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As genomics initiatives have spread around the world–often in the name of genetic diversity and inclusion–they have not only invoked promises of a medical revolution, but also revived categories of human difference that resemble erstwhile racial classifications. This is despite the fact that geneticists broadly dismissed racial categories as obsolete and unfounded after the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003. In fact, contemporary genomics initiatives have often ended up reinforcing ethnocentric and nativist conceptions of difference, drawing intense criticism from activists and critical social scientists. This roundtable brings leading population geneticists grappling with the question of genetic identity and ancestry, especially in the global South, together with some of the most prominent scholars of race in genomics. The result is an engaging and insightful dialogue on questions that have vexed the field for decades. How do we—indeed "can" we reconcile the boundaries of biological and social difference? How do notions of "genetic ancestry" and "biogeographical ancestry differ from erstwhile racial and ethnic categories? Can racial categories ever be shorn of their colonial and oppressive legacies? Here we scrutinise the methodological and epistemological frameworks in contemporary genomics that work to define populations and shape our understanding of biology, society, health, and disease. We seek to clarify perspectives across the disciplinary divide, and to advance constructive and grounded critiques that contend with the question of justice in genomics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are worries about the quality of scientific research, the validity of the knowledge it produces and the integrity of academics. What is lacking in the debate is what scientists have to say and what they do to create and safeguard what they see as 'good science'. Using Dutch academia as a case, we show that the academics' understandings of scientific practice differ in vital ways from those of policy makers. Policy maker's understanding of academia as a competitive marketplace to foster innovative research disturbs the everyday ethics and creativity of scientific work according to the scientists, who see academia as a collective practice aimed at understanding the world in which tradition and innovation have to find a balance. We conclude that this misunderstanding and its consequences do more to damage research integrity than fraudulent activities of individual researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue interrogates race through the lens of face. Its central faces are those in forensic settings. Promising immediate legibility and access to the individual suspect, forensic faces nevertheless mobilize a variety of collectives. We offer conceptual and methodological tools to examine the face as both an individual and a collective phenomenon, and demonstrate through detailed cases how the face thus allows us to address the absent presence of race. Given its long and convoluted history in physical anthropology, as a marker of racial typology, the face forces us to reckon with colonial histories of ordering human difference. But the face also allows us to question a regime of visuality that congeals around the face in Western culture. In this introduction to The Politics of Face and the Trouble with Race we elaborate these concerns and introduce the contributions to this volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is race? And how does it figure in different scientific practices? To answer these questions, I suggest that we need to know race differently. Rather than defining race or looking for one conclusive answer to what it is, I propose methods that are open-ended, that allow us to follow race around, while remaining curious as to what it is. I suggest that we pursue generous methods. Drawing on empirical examples of forensic identification technologies, I argue that the slipperiness of race—the way race and its politics inexorably shift and change—cannot be fully grasped as an 'object multiple'. Race, I show, is not race: The same word refers to different phenomena. To grasp this, I introduce the notion of the affinity concept. Drawing on the history of race, along with contemporary work in forensic genetics, the affinity concept helps us articulate how race indexes three different scientific realities: race as object, race as method, and race as theory. These three different, yet interconnected realities, contribute to race's slipperiness as well as its virulence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why write? The spaces of intellectual dissidence once provided by universities—promoting disinterested inquiry, encouraging critical analysis, challenging conventional wisdoms—are increasingly controlled, if not squeezed out. A lethal mix of neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and right-wing populism is unfolding in different combinations around the world, and one of its key targets of attack is intellectual freedom. It is pressing for academics as writers to ask, What is our purpose? Who is our reader? How do we navigate the tensions between the constraints of