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‘Biosocial’ is a new word, but its pedi- for all things human, in sickness or in health, in success or in strife–is fueling Rabinow, the anthropologist of the ge- nome industry, wrote about ‘biosociali-ty’ in 1992.1 He invented the word part- 1 Paul Rabinow, “Arti½ciality and Enlighten- ly as a joke, to counter the sociobiology ment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality,” in that had been fashionable for some time.
Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter, eds., In- corporations (New York: Zone Books, 1992); re- printed in Paul Rabinow, Essays on the Anthro- pology of Reason (Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1996), 91–111. Rabinow is an insider-outsider with whom many leading ½gures in the biotechnology ½eld talk freely.
that many groups of people can be loose- They respect his wholly critical approach as good science in its own right, which means, in social ways, and that the ‘bio’ and the part, inquiry fueled by intense curiosity. Thisworking relationship is truly uncommon in the ‘social’ reinforce each other, prompted burgeoning ½eld of science studies. The respect is mutual. Rabinow has no doubt that geneti- cists are ½nding out how it is. Unlike most aca- demics, he works well with the commercial, venture capital side of the industry, and is per-haps more comfortable there than in academ- ic laboratories. See a series of his books from Making pcr: A Story of Biotechnology (Chica-go: University of Chicago Press, 1996) to Paul Ian Hacking, a Fellow of the American Acad- Rabinow and Talia Dan-Cohen, A Machine toMake a Future: Biotech Chronicles (Princeton, emy since 1991, holds the chair of Philosophy N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). He does and History of Scienti½c Concepts at the Collège not restrict his work to the United States, for de France. His most recent books are “Mad he is the most challenging informant about as- Travellers” (1998), “The Social Construction pects of French biotechnology. Paul Rabinow, of What” (1999), and “Historical Ontology” French dna: Trouble in Purgatory (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1999).
(2002). A new edition of “The Emergence of He has also had another role, as America’s ½rst reliable facilitator (a handy enough term)for Michel Foucault, with whom there was the same mutual respect. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul too readily the self-image that life tech- that everything is not in our genes, to cite his critical onslaught on the police’s sim- us ‘biosociality,’ a piece called “Galton’s tion is; and so on. Nevertheless, the bio- the silent whistle for police dogs), devel- oped a system to identify criminals using their ½ngerprints. He adapted his system of their subjects de½nitively. His regret was that, although a complete set of ½n- ly asserted) biological or genetic lines, ly, it says absolutely nothing about that forging new alliances and loyalties. Forg- rival, Alphonse Bertillon, who inventedthe French system of identi½cation by Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralismand Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). I single out the second evant for recognizing character traits.
edition because the interview printed there is one of the most useful places to begin a philo- sophical discussion of Foucault’s later ethical studies. Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader(New York: Pantheon, 1984). He continues to explore some of Foucault’s leads. Many of the essays in his Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment (Princeton, N.J.: Prince- ton University Press, 2003) are at the intersec- tion of Rabinow’s abilities, on the one hand,to learn from Foucault and, on the other, to grasp what is happening in biotechnology.
I am carrying Rabinow’s analysis a step There is unlikely to be anyone else, at present, as agile with biotechnology and as adept in discussing biopower as Paul Rabinow.
Leon Kamin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideol-ogy, and Human Nature (New York: Panthe- 3 In Paul R. Billings, ed., dna on Trial: Genet- on, 1984). See also, for example, Richard C.
ic Identi½cation and Criminal Justice (Plainview, Lewontin, It Ain’t Necessarily So: The Dream N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, of the Human Genome and Other Illusions (New 1992); reprinted in Rabinow, Anthropology of York: New York Review of Books, 2000).
is, the neighborhood in which you live.
to changes that resulted, genetic ½nger- reliable. One little-noticed effect was on tion it because it is thought to be as dis- Lewontin’s critique was invaluable.
its initial successes in the United King- bors’ genomes and, by statistical impli- mitted by family members or neighbors.
in the world’s population, or even that the relevant ½gure is the probability of class of all inhabitants of the neighbor- of the crime, where it will most likely be a lot larger. Let alone when the suspects that reliable identi½cation is very dif½-cult. Especially if they all came from thesame neighborhood in the old country.
