Dna, Race, and Reproduction

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

DNA, Race, and Reproduction helps readers inside and outside of academia evaluate and engage with the current genomic landscape. It brings together expertise in law, medicine, religion, history, anthropology, philosophy, and genetics to examine how scientists, medical professionals, and laypeople use genomic concepts to construct racial identity and make or advise reproductive decisions, often at the same moment. It critically and accessibly interrogates how DNA figures in the reproduction of racialized bodies and the racialization of reproduction and examines the privileged position from which genomic knowledge claims to speak about human bodies, societies, and activities. The volume begins from the premise that reproduction, regardless of the means, forces a confrontation between biomedical, scientific, and popular understandings of genetics, and that those understandings are often racialized. It therefore centers reproduction as both a site of analysis and an analytic lens.

Emily Klancher Merchant is Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is author of Building the Population Bomb.

Meaghan O’Keefe is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Medical Humanities at the University of California, Davis.