- Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Department of Anthropology
Programme group Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body
Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
1018 WV Amsterdam
the Netherlands
REC, room C5.17
Amade M'charek
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Anthropology, Department Member
- Science and Technology Studies, Critical Race Studies, Race, Material Semiotics, Postcolonial Studies of Science, forensic DNA, and 38 moreCultural and Social Anthropology, Genetics, Legislation, Biology, Ethics, Globalization, Postcolonial Theory, Anthropology, Critical Theory, History of Science, Ethnography, Michel Foucault, Semiotics, Science, Medical Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Security, Security Studies, Political Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Jacques Derrida, Biopolitics, Biomedicine, Forensic Genetics, Anthropology of Knowledge, Race and Ethnicity, STS (Anthropology), Critical Race Theory, Race and Racism, Bruno Latour, Critical Security Studies, Anthropology of the Body, Social Studies Of Science, Computer Networks, Databases, Software, Feminist Theory, and Feminist science and technology studiesedit
- Amade M’charek is Professor Anthropology of Science at the department of Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam.... moreAmade M’charek is Professor Anthropology of Science at the department of Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are in forensics, forensic anthropology and race. She is the PI of the project Dutchness in Genes and Genealogy, a project examining how Dutchness is enacted in collaborations between population geneticists, archaeologists and genealogists. M’charek is also the PI of the project Sexuality & Diversity in the Making. She is the founding chair of the European Network for the Social Studies of Forensics (EUnetSSF) and the convener of the seminar series Ir/relevance of Race in Science and Society. Her most recent research is on face making and race making in forensic identification, for which she received a five-year ERC consolidator grant in December 2013.edit
DNA-onderzoek in politieonderzoek wijst soms hele groepen met bepaalde raciale kenmerken onterecht aan als verdachte. Het is een voorbeeld van de grote rol die erfelijkheidsleer speelt in ons dagelijks leven. Maar in de wetenschap is daar... more
DNA-onderzoek in politieonderzoek wijst soms hele groepen met bepaalde raciale kenmerken onterecht aan als verdachte. Het is een voorbeeld van de grote rol die erfelijkheidsleer speelt in ons dagelijks leven. Maar in de wetenschap is daar te weinig kritiek op, omdat praten over ‘ras’ er taboe is.
‘Witte mensen zijn slimmer dan zwarte’. Een stelling ten tijde van de koloniale overheersing? Nee, een claim van prominente onderzoekers uit de eenentwintigste eeuw. Amade M’charek bekijkt deze twijfelachtige nieuwe pogingen om... more
‘Witte mensen zijn slimmer dan zwarte’. Een stelling ten tijde van de koloniale overheersing? Nee, een claim van prominente onderzoekers uit de eenentwintigste eeuw. Amade M’charek bekijkt deze twijfelachtige nieuwe pogingen om intelligentieverschillen aan zoiets als ras te koppelen.
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In 1999 a young girl named Marianne Vaatstra was found murdered in a rural area in the Netherlands. In 2012 the perpetrator was arrested. Throughout this period and after, the Marianne Vaatstra case never ceased to receive media attention... more
In 1999 a young girl named Marianne Vaatstra was found murdered in a rural area in the Netherlands. In 2012 the perpetrator was arrested. Throughout this period and after, the Marianne Vaatstra case never ceased to receive media attention and was part of public debate. How is it that this murder became a high-profile case? We argue for an understanding of the Vaatstra case as a 'fire object'. Law & Singleton's fire metaphor helps to attend to objects as patterns of absences and presences. In the Vaatstra case it is in particular the unknown suspect that figures as a generative absence that brings different versions of the case to presence and to proliferate. In this paper we present four versions of the Vaatstra case that were made present in the media that also differently shape identities of concerned actors, victim, suspect and communities. The unruly topology of fire objects might well explain the high-profileness of such criminal cases.
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The article focuses on circulations and what circulations bring about. It does so by following the movements of DNA through different domains of forensic practice. By zooming in on DNA and the role it came to play in the Dutch Marianne... more
The article focuses on circulations and what circulations bring about. It does so by following the movements of DNA through different domains of forensic practice. By zooming in on DNA and the role it came to play in the Dutch Marianne Vaatstra case, the paper demonstrates the performative work of circulations and invites to attend empirically to circulations as an object of research. The article is organized along three steps, in which it is argued that: circulations bring about identities; that circulations make context; circulations are permanent and can only be stopped actively. In the analysis, circulation is no longer to be understood as a process of transmission, as a simple movement of people, commodities, or ideas from one place to another. Rather, the conclusion invites to attend to circulation as a performative event. An event that co-shapes not only humans and things as they move through space and time, but also the contexts in which this happen in situated manners.
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Ethnicity is a frequently used measure in research into youth and sexuality in the Netherlands, a country known and admired for its favourable sexual health outcomes. This paper critically examines the production of knowledge about... more
Ethnicity is a frequently used measure in research into youth and sexuality in the Netherlands, a country known and admired for its favourable sexual health outcomes. This paper critically examines the production of knowledge about sexuality and ethnicity in the Netherlands. It traces the concept of ethnicity through four research practices (rationales of taking up ethnicity and compiling research populations; determining ethnicity; statistical calculations and making recommendations). It shows how the notion of ethnicity is flexible, slippery and changeable, yet at the same time becomes solidified and naturalized in relation to sexuality. The paper is based on a literature review of youth and sexuality in the Netherlands.
