Download The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (Conversations by Dorothy Nelkin PDF

By Dorothy Nelkin

"The DNA Mystique is a serious warning call to all who might brush aside America's love affair with 'the gene' as a simply eccentric obsession."--In those Times"Nelkin and Lindee are to be warmly congratulated for beginning up this interesting box [of genetics in pop culture] to extra study."--NatureThe DNA Mystique means that the gene in pop culture attracts on clinical rules yet isn't restricted by way of the technical definition of the gene as a bit of DNA that codes for a protein. In highlighting DNA because it appears to be like in cleaning soap operas, comedian books, ads, and different expressions of mass tradition, the authors suggest that those domain names offer severe insights into technology itself.With a brand new advent and end, this version will stay a fascinating, obtainable, and provocative textual content for the sociology, anthropology, and bioethics school room, in addition to stimulating studying for these as a rule drawn to technological know-how and tradition.

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Additional info for The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (Conversations in Medicine and Society)

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The central character of the eugenics movement was the "germ-plasm," the essential entity through which a social transformation would be achieved. And the agents of this social transformation would be the individuals who were "well-born," the "better babies" celebrated in the public con- tests and competitions sponsored by the American Eugenics Society in the 1920s. The stories of unsavory families marked by tragedy and social dissolution, the advice to parents and parents-to-be, and the fitter families contests were often intended to per- suade an educated but not necessarily scientific audience of the need for progressive social reform.

This narrative of the genetic origins of behavior and the threat of future genetic decline conveys a cluster of expecta- tions and fears that have significant historical resonance. Long before heredity could be biologically explained, notions of "blood" and kinship were used to account for social inequalities. 53 Heredity has long been interpreted as socially powerful, though the relative importance of heredity and environment has been the focus of a continuing debate. Renewed interest in genetic explanations reflects the high status of the science of molecular genetics.

Chapter 7 examines its ideological resonance in a society that tends to deflect responsibility for problems away from social or structural conditions and toward the individual. In this context, we argue, genetic essentialism becomes a theory of responsibility and blame. Moving to this theory's practical significance, Chapter 8 examines how routine acceptance of genetic assumptions influences institutional decisions, as employers, insurers, educators, and the courts apply genetic information to meet immediate economic and administrative needs.

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