Social genomics holds great promise but may run the risk of naturalizing human difference.
Since the mapping of the genome in 2000, scientists have sought to uncover what makes us tick by putting our genes under the microscope. Trait after trait has been subjected to genomic testing, and the fruits of that research have been splashed across headlines: “‘Gangsta Gene’ Identified in US Teens,” trumpeted one article in the New Scientist; “Happiness is in your DNA,” heralded The Economist. This avalanche of research has emerged from a new form of science, what I call “sociogenomics,” which melds genetic and social science approaches to understand the gene-environment interactions that make up various phenomena in our lives. Sociogenomics is practiced by lots of different scientists, geneticists, sociologists, economists, and behaviorists, but a new field that is driving its innovation is that of social genomics.
An avalanche of research has emerged from a new form of science, what I call “sociogenomics,” which melds genetic and social science approaches.
Social genomics focuses on social behavior and outcomes, things like making it through school and going to the polls to vote. Social genomics is not just interdisciplinary. It is transdisciplinary. It goes beyond adding natural and social science methods to blending them and coming up with new ones. It holds great potential for transforming science in important ways, because it has the power to pull together the best practices of all its disciplinary home bases. As the old adage goes, it is greater than the sum of its parts.
One thing I was interested in when I began investigating this new form of science was how it handled classifying humans. In my research, I’ve focused on how genome mappers involved in the major human genome projects of our time conceived of race. It showed that, even though these scientists believed that race was not a good classification system for genomics, and that humanity’s genomes couldn’t be broken down into racial groups, the concept of race was so important to everyday people that it was worth keeping in play in genomic research. Scientists used racial categories to structure their big global projects. As the field of genomics became more prominent in public health, it made racial classification more of a standard in science. The field made it a point to avoid being labeled as “colorblind.”
In my first book, Race Decoded, I argued that appropriating the social categories of race for genomic research made these categories seem genetically fixed, based deep down in the essence of a person’s DNA code. I worried that our collective understanding of the social inner workings of race was falling by the wayside. Social scientists like myself had spent decades unearthing the social processes behind race, like how our contemporary classifications originated in problematic folk notions of a bygone era, and how a person’s racial identity intersected with their class and gender status to produce a specific set of life outcomes. So when I moved to study sociogenomics, I wanted to know how things might be different.
In mapping the contours of sociogenomic science, I was learning that there were different approaches at play. Some research was conducted within a certain discipline, say psychology or biology. That research did not always involve social scientists who had a sociological view of race. In the field of social genomics, however, social scientists were the chief directors of studies. It seemed to me that there was great opportunity here for a complex understanding of the ways that social processes of race could shape gene-environment interactions. At the least, it seemed that social genomics could do better than mainstream genomics in presenting a rich definition of race and how it was used in particular studies.
The same went for gender and sexuality, two other traits commonly deployed in classifying humans that could be read as either byproducts of one’s DNA or as socially constructed markers. Was sociogenomics capturing the social processes at work in subjects’ gender and sexuality? Was social genomics better at doing so given its social science slant?
Looking at media reporting on sociogenomics, I found that sociogenomic studies tended to be conducted on single racial groups and that the social factors comprising those racial groups were never discussed. News coverage would often compare groups under the rubric of “the West versus the Rest,” or people of European descent versus others. This just reinforced the notion that there was a kind of white versus nonwhite division in humanity’s genomes. Social genomics fared better, in that studies avoided making comparisons across racial groups. But because social genomics used genomics’ gold standard method of separating by race, studies conducted on one specific group were ripe for comparison by external entities such as the media.
The social scientists that lead social genomics research often have the most sophisticated understanding of race, gender, and sexuality, but it does not always inform their work in the realm of genetics.
When it came to gender, I saw the same thing happening. The media reported sociogenomic studies in terms of a strict and obvious sexual binary of male and female. Disorders like aggressive behavior and violence were male traits. Females were supposedly wired differently. Here, social genomics also handled gender according to the mainstream genomic standard, often conducting research on men or women only. The social processes behind gender were not discussed in research publications.
Sexuality was different both in terms of sociogenomic science writ large and social genomics. Sexuality was often presented in both arenas as something intrinsically genetic, fixed, and immutable. But when it came to sexual orientation, research teams were careful to present the fluidity of sexuality and to discuss its social nature. Sexual orientation was handled with a great deal of care.
What do I make of all this? First of all, just because social scientists are involved in a study, does not mean that the study will marshal those scientists’ disciplinary knowledge or approach to human classification. The social scientists that lead social genomics research often have the most sophisticated understanding of race, gender, and sexuality, but it does not always inform their work in the realm of genetics. Second, some forms of human classification are more naturalized than others. Race and gender may go under the radar of scientists as something to complicate, whereas sexuality may trigger more careful consideration.
It would behoove us to ask more of scientists. We can avoid casting race and gender as merely about DNA codes if we agree on the value of environmental approaches in gene-environment interdisciplinary endeavors, and if we demand that interdisciplinary science be balanced. We also need to keep an open discussion of the ways that human classifications are naturalized, so that we can dispel them. In the cases where studies have drawn on social scientists’ rich knowledge of the social processes behind race, gender, and sexuality, better gene-environment science has resulted, and we have learned how genes and environments truly are constitutive of one another. We should make sure that our truly transdisciplinary science lives up to its fullest potential.
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