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In a recent special issue of the journal on new trends in forensic genetics, Manfred Kayser contributed a review of developments, opportunities and challenges of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP). In his article he argues that FDP... more
In a recent special issue of the journal on new trends in forensic genetics, Manfred Kayser contributed a review of developments, opportunities and challenges of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP). In his article he argues that FDP technologies—such as determining eye, hair and skin color—should be considered as akin to a "biological witness" with the potential of providing more accurate information than traditional eye witnesses. We share with Manfred Kayser the goal of supporting the scientific progress of forensic genetics. We are, however, less convinced by the assumption that the power to improve the safety of our society lies simply (or even primarily) in technology. Technologies are—as decades of research in Science and Technology Studies have shown—never merely material vehicles of progress. Instead they are a multi-faceted conglomerate of scientific and societal practices. In other words, technology is always technology-in-practice. This is exactly the reason why the ethical evaluation of technological innovation, when done well, is such a difficult trade: a merely principle-driven ethics—although it may be easiest to do—never grasps and addresses the messiness of how technologies are understood and used in the real world. It is in this light that we are concerned about Kayser's call to expedite FDP research, when coupled with his narrow treatment of both personal safety and individual rights. Such a reductionist understanding cannot capture the richness of ethical discussions about notions such as individual freedom, autonomy, and solidarity. Rather, it foregrounds technology without giving due consideration to wider ethical, legal and social dimensions as well as issues around the practical implementation of FDP technologies.
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Podcast available here: http://societyandspace.com/2015/10/26/aylan-kurdi-coming-to-terms-with-an-image/ The images of the body of Aylan Kurdi, who drowned off the coast of Turkey, have shaped global perceptions of refugees and refugee... more
Podcast available here: http://societyandspace.com/2015/10/26/aylan-kurdi-coming-to-terms-with-an-image/
The images of the body of Aylan Kurdi, who drowned off the coast of Turkey, have shaped global perceptions of refugees and refugee policy in Europe. This is a recording of a symposium which sought to encourage more sustained reflection on the nature and meaning of these images and the ethics and the politics of their use. How do we balance the emotions that the images evoke with our drive for sober and critical analysis? Can we establish a position on the subject that in some way does justice to the boy’s life, his family members and all those affected by the consistent failure to provide a humanitarian solution for refugees in Europe? The discussion, held at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam aimed to provide staff and students with – not a definitive analysis – but some ways of charting their path through the questions at hand.
Speakers: Sébastien Chauvin, Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Darshan Vigneswaran, Hernan del Valle (MSF, Operational Centre Amsterdam) and Saskia Bonjour – not present, but with a textual contribution below: Amade M’charek (Anthropology, UvA)
The images of the body of Aylan Kurdi, who drowned off the coast of Turkey, have shaped global perceptions of refugees and refugee policy in Europe. This is a recording of a symposium which sought to encourage more sustained reflection on the nature and meaning of these images and the ethics and the politics of their use. How do we balance the emotions that the images evoke with our drive for sober and critical analysis? Can we establish a position on the subject that in some way does justice to the boy’s life, his family members and all those affected by the consistent failure to provide a humanitarian solution for refugees in Europe? The discussion, held at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam aimed to provide staff and students with – not a definitive analysis – but some ways of charting their path through the questions at hand.
Speakers: Sébastien Chauvin, Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Darshan Vigneswaran, Hernan del Valle (MSF, Operational Centre Amsterdam) and Saskia Bonjour – not present, but with a textual contribution below: Amade M’charek (Anthropology, UvA)
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This special issue explores the value of actor-network theory (ANT) for sociology. Using case studies, interviews, conversations and columns we aim to provide insight into the empirical sensibility to practices and objects characteristic... more
This special issue explores the value of actor-network theory (ANT) for sociology. Using case studies, interviews, conversations and columns we aim to provide insight into the empirical sensibility to practices and objects characteristic of ANT, and to relate these to sociology. This issue does not aim at a representation of ANT, nor does it want to pass a final judgement about the relationship of ANT with sociology. The aim of this issue is rather to raise new questions, and to stimulate the curiosity of our audience. What is to gain from paying meticulous attention to objects and practices? And – the flip side of the coin – what does such sensibility require of us?
DNA has become part of everyday contemporary life. Its role in medical and scientific practices is ever growing and it increasingly features as technology for the identification of individuals and populations. Recently we even see DNA... more
DNA has become part of everyday contemporary life. Its role in medical and scientific practices is ever growing and it increasingly features as technology for the identification of individuals and populations. Recently we even see DNA getting involved in the enactment of city identities.
This article studies a remarkable collaboration between geneticists, archaeologists and a city archivist and analyses the reshaping of identity of the city of Vlaardingen, situated in the southwest of the Netherlands. We follow the quest for the ‘Oer-Vlaardinger’ and examine how a DNA match helps to undo a 1000 year distance while simultaneously recreating it through a chronological timeline. DNA helps to fold and unfold time.
By situating DNA and following it in practices it becomes clear how DNA in this case is not so much figured as a biological essence but rather as a technology that is able to create temporal distance and proximity. This article demonstrates that identities do not have an inherent essence or core but are relational and mediated by technology.
