Foto: Håkon Bergseth / Norsk Teknisk Museum
Dette var et international forskningsprosjekt støttet av Norges forskningsråd, og informasjonen her følger derfor på engelsk.
'Race' and 'ethnicity' and the science of human genetic variation 1945-2012
This project has been funded by the Research Council of Norway for the period 2013-2018 under the programme Cultural Conditions Underlying Social Change.
Over the last decades genetic research has undergone a technological revolution and is now producing large amounts of data on human populations. This has opened up new avenues for scientific research, but has also raised a host of epistemological, historical, ethical and political questions about genetic science itself, as well as the role of genetic information in society. Among these debates are controversies involving the concepts of ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ and human genetic variation, and the related scientific practices. How do social and cultural notions of 'ethnicity', 'race' and ancestry interact with the production of scientific knowledge about human genetic variation? And how, in turn, do scientific developments guide the conceptualisation of human variation both inside and outside the academia? Such questions figure prominently in ongoing international academic debates and research, but more than often transcend scholarly discussions to engage with the public.
The overall aim of this project is to investigate the interactions between societal and scientific processes in the establishment of concepts of 'race' and 'ethnicity' in physical anthropology and human population genetics from 1945 to 2012. In this project genetic data are neither understood as a simple representation of nature nor as a mere product of social and political interests. Instead, we will elucidate how society shapes the production of scientific knowledge in human genetics, and how scientific knowledge influences the social sphere. Our goal is to identify cultural and societal implications of human population genetics, and provide a knowledge base for normative discussions about these implications.
The project is led by The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, and is conducted in cooperation with the Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, the Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo and the Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen. .
Jon Røyne Kyllingstad is the project leader.
The project consists of the following four parts: