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DNA evidence? The impact of genetic research on historical debates

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Abstract

The article explores how the relationship between genetics and history is performed in genetics studies that aim to reconstruct human migrations. It focuses on two case studies: research on the nature of genetic diversity of South Asian populations and on the genetic history of different Jewish communities. Analysis is based on a close reading of 16 articles on the genetic history of Jewish and South Asian populations and on in-depth interviews with eight geneticists who played a key role in either or both types of studies and with 20 historians with expertise in the issues examined in the genetic studies under survey. The paper discusses the way geneticists construct their contribution to historical debates and the way this contribution is perceived by historians. It will be demonstrated that geneticists and historians are keen on demarcating their disciplines from each other with geneticists insisting on keeping some distance from historical evidence for the sake of maintaining ‘objectivity’, and historians questioning the epistemological validity of genetic interventions into their field. It will be argued that what accounts for this lack of engagement with each other's discipline is the sociocultural norms associated with academic practice in the natural sciences and humanities and a tendency towards monodisciplinary peer-review.

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Notes

  1. For a discussion on biologisation and molecularisation of race see also Duster (2005), Fullwiley (2008).

  2. Some parts of this section have been published in Egorova (2009b).

  3. The Babri Masjid (the mosque of Babur, Urdu) was constructed in Ayodhya in the sixteenth century at the site, which many Hindus believe was the birthplace of Rama, one of the incarnations of the god Vishnu. The mosque was destroyed in 6 December 1992 by the crowd brought in by the Hindu communalist party Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and associated groups. The destruction of Babri Masjid sparked one of the worst outbreaks of sectarian violence in contemporary Indian history.

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Acknowledgements

Material that this paper is based upon was collected in the course of the projects sponsored by the British Academy (grant ref. SG: 41704) and by the Nuffield Foundation (SGS/36124). I am very grateful to Troy Duster, Sara Shostak and the four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. I would also like to thank Soraya de Chadarevian for the opportunity to present this paper in the special issue of BioSocieties.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, DH1 3HP, UK

    Yulia Egorova

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Egorova, Y. DNA evidence? The impact of genetic research on historical debates. BioSocieties 5, 348–365 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2010.18

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