This article studies a remarkable collaboration between geneticists, archaeologists and a city archivist and analyses the reshaping of identity of the city of Vlaardingen, situated in the southwest of the Netherlands. We follow the quest for the ‘Oer-Vlaardinger’ and examine how a DNA match helps to undo a 1000 year distance while simultaneously recreating it through a chronological timeline. DNA helps to fold and unfold time.
By situating DNA and following it in practices it becomes clear how DNA in this case is not so much figured as a biological essence but rather as a technology that is able to create temporal distance and proximity. This article demonstrates that identities do not have an inherent essence or core but are relational and mediated by technology.
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"Given their commitment to practices science studies have bestowed considerable attention upon objects. We have the boundary object, the standardized package, the network object, the immutable mobile, the fluid object, even a fire object... more
"Given their commitment to practices science studies have bestowed considerable attention upon objects. We have the boundary object, the standardized package, the network object, the immutable mobile, the fluid object, even a fire object has entered the scene. However, these objects do not provide us with a way of understanding their historicity. They are timeless, motionless pictures rather than things that change over time, and while enacting 'historical moments' they do not make visible the histories they contain within them.
What kind of object could embody history and make that history visible? We might learn from Michel Serres about objects and time, and about the way that histories cannot be left behind. The image of a dog cadaver, constantly orbiting a projectile in space, might turn out helpful here. Inspired by Serres, I suggest the folded object is a way to attend to the temporality and spatiality of objects.
In this paper, I explore this new object by unravelling the history of a DNA reference sequence. I show how, ever since it was produced in the early 1980s, attempts have been made to filter race out of the sequence. That effort has failed due to what one could call 'political noise'. Making and remaking the sequence have left traces that cannot be erased."
What kind of object could embody history and make that history visible? We might learn from Michel Serres about objects and time, and about the way that histories cannot be left behind. The image of a dog cadaver, constantly orbiting a projectile in space, might turn out helpful here. Inspired by Serres, I suggest the folded object is a way to attend to the temporality and spatiality of objects.
In this paper, I explore this new object by unravelling the history of a DNA reference sequence. I show how, ever since it was produced in the early 1980s, attempts have been made to filter race out of the sequence. That effort has failed due to what one could call 'political noise'. Making and remaking the sequence have left traces that cannot be erased."
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In many European countries, the explicit discussion of race as a biological phenomenon has long been avoided. This has not meant that race has become obsolete or irrelevant all together. Rather, it is a slippery object that keeps shifting... more
In many European countries, the explicit discussion of race as a biological phenomenon has long been avoided. This has not meant that race has become obsolete or irrelevant all together. Rather, it is a slippery object that keeps shifting and changing. To understand its slippery nature, we suggest that race in Europe is best viewed as an absent presence, something that oscillates between reality and nonreality, which appears on the surface and then hides underground. In this special issue, we explore how race has been configured in different practices and how race-based identities and technologies are entwined in various European settings.
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Territorial borders just like other boundaries are involved in a politics of belonging, a politics of ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’. Border management regimes are thus part of processes of othering. In this article, we use the management of borders... more
Territorial borders just like other boundaries are involved in a politics of belonging, a politics of ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’. Border management regimes are thus part of processes of othering. In this article, we use the management of borders and populations in Europe as an empirical example to make a theoretical claim about race. We introduce the notion of the phenotypic other to argue that race is a topological object, an object that is spatially and temporally folded in distributed technologies of governance. To elaborate on these notions, we first examine a number of border management technologies through which both race and Europe are brought into being. More specifically we focus on how various such technologies aimed at monitoring the movement of individuals together with the management of populations have come to play crucial roles in Europe. Different border management regimes, we argue, do not only enact different versions of Europe but also different phenotypic others. We then shift the focus from border regimes to internal practices of governance, examining forensic DNA databanks to unravel articulations of race in the traffic between databases and societies.
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What is biological race and how is it made relevant by specific practices? How do we address the materiality of biological race without pigeonholing it? And how do we write about it without reifying race as a singular object? This article... more
What is biological race and how is it made relevant by specific practices? How do we address the materiality of biological race without pigeonholing it? And how do we write about it without reifying race as a singular object? This article engages with biological race not by debunking or trivializing it, but by investigating how it is enacted in practice. Discarding two dominant and mutually exclusive notions, race as fact and race as fiction, I follow a praxiographic approach to present three ethnographic cases that show race is a relational object, one that it is simultaneously factual and fictional. I conclude that fiction needs to be taken more seriously as an inherent part of fact making.
The social and legal implications of forensic DNA are paramount. For this reason, forensic DNA enjoys ample attention from legal, bioethics, and science and technology studies scholars. This article contributes to the scholarship by... more
The social and legal implications of forensic DNA are paramount. For this reason, forensic DNA enjoys ample attention from legal, bioethics, and science and technology studies scholars. This article contributes to the scholarship by focusing on the neglected issue of sameness. We investigate a forensic courtroom case which started in the early ’90s and focus on three modes of making similarities: (1) creating equality before the law, (2) making identity, and (3) establishing standards. We argue that equality before the law is not merely a principle but a practice. In the context of DNA research, equality refers to using standardized technology and procedures to identify the criminal suspect. Our case shows the work at stake in introducing a new technology into the courtroom and serves as a lens, magnifying how contingencies and uncertainties are managed and ordered in everyday court practices to arrive at an equal treatment of the suspect.
