Eugene Thacker on Sun, 25 Jan 2004 06:50:14 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> The DNA of Culture |
The DNA of Culture The Journey of Man, PBS, 2003 http://www.pbs.org/previews/2002fall/joum.html >From WIPs to DNA? Usually I don't have a huge problem with PBS documentaries on bioscience. There are other things to complain about: special-interest health care policies in the US, the media fear-factor of the "disease of the month" (now chicken-flu), and the zombie-mania of the US Bioterrorist Act. But check out The Journey of Man, a NOVA science documentary produced in 2003, which might be subtitled "The Benetton Theory of Genetics." The Journey of Man is a documentary that, in its own bizarre way, suggests that globalization is about DNA, and that DNA can explain race and ethnicity. It is one of a string of recent examples of how biotech is consciously fashioning itself as a global industry. Or, put another way, The Journey of Man consciously fashions genetics as global, but it does so in a way that masks or hides the ways in which this global science is linked to a global industry in intellectual property, market-driven health care, and pharmaceuticals. But perhaps I am, in a way, giving the program too much credit. The Journey of Man is so full of problems that one is overwhelmed at where to start. First off, a cynical comment: The Journey of Man is basically an excuse for a privileged, American geneticist to take a vacation around the world. Travel the world, take a few blood samples, be the host of your own TV show - what could be better? The Journey of Man shows population geneticist Spencer Wells re-tracing the steps of the earliest human beings. Wells begins with Africa, then on to Australia, India, China, Russia and finally to Europe and America. Along the way Wells also takes genetic samples of volunteers in order to build up a set of genetic markers to tell his genetic narrative: that each individual on this planet is related to every other individual, that "we" have a common genetic heritage, one that originates in Africa, and spreads outwards to Australia, China, and the Middle East. But The Journey of Man ultimately fails in its quest: in setting out to prove that genetics can explain race and ethnicity, it ultimately ends up showing how genetics is totally unable to account for cultural and social factors. There is something that makes me uncomfortable in seeing a very American geneticist supposedly hanging out with African bushmen and Afghanis, Pakistanis and Native Americans, generously sharing with each group the irrefutable origin narrative of genetics. (Upon first meeting an African bushman tribe, Wells, indulging in a bit of physiognomy, immediately notes how he can see the myriad of human races in the foreheads, cheekbones, and bodily features of the tribespeople.) The premises which the program makes are twofold: First, that all human beings on the planet - and all their ancestors - are "related" via their DNA. This is, in a nutshell, the idea behind genetic archaeology, or the use of molecular genetics technologies to discern archaeological and anthropological relationships. One popular field has been the use of genetic analysis to construct or re-construct human racial lineages, thereby re- telling the "story of man." The idea is that genetics can tell the story of the "journey of man," a journey which presumably extends from the Dark Continent to the Developed World. The problem is that The Journey of Man intimates that the genetic narrative of man is also a progress narrative, from the primitive cultures of African plains to the electronic pulse of American cities. The second premise is implicit in the first, and only emerges near the program's end. That premise is that "our" common genetic heritage serves as the ground for seeing all human beings and cultures as being essentially alike. The biggest and most obvious problem with The Journey of Man has to do not with science but with culture. At every step of the way, Wells encounters dissent from his so-called ancestors. Wells' genetic narrative is Janus-faced: on the one hand it sets itself up as irrefutable science, and on the other hand it also claims to explain something about the universality of "the human," irrespective of cultural difference, the particular, the local, the translocal. African Bushmen, Australian Aboriginals, Native Americans - each ethnic group Wells visits directly questions his scientific proposition. But they question him not on the details of his science, but on the level of culture. One instance is instructive. After an elaborate lecture in genetics, an Aboriginal tribesman plainly states he does not believe Wells' "story" about the common genetic roots of all human beings. The reason? The tribesman points to the long tradition of stories, myths, and cultural traditions that explicitly state that the origin of Aboriginal tribes is Australia, and not in Africa. The only response Wells can come up with is that perhaps genetics is the Western world's own story or myth about origins. This is, to my mind, the real message of this documentary. But mostly, the individuals, families, and communities Wells visits just smile or even laugh while he tells and re-tells his genetic narrative, almost like a genetic salesman... Now the issue obviously isn't who's right and who's wrong. But what is important is that at each step of the way, Wells encounters an irreducible difference between Western science and local cultural traditions. Put another way, the only thing The Journey of Man proves is that the supposedly universal, global science of genetics is anything but global (or local). Irreducible differences between science and culture, the global and the local, race and ethnicity, pop up at each step of the way on Wells' own "journey." In fact, the documentary is framed narratologically as a giant detective story: the geneticist is the sleuth, the evidence or clues are DNA samples, the "scene of the crime" different continents and countries, and the "crime" itself? Perhaps the crime is simply being different, for the aim of The Journey of Man is nothing less than to use population genetics to show the universality of the "us" or "we." In fact, the most preposterous statement Wells makes comes at the close of the documentary: "We are all literally 'African' under the skin." One thing is certain from this documentary, and that is that The Journey of Man is a documentary that purports to be about genetics, but is really about culture. This is, I agree, an easy target, and a part of me is still trying to see programs and books like this in a more complex way, as more than attempts to use biology to answer problems that are social, economic, and political. But it is hard for me to see this documentary, and fields such as population genetics, as disconnected from the medical and economic interests of drug development, intellectual property, and the growing hegemony of Western/American healthcare systems. A disconcerting scenario comes into my mind: if research like this can convince people in various cultures that genetics is the answer to the questions of social and cultural origins, then it follows that genetics is also the answer to medicine and healthcare, and it then follows that a market-based healthcare system is in turn the answer to delivering genetic medicine to the "rest" of the world. This is reductive, I know, but the clear impression of The Journey of Man is that, along his travels, Wells encounters not DNA sequences or test tubes, but rather cultural difference, economic hardship, political unrest, unequal social development, religious fervor, and suspicion of American culture. Wells' "incredible story" of DNA has very little to say in the face of such difficult issues. My big question to Wells is this: why? Why is it so significant to travel around the world and lecture people from different cultures about genetics? Perhaps the aim is to foster a greater sense of community among the human race, or some such idealistic notion. But if this is the aim, surely we need more than DNA for that... Finally, a footnote: Wells himself comes from an interesting professional lineage. His mentor, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, is a well-known population geneticist, a researcher largely acknowledged for playing a key role in the development of the field of population genetics. Cavalli-Sforza is also well known as one of the lead researchers of the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), an NIH-funded programmed initiated in the early 1990s. The goal of the HGDP was to collect genetic samples from thousands of genetically-isolated populations world-wide. The reason was twofold: first, to assemble something resembling a genetic archaeology of the human race, and second, to make use of these samples for the development of effective genetic medicines. Cavalli-Sforza's name, and the HGDP project, gained media attention when activist groups such as RAFI showed that project teams had filed patents for a number of the genetic samples, without fully informing the communities from which the samples were taken. By 1996 the HGDP had dropped several of its patent claims and had publicly issued a set of protocols for the acquisition of biological and genetic samples. All of this, needless to say, was not mentioned in the documentary. - Eugene Thacker ************************************** Eugene Thacker, PhD Literature, Communication, & Culture Georgia Institute of Technology eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~ethacker ************************************** # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net