4 For “A Bibliography for a Course of Crimi- nal Anthropology, or Criminal Sociology, Cir- ca 1893–4,” see Ian Hacking, The Taming ofChance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 246–247. For parallels between that criminal anthropology and its 1990s face- lift, see Ian Hacking, “Criminal Behavior, De- generacy and Looping,” in David T. Wasserman and R. T. Wachbroit, eds., Genetics and Crimi-nal Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge Universi- ever, in principle, if not always in prac- Ian Hacking tice, the new local data banks make that rink but in a little gray box. Police servic- es, in many parts of the world, are just helped free a signi½cant number of indi- as the fbi evidently was of its in 1944.
The House on 92nd Street, a wonderful movie made in 1944, provides a point of comparison between the new ½nger- cooperation of the fbi (apparently be- fore Hiroshima, although released only secrets.5 In it is a shot of a vast arena ti½cation, Rabinow was right to foresee, ½fteen years ago, the increasing role of guilty parties. The ½lming took place on not primarily interested in the use of ge- netics for racial identi½cation, the cur- dure is automated, using Hollerith cards, looking further into the future when, for identify themselves as that sort, the ones descends from Hollerith’s original com- at risk of having Alzheimer’s, an autistic ‘data bank.’ It is not just a secure place to the idea of already existing de facto stacks of cards are ‘banks’ in another locations in the United States for all the puters, this scene is a reliable metaphor for dna-½ngerprint searching today.
tunities, language, lifestyles. On a Sun- The two chief differences: today’s iden- ti½ers are genes, not the surfaces of ½n- notably ½t, playing soccer. Where there are serious Angeleno hills and canyons,groups of Armenians of all ages and bothsexes are taking sociable walks, com- 5 The House on 92nd Street, directed by Henry Hathaway, released September 1945. All the fbi fbi personnel–in many cases the actual per- sonnel involved in the historical events.
sociologist’s point of view, to set them great as that between two randomly cho- Genetics, sen members of different races. This was biosocial sider. And, to put it bluntly, their His- rect statements for general audiences, by of identity grant in love with the beautiful daughter of Armenians. Finally, there is the bond- are certainly more social than biological.
thirty years ago.6 Editorials to this effect were still appearing in Nature Genetics borhood to identify with each other.
gions, one would ½nd a far more distinct not so different from that of nearby peo- with race, either stereotypically or phys- iologically, are statistically independent.
eyed blonde has whitish skin. A. W. F.
loquial speech, the ’hood really denotes 6 Richard Lewontin, “The Apportionment of both social and genetic. To say that is to Human Diversity,” Evolutionary Biology 6 (1972): racism. Good. We need to get the racestuff out in the open quickly, or we may 7 Nature Genetics 24 (2000): 97; Nature Genetics be overtaken by new versions of race sci- 29 (2001): 239; Nature 409 (2001): 812.
8 Ian Hacking, “Why Race Still Matters,” Dæ- dalus 134 (1) (Winter 2005): 102–116. I shall not repeat my four-page discussion of race-based medicine here, but it is taken for granted in tudes: that all race science is biased bal- 9 A. W. F. Edwards, “Human Genetic Diver- sity: Lewontin’s Fallacy,” BioEssays 25 (2003): 798–801. Edwards is a statistical geneticist at It produced ½ve groups of people, recog- a modest statistical training, rather di- nized as the ½ve races of nineteenth-cen- rect and ‘self-evident,’ and yet it had to tury science, plus one group that did not the matter out in public. I suspect that, thing, but it is a signi½cant anecdote.
‘obviously’ correct, no one attended to to imply that the issues are simple, only Nature Genetics a few years ago is obso- time. In such regions, skin color and the lete. The fall 2004 issue of the same jour- rest furnish little indication of the pro- sings to a tune altogether different from owes to different geographical regions.
the harmonies of three years earlier.
lished for Brazil.11 Genetic markers can- –I would categorize it both as acute and groups of objects with lots of character- istics into small groups of distinct class- ferent designs, for example, and sort the race science that ‘Caucasian’ is still the 10 Noah A. Rosenberg et al., “Genetic Struc-ture of Human Populations,” Science 298 Cambridge University. For fear that his tes- timony be taken as a priori suspect, I shouldmention that perhaps the most vigorous life- 11 Sérgio D. J. Pena et al., “Color and Genomic long proponent of the irrelevance of race Ancestry in Brazilians,” Proceedings of the Na- for evaluating human beings is Luca Cavalli- tional Academy of Sciences 100 (2003): 177–182.