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"This article is about population. My aim is to answer the question, what is population? Instead of defining it myself or asking geneticists what it is, I want to trace population in genetic practices and to observe how it is embodied in... more
"This article is about population. My aim is to answer the question, what is population? Instead of defining it myself or asking geneticists what it is, I want to trace population in genetic practices and to observe how it is embodied in them. Toward this end, I analyze a forensic case. My analysis results in two arguments: first, that geneticists cannot know the individual without a population; second, that in genetic practices neither the individual nor the population is inherently "biological"--both are technologically assisted categories.
Population is a category of debate specifically in the Human Genome Diversity Project, 1 and in population genetics at large. Geneticists aim at achieving a consensus definition of what population is, in order to sample, study, and compare populations. In this article, however, I examine practices of population and attend to its variety in laboratories. In order to "know" a population, geneticists study the cell material of collections of individuals. In forensics, on the other hand, the vantage point is quite different. Forensic geneticists [End Page 121] are interested in the individual: their aim is to identify individual A as similar to, or different from, individual B. Yet, I have chosen this very practice as a site for examining population. For, in order to know an individual, forensic geneticists apply a category of population as well. Hence, in order to produce differences (between individuals), geneticists need to presuppose similarities (within a population). I will examine practical decisions about individuality and population, and hence about similarities and differences. On the basis of one forensic case, various concepts of population will be interrogated.
Taking population as the main focus of my analysis, I will pay little attention to legal aspects of forensic DNA, a highly important matter in its own right. Rather, the site studied is a laboratory, the Forensic Laboratory for DNA research in Leiden. Since my argument is organized around a forensic case, the narrative unfolds as a "trip" back and forth between laboratory and courtroom, observing the process of identification and examining concepts of population embodied in the case."
Population is a category of debate specifically in the Human Genome Diversity Project, 1 and in population genetics at large. Geneticists aim at achieving a consensus definition of what population is, in order to sample, study, and compare populations. In this article, however, I examine practices of population and attend to its variety in laboratories. In order to "know" a population, geneticists study the cell material of collections of individuals. In forensics, on the other hand, the vantage point is quite different. Forensic geneticists [End Page 121] are interested in the individual: their aim is to identify individual A as similar to, or different from, individual B. Yet, I have chosen this very practice as a site for examining population. For, in order to know an individual, forensic geneticists apply a category of population as well. Hence, in order to produce differences (between individuals), geneticists need to presuppose similarities (within a population). I will examine practical decisions about individuality and population, and hence about similarities and differences. On the basis of one forensic case, various concepts of population will be interrogated.
Taking population as the main focus of my analysis, I will pay little attention to legal aspects of forensic DNA, a highly important matter in its own right. Rather, the site studied is a laboratory, the Forensic Laboratory for DNA research in Leiden. Since my argument is organized around a forensic case, the narrative unfolds as a "trip" back and forth between laboratory and courtroom, observing the process of identification and examining concepts of population embodied in the case."
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... more
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.
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What is biological race and how is it made relevant in specific practices? How to address the materiality of biological race without fixing it? And how to write about it without reifying race as a singular object? These are the central... more
What is biological race and how is it made relevant in specific practices? How to address the materiality of biological race without fixing it? And how to write about it without reifying race as a singular object? These are the central questions in this short essay. Instead of debunking or trivializing biological race, it wants to attend to race and investigate how it is made relevant in practices. I am interested in what it is made to be in them. By engaging with race in practices, I want to move away from two dominant and mutually exclusive notions: race as a fact, and race as a fiction. As a contrast to these approaches I present one short case to show how race is enacted but also that it is both factual and fictional.
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In den Niederlanden dient DNA-Technologie dazu, Geschichte und Geschichten im Kontext archäologischer Ausgrabungen zu erzeugen. Ein Beitrag zu den Effekten jener neuen Genetik.
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This article is about the materiality of difference, about race, sex and sexual differences among others. To find out about these differences and their materialities, this article looks not into bodies but rather at how bodies are... more
This article is about the materiality of difference, about race, sex and sexual differences among others. To find out about these differences and their materialities, this article looks not into bodies but rather at how bodies are positioned in spaces and how they are enacted in practice. In the first part of the article, the focus is on the relationality of identities and how they are made and unmade in specific practices. The second part of the article attends to the various histories and practices that are drawn together in one specific body and how they help to enact a particular version of the body. Differences, it is argued, are not given ‘entities’ out there, awaiting dis-covery; rather they are effects that come about in relational practices. This indicates that materiality is not simply a given that can be taken on board (such as readily given biology or the body), but it is the very configuration through which differences can be articulated.
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Het rechercheren op verdachte populaties herbergt een nieuwe set van juridische, normatieve en ethische problemen. Een weigering van een ‘interessant persoon’ uit een verdachte populatie om celmateriaal af te staan, maakt die persoon... more
Het rechercheren op verdachte populaties herbergt een nieuwe set van juridische, normatieve en ethische problemen. Een weigering van een ‘interessant persoon’ uit een verdachte populatie om celmateriaal af te staan, maakt die persoon extra interessant. Daarmee staat het vrijwilligheidsprincipe onder druk. Personen behorend tot de verdachte populatie wordt gevraagd aan te tonen dat zij onschuldig zijn. In juridische zin is dat een omkering van de bewijslast en een erosie van de onschuldpresumptie.
