The Heredity Matrix: Genetics and the Understanding of Mestizaje, Health, and Belonging in Mexico
Por:
Lopez-Beltran, Carlos, Delgado, Abigail Nieves, Gonzalez-Santos, Sandra P., Garcia-Deister, Vivette
Publicada:
3 jul 2022
Resumen:
Empirical data gathered from group discussions with Mexican
undergraduate students from different regions and backgrounds showed
that students tend to incorporate information about genetics into their
accounts of hereditary intergenerational transmission linked to issues
of family resemblance, health, and mestizaje (racial admixture) in a
nuanced, elaborated, and non-simplistic manner. Locality and cultural
variations can define the ways hereditary transmission is understood,
which precludes any generalization about how genetics contributes to
defining group or personal features. In the students' accounts, gene
action appears as stable but not deterministic, and they tend to
sideline genetics and race, when dealing with identity-linked notions
like mestizo. Genes were considered by students to be only one influence
among many that affect their health, identity, family resemblance and
ancestry. They understood themselves as hereditarily linked to their
relatives, their communities, and their localities in what we call the
proximate dimension of belonging. This contrasted with how they
portrayed themselves in distant, more abstract belongings pertaining to
ethnic, regional, or national ascriptions. This dual framing of genetic
narratives was a main feature of a connected set of ideas about heredity
and belonging, which can be elucidated through the concept of heredity
matrix. This complements previous STS contributions to the research on
Genetics in Society and Public Understanding of Science.
Filiaciones:
Lopez-Beltran, Carlos:
Univ Nacl Autonoma Mexico, Inst Invest Filosof, Mexico City, DF, Mexico
Delgado, Abigail Nieves:
Univ Utrecht, Freudenthal Inst, Utrecht, Netherlands
Gonzalez-Santos, Sandra P.:
Univ Anahuac, Fac Bioet, Mexico City, DF, Mexico
Garcia-Deister, Vivette:
Univ Nacl Autonoma Mexico, Fac Ciencias, Mexico City, DF, Mexico
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