Sforza. Edwards was for some years his col-laborator and developed much of the statisti- 12 See, for example, the catalog of the Royal cal machinery on which his early population Academy Exhibition, Turks: A Journey of a Thou- sand Years 600–1600 (2005).
gle drop of alien blood could ‘pollute’ netic bag, just as they are on the old Silk facilitated and in some cases guaranteed.
Road. Call that idiocy, or call that an in- So a host of companies is offering genet- advertent stroke of ironic prescience, as ers and stereotypical racial identi½cation rights to the Indians at the same time as they took their territory. In present law, publicized, quite a lot of scienti½c work other citizens. Similar laws exist in the pices. At a quite different level, for peo- mining the extent of a person’s aborigi- nal ancestry also get a lot of business.
use of genetics to trace identities. I hope the dangers are evident. It will be tempt- that all this dna stuff will be put to rac- reasonable fear is that a lust for technol- nal pro½ling, is justi½ed. But there is but also people in general. For example,it might become easy to reject children 13 “Blacks Pin Hope on dna to Fill Slavery’s Gap in Family Trees,” New York Times, July 29, 2005, A1. You can get something about yourancestors quite cheaply. Since this is a highlycompetitive market, prices will keep on falling, 14 Thus, Genelex says it has facilities available and any costs I might write today will soon in seventy-two countries from Argentina to be out-of-date. For an idea, try Google: for ex- Vietnam. Unlike the ½rm cited in the previous ample, Family Tree dna, from Family Tree Ge- note, it does offer pro½les of its management netics Ltd., located in Houston, Texas, displays and consultants. It asserts, “Genelex tests are what it asserts is a competitive chart of com- 100 times more discriminating than the indus- parisons with two major rivals, Relative Ge- try standard. Typical positive test results exceed netics (U.S.) and the Oxford Ancestors (U.K.).
99.99%.” The longer you look at that assertion “ftdna lab’s scientists are world-renowned the more ways you can read it. Did I say buyer geneticists and discoverers of original markers that have been included in other lab tests.” It is dif½cult for a layperson to ½gure out exactly 15 Jon Elster drew my attention to debate in- what any such organization is selling, or even volving legislation under consideration in Ver- who the world-renowned paid collaborators mont. Kimberly Tallbear, “dna, Blood and are. Caveat emptor, and consult a knowledgeable Racializing the Tribe,” Wicazo sa Review 18 Ian Hacking If the genome begins to override culture, then all citizens must rise up and insist of its ½rst classic uses was in a national knowledge of genetic ‘identities’ will partial science. That is not intrinsically bad, but it is still a phenomenon that can mercial labs send you a ‘kit’ to collect ought to be looking for in patient genet- will collect it. All British genes will go on ½le, unless a public outcry arises far think are your ethnic and, above all, geo- greater than what has occurred so far.
quite a few parts of the world, including about you is legitimate, they also ridicule ti½cation is, among other things, worth- 16 Ancel Keys et al., “Indices of Relative Weight and Obesity,” Journal of Chronic Dis-eases 25 (1972): 329–343. The ratio, namely metric weight over height squared, is much older. But it was used not for medicine but for anthropology (anthropometry), and in per- ty, the ratio of body fat to body mass, is haps the ½rst instance for studying the rate the important health indicator, but it is of growth in height and weight in children– 17 Erik Bielke, “Variation in Height and Weight in the Norwegian Population,” British very cheap: stand on a scale, stand under Journal of Preventive Medicine 25 (1971): 192– 202. Much of the early bmi literature from buttons on a calculator (or use one of the international sources was published in Britishnhs-oriented medical journals. For the classic full study, see H. Th. Waaler, “Height, Weight and Mortality: The Norwegian Experience,” Acta Medica Scandinavica Supplement 679 (1984).