Forensic DNA practice is about identification and thus about making individuality. Yet in order for this to be possible an individual has to be placed in a population, a precondition which has caused problems for the forensic community.... more
Forensic DNA practice is about identification and thus about making individuality. Yet in order for this to be possible an individual has to be placed in a population, a precondition which has caused problems for the forensic community. For given the lack of a standard biological definition, what is a population? Meanwhile forensic DNA has come of age, bypassing the problem of population, irrespective of the definition applied, through scale and the availability of technology. This article examines three practices of profiling: 1) "conventional" DNA profiling, 2) inferring visible traits from DNA, 3) and inferring visible traits from surveillance recordings. Their juxtaposing can be read in two ways: as a linear story of the ever-growing role of forensic DNA in criminal investigation or as topological story of different versions of the same practice of DNA profiling.
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Waar komen krantenkoppen als ‘Seksualiteit onder allochtonen nog taboe’ vandaan? En wat moeten we maken van onderzoeksrapporten die concluderen dat ‘Antillianen veel met seks bezig zijn’? Hoe toevallig zijn termen als bangalijst, breezers... more
Waar komen krantenkoppen als ‘Seksualiteit onder allochtonen nog taboe’ vandaan? En wat moeten we maken van onderzoeksrapporten die concluderen dat ‘Antillianen veel met seks bezig zijn’? Hoe toevallig zijn termen als bangalijst, breezers leten loverboy? In dit artikel wordt nagegaan hoe onderzoekspraktijken bijdragen aan de naturalisering van een bepaalde relatie tussen etniciteit en seksualiteit. Daarbij wordt uiteengezet hoe seksualiteit en etniciteit elkaar in dit proces betekenis geven.
"De overheid en burgers hechten steeds meer waarde aan preventie. De markt is ingesprongen op dit verlangen. Zo bieden bedrijven net over de grens in Duitsland de in Nederland vergunningsplichtige en de facto verboden Total Body Scans... more
"De overheid en burgers hechten steeds meer waarde aan preventie. De markt is ingesprongen op dit verlangen. Zo bieden bedrijven net over de grens in Duitsland de in Nederland vergunningsplichtige en de facto verboden Total Body Scans aan. Nederlandse artsen zijn sceptisch over de kwaliteit en het nut van dit soort onderzoeken. In deze beschouwing bespreken we een onderzoek naar de ervaringen en opvattingen van mensen die een preventieve Total Body Scan laten verrichten. Vervolgens gaan we in op de vraag of het PreventieConsult (gebaseerd op een korte vragenlijst) dat in huisartspraktijken wordt aangeboden, kan aansluiten bij de wensen van consumenten die veel waarde hechten aan door middel van medische technieken verkregen gegevens.
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Seeing is believing Prevention is highly valued by both governments and civilians. Market parties have developed initiatives to accommodate this demand. Companies offer in the Netherlands prohibited Total Body Scans in Germany. Dutch physicians are sceptical about the quality and value of these tests. The first author has investigated the experiences and opinions of patients who had a preventive Total Body Scan. In this contribution we discuss the findings with respect to the recent attempt in the Dutch health care to prevent citizens from doing unnecessary and cost-generating tests by means of the Prevention Consult. Because consumers value outcomes that are obtained by medical techniques we question how the prevention consult can answer to the wishes of consumers."
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Seeing is believing Prevention is highly valued by both governments and civilians. Market parties have developed initiatives to accommodate this demand. Companies offer in the Netherlands prohibited Total Body Scans in Germany. Dutch physicians are sceptical about the quality and value of these tests. The first author has investigated the experiences and opinions of patients who had a preventive Total Body Scan. In this contribution we discuss the findings with respect to the recent attempt in the Dutch health care to prevent citizens from doing unnecessary and cost-generating tests by means of the Prevention Consult. Because consumers value outcomes that are obtained by medical techniques we question how the prevention consult can answer to the wishes of consumers."
De tijd dat DNA uitsluitend gebruikt werd als identificatie en bewijsmiddel ligt achter ons. Forensisch DNA-onderzoek wordt vandaag de dag steeds vaker ingezet als opsporingsinstrument. Het wordt steeds vaker gebruikt om een poule van... more
De tijd dat DNA uitsluitend gebruikt werd als identificatie en bewijsmiddel ligt achter ons. Forensisch DNA-onderzoek wordt vandaag de dag steeds vaker ingezet als opsporingsinstrument. Het wordt steeds vaker gebruikt om een poule van mogelijke verdachten te genereren, bijvoorbeeld door voorspellingen te doen over uiterlijk waarneembare persoonskenmerken (zoals in de zaak Marianne Vaatstra is gedaan) of door een zogenaamde DNA-verwantschapsonderzoek te doen. Omdat het hierbij niet gaat om een simpele routinetoepassing is meer voorzorg op zijn plaats.
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Available at: http://www.criminologie.nl/downloads/nvc/criminoloog/de_criminoloog_09.pdf &... more
Review on
Ordinary Genomes: Science, Citizenship, and Genetic Identities.
Karen-Sue Taussig.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. 264 pp. Pb.: $22.95.
ISBN: 978-0822345343
Ordinary Genomes: Science, Citizenship, and Genetic Identities.
