Technologies of Kinship: Genetic Genealogists and Origin Stories

A colloquium talk organized by Carleton University's Department of Sociology and Anthropology may be of interest to blog readers in the Ottawa area.

Title: Technologies of Kinship: Genetic Genealogists and Origin Stories

Against the backdrop of powerful, networked ICTs, affordable genetic tests, and discourses of human difference that inhabit genealogy and genetics research, this paper investigates the production of genetic knowledge and subjectivities within genealogical communities of practice. Based on interviews and participant-observer work in genealogical communities, this paper explores how genetic genealogists use and engage with genetic tests and databases, with ramifications for the construction of race and identity in the US context.

Speaker:

Scout Calvert serves as Assistant Project Scientist at University of California, Irvine. Her recent research projects have been about the “social lives of data,” primarily information infrastructures in cattle pure-breeding and genetic genealogy. Dr. Calvert also investigates how genealogists work with genetic data to create new knowledge about both recent family groups and ³deep² genealogical migrations of populations. She is a co-investigator at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2), on the Health Data Exploration project. She is affiliated with the Animal Studies Graduate Specialization and the Center for the Study of Standards in Society, both at Michigan State University.

The presentation is on Friday, February 28th, at 2:30 in room A720 in the Loeb building at Carleton.

Thanks to Leighann Neilson for the tip