fact handicapped, also protest: “I would on genetic treasure hunts. It is also trou- contract arose from a variety of civil lib- erty and ‘green’ spokespeople in Iceland.
sold out from under their noses. Interna- tional activists also protested. The Ice- genetic markers. Such ‘tailoring,’ as it this case, a large number of well-educat- ed Icelanders reside in all parts of the in- ing the obvious: the intersection of med- ical, social, personal, and pro½t-making Iceland’s greatest natural resource, her cialized genetic searches. At the time of for forty-four different types of disease risk. It is often argued that full genetic and sometimes that it is a right of thecitizens covered by the system. We have but it ½ts in neatly with our ‘risk society.’ possible essential early medical services Ulrich Beck was the ½rst to use this term the extent to which screening promptsabortions. It is not only across-the-board 18 Ulrich Beck, Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt: Surhkamp, a test leads to killing the fetus. A vocal 1986), translated as Risk Society: Towards a New number of disability activists, who are in Modernity (New York: Sage, 1992).
Ian Hacking Beck was initially concerned with risks where the syndrome is usually just called trisomie. (This has turned out to be a less than exact label, for triplings of certain to risks that are not primarily of our own making, such as the risk of inherited dis- say trisomie vingt-et-un.) There are other success stories, for which the teams that the latter, such as Jérôme Lejeune’s 1959 identi½cation of the association between and manifest illness or disability will be ‘multifactorial.’ Genetic markers will not be causes but risk factors.
an extra chromosome 21 will developinto a child with Down’s syndrome, if Though ‘risk’ implies danger, and dan- it is allowed to live. This is so probable that it is unnatural to speak of risk here.
four and to compose symphonies at ten.
exceptional desirable abilities as well.
against diseases is also spurring genetic hunts. For example, Alzheimer’s disease shows up rarely or not at all among cer-tain American Indian communities.
making the ½rst identi½cation of a separate de- ty to, or delay, the advance of senility. If velopmental disability, which he called Mongo-lian idiocy. We blush now at the name, which so, ½nding this protection factor will be was abandoned in 1960, but most of us have forgotten that his work was part of an explic- itly racialist program to classify mental and also surrounds the genetic imperative.
physiological defects as throwbacks to other races. J. L. H. Down, “Observations on an Eth-nic Classi½cation of Idiots,” London Hospital Reports, 1866; reprinted in Journal of Mental Sci- ence 13 (1867): 121–123. Mongolism became a standard diagnosis in the English-speaking world, thanks to W. W. Ireland, On Idiocy and alcoholism is a disease or, at any rate, an Imbecility (London: Churchill, 1877), but was not picked up in continental Europe until theturn of the century. But the vigilant Cesare Lombroso included it in his atavistic anthro- pology as early as 1873, speaking of what awk- sexuality is not a disease or disability.
wardly translates as “mongolian atavism of the cretinoid anomaly.” C. Lombroso, “Sulla that we are still in the adolescent phase microcephalia e sul cretinismo,” Rivista Clinicadi Bologna, July 1873, fasc. 7.
this central phenomenon: the genetic im- resurrection. Certainly autistic children perative ½nds its natural home in the risk soci- ety. Even a relatively abstract search, the linked locus for any genetic carrier.
cate risk factors for disease or disability.
is not a gene for any of these disorders sites may contribute to several disorders, plication that this ‘gene’ causes this dis- genetic conjectures just will not pan out.
ism but risk factors, or worse, multifac- torial risk. But for simplicity’s sake, I’ll certainty, like trisomy 21, are rare, the one’s chances of getting a particular dis- order–whether single or multiple–as a as in the early-onset forms of diseases such as breast cancer, colonorectal can-cer, or Alzheimer’s. Indeed, early-onset biological, not social, group. But people ease at a de½nite stage in the body’s ag- praecox, is triggered speci½cally by ma- dementia, or so it was ½rst described.
with a disease or disability, or have fami- ‘Friends of Schizophrenia.’ They are, formed around a biological condition.
gled? Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia velopmental dif½culties. Parents, under- tism’ was originally the name of a symp- Ian Hacking but they were greatly aided by the fact diseases. Now we step into the future.