Karen-Sue Taussig.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. 264 pp. Pb.: $22.95.
ISBN: 978-0822345343
Down Syndrome is typically considered to be a genetic disease, that is, an abnormality in the chromosomal count. In this paper, however, I will focus on other practices of Down’s syndrome. First, I will examine a case of post-natal care,... more
Down Syndrome is typically considered to be a genetic disease, that is, an abnormality in the chromosomal count. In this paper, however, I will focus on other practices of Down’s syndrome. First, I will examine a case of post-natal care, to show how race and disability are made and unmade in relation to each another. I will argue that the ‘body of concern’ is not so much a somatic individual body as it is a relational body. Differences are not entities “out there” that can be added to our (diagnostic) methods “in here”. Instead, I argue that they are effects that come about in specific practices. The second part of the paper analyzes the peculiar case of the Down Doll and focuses on how its body assumes different forms and roles in different social settings. The case will particularly demonstrate how medical ‘facts’, materialized in the body of a doll, perform a variety of social tasks in different contexts. With the (help of the) doll, Down syndrome becomes not only a medical but also a social ‘fact’. In addition, the “medical” (or the biological) itself does not remain unaffected but is constantly changing as the doll moves through different social settings.
Research Interests:
Opsporing verzocht: 'ras' in DNA Over de problematische terugkeer van ‘ras’ binnen het gebruik van DNA als opsporingsmiddel. Het is 25 jaar geleden dat de eerste DNA-wetgeving in Nederland werd ingevoerd. In de jaren erna werd in... more
Opsporing verzocht: 'ras' in DNA
Over de problematische terugkeer van ‘ras’ binnen het gebruik van DNA als opsporingsmiddel.
Het is 25 jaar geleden dat de eerste DNA-wetgeving in Nederland werd ingevoerd. In de jaren erna werd in toenemende mate forensisch DNA ingezet als opsporingsmiddel. De wetgeving van 2003 maakte het mogelijk om het 'ras' van onbekende verdachten te bepalen. Nu, 16 jaar later, is het dus de hoogste tijd voor een historisch overzicht van de rol die ‘ras’ speelt in de praktijk. Tijdens dit programma houden wetenschappers, forensisch experts en een politiefunctionaris het gebruik van DNA in de opsporingspraktijk tegen het licht. Ook bevragen zij de relatie van DNA-onderzoek tot racisme, stigmatisering en etnische profilering.
Dit programma is georganiseerd in samenwerking met de seminar serie 'Ir/relevance of race in science and society'. De serie is een initiatief van het Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research en de Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Over de problematische terugkeer van ‘ras’ binnen het gebruik van DNA als opsporingsmiddel.
Het is 25 jaar geleden dat de eerste DNA-wetgeving in Nederland werd ingevoerd. In de jaren erna werd in toenemende mate forensisch DNA ingezet als opsporingsmiddel. De wetgeving van 2003 maakte het mogelijk om het 'ras' van onbekende verdachten te bepalen. Nu, 16 jaar later, is het dus de hoogste tijd voor een historisch overzicht van de rol die ‘ras’ speelt in de praktijk. Tijdens dit programma houden wetenschappers, forensisch experts en een politiefunctionaris het gebruik van DNA in de opsporingspraktijk tegen het licht. Ook bevragen zij de relatie van DNA-onderzoek tot racisme, stigmatisering en etnische profilering.
Dit programma is georganiseerd in samenwerking met de seminar serie 'Ir/relevance of race in science and society'. De serie is een initiatief van het Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research en de Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Abstract This paper takes a distinctive analytical route into the broader Flint water crisis, which began in 2014 when a change in municipal water source caused the city’s population to be exposed to toxic levels of lead. Specifically,... more
Abstract
This paper takes a distinctive analytical route into the broader Flint water crisis, which began in 2014 when a change in municipal water source caused the city’s population to be exposed to toxic levels of lead. Specifically, it contrasts the disregard for the population with the care taken for the machines at the city’s General Motors engine plant. I argue that the differential protection of nonhuman material integrity of GM’s machines over the nonhuman material integrity of the water pipes and the human bodily integrity of the people of Flint provides a window into racialized biopolitics. In the Flint water crisis, we can see crucial stratification within human and nonhuman categories, stratification that I will argue rests on questions of ownership. The paper follows such disparate nonhuman objects as fiscal bonds, machines, and pipes, to track the intertwined flows of capital, labor, and water. In Flint, the city’s creditors and GM’s machines received quick care, in contrast with the disregard for the vulnerability of the pipes and the population. The protection of finance and machines over pipes and people illustrates the devaluation of groups of humans considered to be surplus in the service of the interests of capital. It also demonstrates the extent to which ideas of emergency, citizenship, and bodily integrity are politically contingent. This small event within the broader ongoing Flint water crisis illustrates a fundamental element of racial disparities in health in the United States: differential protection of nonhuman financial capital and racialized human life.