academic evaluation criteria and the compulsions of writing for wider publics, scholarly fidelity and activist commitments, writing as scholars and producing journalism or fiction? This article reflects on these questions through the writing of the book Nightmarch , an anthropologist's account of the spread of the Naxalites, a Marx-, Lenin-, and Mao-inspired guerrilla struggle among Indigenous people in the heart of India. The backdrop is the rise of neoliberal audit cultures in UK universities sapping writing of its vitality and Hindu nationalism in India clamping down fiercely on debate, deliberation, and critique, with human rights activists and intellectuals imprisoned as alleged Maoists or "urban Naxals." The overall aim of this essay is to contribute to opening the space for intellectual dissidence and ignite scholarly relevance beyond academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2008.00699.x Byline: AMADE M'CHAREK (1) Keywords: forensic DNA; visible traits; race; legislation; ethics of visible traits Abstract: ABSTRACT DNA profiling is a well-established technology for use in the criminal justice system, both in courtrooms and elsewhere. The fact that DNA profiles are based on non-coding DNA and do not reveal details about the physical appearance of an individual has contributed to the acceptability of this type of evidence. Its success in criminal investigation, combined with major innovations in the field of genetics, have contributed to a change of role for this type of evidence. Nowadays DNA evidence is not merely about identification, where trace evidence is compared to a sample taken from a suspect. An ever-growing role is anticipated for DNA profiling as an investigative tool, a technique aimed at generating a suspect where there is none. One of these applications is the inference of visible traits. As this article will show, racial classifications are at the heart of this application. The Netherlands and its legal regulation of 'externally visible traits' will serve as an example. It will be shown that, to make this technology work, a large number of actors has to be enrolled and their articulations invited. This indicates that instead of a 'silent witness', a DNA profile should rather be seen as an 'articulate collective'. Based on two cases, I argue that the normativity of visible traits is context-dependent. Taking into account the practices in which technology is put to use alerts us to novel ethical questions raised by their application. Author Affiliation: (1)at the University of Amsterdam Article note: Amade M'charek, University of Amsterdam - Political Science/Biology, OZ Achterburgwal 237, Amsterdam 1012 DL, Netherlands. T: 00-31-20-5256558 F: 00-31-20-5252086, Email: a.a.mcharek@uva.nl

In this commentary I argue that rather than going beyond race, we need to 'stay with the trouble' of race (Haraway 2016). Race, I want to suggest, is precisely 'trouble' because it is produced and sustained in everyday practices. To make this more tangible, I will zoom in on one specific case, a homicide case, that was eventually solved through forensic technologies and attend to the impact of the case on society. Analyzing responses in the media to the identification of suspect, I focus on the sense of community that emerged, and unravel how race came to play a role. To push the point that we need to attend to the intricacies of race, I will switch focus from an analysis of race in relation to difference, to race in relation to sameness. As I argue, while difference tends to be politicized, sameness has been viewed as curiously apolitical and thus functions as the baseline. Here I suggest to differentiate between sameness as otherness and sameness as us-ness. My analyses is aimed at inviting us to stay curious about what race is made to be in practice, how it manifests and what politics it does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The capacity of contemporary forensic genetics has rendered "race" into an interesting tool to produce clues about the identity of an unknown suspect. Whereas the conventional use of DNA profiling was primarily aimed at the individual suspect, more recently a shift of interest in forensic genetics has taken place, in which the population and the family to whom an unknown suspect allegedly belongs, has moved center stage. Making inferences about the phenotype or the family relations of this unknown suspect produces suspect populations and families. We discuss the criminal investigation following the Marianne Vaatstra murder case in the Netherlands and the use of forensic (genetic) technologies therein. It is in many ways an interesting case, but in this paper, we focus on how race surfaced in science and society. We show that race materializes neither in the technologies used nor in the bodies at stake. Rather, race emerges through a material semiotic relation that surfaces in the translation that occurs as humans and things move across sites. We argue that race is enacted, firstly, in the context of legislation as biology reduced to bodily characteristics ; secondly, in the forensic analyses as patterns of absent presence ; and, thirdly, in society as a process of phenotypic othering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]