Philip Roth in The Human Stain. A boy in families that are genetically at risk for a black family, who had rather olive skin, will then consist not of those who are ill hangs the tale. That is a pregenetic tale– new to the discussion of identity, a con- life in the prosperous parts of the world.
one will notice. In this case, the septua- cal. Built into their conception of identi- ty was the idea that one’s essential fea- should constitute one’s identity. Those words ‘essential’ and ‘accidental’ reek zer’s Viagra turns a once-essential prop- erty, the natural limitations of age, into the surreptitious idea of essence at their ty. Roth seems to imply at the end of the truly free in a sense that the existential- ly avoid thinking of their genetic inheri- as part of who they are, as their essence.
exist without a roster of acted identities, ness itself is not a role that can be played tantly, she is a Haitian, born and educat- received an ‘excellent’ education at a phone working in anglophone Toronto.
thought–or more pure than they feared.
future it is as likely to be denial as any- ferson’s daughter speaks for itself: only at about age thirty, by a very nasty, lit- strations will be political. Imagine a very white-looking Brazilian capitalist turned a man of the people. He sends off his spit not likely to learn more about it for the peats to no effect that this hardly distin- identity, being at risk genetically for thisdisorder. My friend could decide that the We are experiencing and will contin- pressing battle for her today is not the allies, but advocacy for those at risk for the most stringent kind of identity poli- ‘identities.’ Identity politics was partic- Ian Hacking tor are not markedly different in any fair: those at risk often create organiza- tions. And while their initial motivation ingly we shall have ‘making up people’ manism is one of the more remarkable.
Last year, I agreed to give a talk for an are separating into their Cartesian habi- adult-education series run by a good uni- tattoo, pierce, and bind our body parts.
monthly discussions on the topic of ‘the person.’ My title was “People and Cy- Australian performance artist Stelarc.
were astonished to see a far larger audi- and their thoughts border on science.
tesque. Yet real subcultures of individu- “No idea,” he said quietly, “but perhapsthey are from the liberal community.” 20 Ian Hacking, “The Cartesian Vision Ful- ½lled: Analogue Bodies and Digital Minds,” of ten intellectuals whom Foreign Policy Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 30 (2005): 153–166; Ian Hacking, “Our Neo-Cartesian Bodies in Parts,” Critical Inquiry, forthcoming.
nophilia: Information, Questions, Answers and 21 Carl Elliott introduced amputism to the gen- Recommendations about Self-Demand Amputation eral reader in “Amputees by Choice,” in Better (New York: 1st Books, 2000). Furth is a New Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American York Jungian analyst who does play therapy Dream (New York: Norton, 2003). For the in- for terminally ill children. Smith is a Scottish house description of the need to be amputated, surgeon who has done some self-demand am- see Gregg M. Furth and Robert Smith, Apotem- thirty, or Chinese. Yet, I wanted to know ‘who’ she was–and the same for a num- But they were rejecting that question.
Refusing to choose a society or a biology, very concept of a biosocial identity.
Hayek, Popper, or Oakeshot (or Fuku-yama): don’t make big changes; if youmust change, change slowly and be sureyou know what you are doing.
the people in the room, “What do youthink is the most dangerous idea aroundtoday?” I received the expected answersfrom people my age: genetically modi-½ed food and so forth. Then a youngwoman said very quietly, “The idea thatwe should not evolve.” I would have saidshe was an impeccably groomed womanof about thirty, of Chinese ancestry, heraccent standard Ontario well-educated. I ought to have been prepared, for I hadgiven a more highbrow talk with a simi-lar theme in Montreal a few weeks earli-er. There, a young black man asked mevery strong direct questions in standardeducated French. I was later told he wasan of½cer in the local transhumanist so-ciety.
ous members of the audience, the pen-ny dropped more slowly than it shouldhave. Half the population in this audi-ence already knew all about transhu-manism. ‘Cyborg’ had been my unwit- 22 “Transhumanism,” Foreign Policy 144 (Sep-tember–October 2004): 42–43.
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