About the lecturer
Anne Pollock is a Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She is the author of Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference (Duke University Press, 2012) and Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2019). Among other projects, she is currently working on her third book manuscript, which explores race and biopolitics in the 21st century United States.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
This paper takes a distinctive analytical route into the broader Flint water crisis, which began in 2014 when a change in municipal water source caused the city’s population to be exposed to toxic levels of lead. Specifically, it contrasts the disregard for the population with the care taken for the machines at the city’s General Motors engine plant. I argue that the differential protection of nonhuman material integrity of GM’s machines over the nonhuman material integrity of the water pipes and the human bodily integrity of the people of Flint provides a window into racialized biopolitics. In the Flint water crisis, we can see crucial stratification within human and nonhuman categories, stratification that I will argue rests on questions of ownership. The paper follows such disparate nonhuman objects as fiscal bonds, machines, and pipes, to track the intertwined flows of capital, labor, and water. In Flint, the city’s creditors and GM’s machines received quick care, in contrast with the disregard for the vulnerability of the pipes and the population. The protection of finance and machines over pipes and people illustrates the devaluation of groups of humans considered to be surplus in the service of the interests of capital. It also demonstrates the extent to which ideas of emergency, citizenship, and bodily integrity are politically contingent. This small event within the broader ongoing Flint water crisis illustrates a fundamental element of racial disparities in health in the United States: differential protection of nonhuman financial capital and racialized human life.
About the lecturer
Anne Pollock is a Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She is the author of Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference (Duke University Press, 2012) and Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2019). Among other projects, she is currently working on her third book manuscript, which explores race and biopolitics in the 21st century United States.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
The Dead and the Living Jesus said 'Let the dead bury the dead' (Luke 9:60). But, obviously, they cannot. They need the living to do it for them. What strikes the reader of the overwhelming historical and anthropological literature on... more
The Dead and the Living
Jesus said 'Let the dead bury the dead' (Luke 9:60). But, obviously, they cannot. They need the living to do it for them. What strikes the reader of the overwhelming historical and anthropological literature on death and the disposal of the dead is the deep concern that most societies have in taking care of the bodies of the dead. In his monumental book on The Work of the Dead (Princeton 2015) the historian Thomas Laqueur takes as his starting point an anecdote about the Greek Cynic philosopher Diogenes who supposedly has said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In his research on mainly Europe’s cultural history from the Greeks till today Laqueur shows that almost everyone at any point of history does care. In recent ethnographies, such as Eric Mueggler’s Songs for Dear Parents (Chicago 2017) about the Lolopo in Yunnan (China), and Piers Viterbsky’s Living without the Dead (Chicago 2017) about the Sora of Orissa (India), or in Matthew Engelke’s current research on secular humanist funerals in Great Britain, we find a variety of deep societal concerns about taking care of human remains. This scholarship is all about death practices in times of relative peace.
With warfare another concern comes up: the locating of the missing war dead. When peace returns a huge effort is made to locate the dead and give them a proper burial. Identification tags (‘dog tags) have been in common use for more than a century to help identify fallen soldiers. Northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have huge cemeteries for the war dead of the First and the Second World War. Many of them remained unidentified like the 130.000 whose bones one can see through the small lower windows of the alcoves of the Ossuary of Douaumont near Verdun in France, but the effort goes on. The German War Graves Commission still locates 40.000 missing dead a year. There is an overwhelming need in many societies to find the dead which is more recently supported by advances in DNA research in forensic science. This search can have tremendous political consequences like in the aftermath of the Civil War in Spain or in the aftermath of the American War in Vietnam. The politics of finding the dead and dealing with the dead is an important topic in our Religious Diversity Department.
Although questions about the living conditions of refugees who have been forced to migrate are of paramount concern one should not forget the dead. The concern for connecting again with those who have fled from somewhere and have died on the way grows when others have found a place to settle or have not fled at all. This January Tam Ngo and I did fieldwork in Vung Tau (no diacritics). At the time of the victory of the North Vietnamese communists in 1975 it was a sleepy fishing area on the South Vietnamese coast, inhabited largely by Sino-Vietnamese and by Catholics who had fled in 1954 from North Vietnam out of fear for communist atheism. Now it boasts an enormous statue of Christ and a huge number of catholic churches. The Sino-Vietnamese presence is hardly noticeable anymore, since many of them were pushed out around 1978-79 as a result of the growing antagonism between China and Vietnam. Those who wanted to flee from communist rule used the fishing boats of the area. Many perished in the sea. Nowadays one finds not only catholic churches but also a great number of Buddhist shrines for those who died in the sea. They are frequented by relatives who either still live in Vietnam or have made a living abroad. We also interviewed a female North Vietnamese army officer in a village nearby who had become a telepathic medium for reaching and locating fallen soldiers. In Vietnamese society one is struck by the frenzied looking for the dead of all sides.
With people on the move in perilous conditions, like with the Vietnamese boat refugees of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the question becomes what happens with those who do not make it to the safe shore. Amade M’charek, an anthropologist of science at the University of Amsterdam and an expert on forensic research, is currently looking at what happens with the bodies of the migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea and are washed ashore. Since 2014 more than 30.000 people have drowned on their flight in the Mediterranean. Given the enormous importance of locating and identifying the dead she and her collaborators have taken an important initiative. I would like to draw your attention to their fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants who wash up in the south of Tunisia. Recently they initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery to help realising a dignified cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia). In addition, they are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies. They hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros with a social media campaign. On the following website you will find background information for this initiative: http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French).
Jesus said 'Let the dead bury the dead' (Luke 9:60). But, obviously, they cannot. They need the living to do it for them. What strikes the reader of the overwhelming historical and anthropological literature on death and the disposal of the dead is the deep concern that most societies have in taking care of the bodies of the dead. In his monumental book on The Work of the Dead (Princeton 2015) the historian Thomas Laqueur takes as his starting point an anecdote about the Greek Cynic philosopher Diogenes who supposedly has said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In his research on mainly Europe’s cultural history from the Greeks till today Laqueur shows that almost everyone at any point of history does care. In recent ethnographies, such as Eric Mueggler’s Songs for Dear Parents (Chicago 2017) about the Lolopo in Yunnan (China), and Piers Viterbsky’s Living without the Dead (Chicago 2017) about the Sora of Orissa (India), or in Matthew Engelke’s current research on secular humanist funerals in Great Britain, we find a variety of deep societal concerns about taking care of human remains. This scholarship is all about death practices in times of relative peace.
With warfare another concern comes up: the locating of the missing war dead. When peace returns a huge effort is made to locate the dead and give them a proper burial. Identification tags (‘dog tags) have been in common use for more than a century to help identify fallen soldiers. Northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have huge cemeteries for the war dead of the First and the Second World War. Many of them remained unidentified like the 130.000 whose bones one can see through the small lower windows of the alcoves of the Ossuary of Douaumont near Verdun in France, but the effort goes on. The German War Graves Commission still locates 40.000 missing dead a year. There is an overwhelming need in many societies to find the dead which is more recently supported by advances in DNA research in forensic science. This search can have tremendous political consequences like in the aftermath of the Civil War in Spain or in the aftermath of the American War in Vietnam. The politics of finding the dead and dealing with the dead is an important topic in our Religious Diversity Department.
Although questions about the living conditions of refugees who have been forced to migrate are of paramount concern one should not forget the dead. The concern for connecting again with those who have fled from somewhere and have died on the way grows when others have found a place to settle or have not fled at all. This January Tam Ngo and I did fieldwork in Vung Tau (no diacritics). At the time of the victory of the North Vietnamese communists in 1975 it was a sleepy fishing area on the South Vietnamese coast, inhabited largely by Sino-Vietnamese and by Catholics who had fled in 1954 from North Vietnam out of fear for communist atheism. Now it boasts an enormous statue of Christ and a huge number of catholic churches. The Sino-Vietnamese presence is hardly noticeable anymore, since many of them were pushed out around 1978-79 as a result of the growing antagonism between China and Vietnam. Those who wanted to flee from communist rule used the fishing boats of the area. Many perished in the sea. Nowadays one finds not only catholic churches but also a great number of Buddhist shrines for those who died in the sea. They are frequented by relatives who either still live in Vietnam or have made a living abroad. We also interviewed a female North Vietnamese army officer in a village nearby who had become a telepathic medium for reaching and locating fallen soldiers. In Vietnamese society one is struck by the frenzied looking for the dead of all sides.
With people on the move in perilous conditions, like with the Vietnamese boat refugees of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the question becomes what happens with those who do not make it to the safe shore. Amade M’charek, an anthropologist of science at the University of Amsterdam and an expert on forensic research, is currently looking at what happens with the bodies of the migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea and are washed ashore. Since 2014 more than 30.000 people have drowned on their flight in the Mediterranean. Given the enormous importance of locating and identifying the dead she and her collaborators have taken an important initiative. I would like to draw your attention to their fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants who wash up in the south of Tunisia. Recently they initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery to help realising a dignified cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia). In addition, they are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies. They hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros with a social media campaign. On the following website you will find background information for this initiative: http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French).
“The “migrant with poor prospects”: racialized intersections of class and culture in Dutch civic integration debates” Date: Monday, May 28 Time: 15:30-17:00 Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See... more
“The “migrant with poor prospects”: racialized intersections of class and culture in Dutch civic integration debates”
Date: Monday, May 28
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
The recent trend towards selective immigration policies is based on the racialization of certain categories of migrants into irretrievably unassimilable Others. In Europe, this trend has materialized largely through the application of integration requirements to the immigration of foreigners, the so-called “civic integration turn”. Based on an analysis of parliamentary debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, this paper asks which migrants are considered likely or unlikely to integrate based on which presumed characteristics. We find that Dutch civic integration policies aim at barring “migrants with poor prospects”. In sharp contrast with a long history of Dutch social policies, politicians deny state responsibility for migrants’ emancipation based on a discursive racialization of these migrants as unassimilable. While class has hitherto been largely ignored in the literature on migration and the politics of belonging, we show that class, intersecting with culture and gender, is key in this process of racialization.
In this seminar, Saskia Bonjour will present the paper: “The “migrant with poor prospects”: racialized intersections of class and culture in Dutch civic integration debates”. The paper is co-authored with Jan Willem Duyvendak.
About the lecturer
Saskia Bonjour is assistant professor in political science. She teaches mostly in the field of gender & politics and intersectionality. Her research focuses on the politics of migration and citizenship in the Netherlands and in Europe. She is especially interested in family migration, civic integration, gender and migration, and Europeanisation.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
Date: Monday, May 28
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
The recent trend towards selective immigration policies is based on the racialization of certain categories of migrants into irretrievably unassimilable Others. In Europe, this trend has materialized largely through the application of integration requirements to the immigration of foreigners, the so-called “civic integration turn”. Based on an analysis of parliamentary debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, this paper asks which migrants are considered likely or unlikely to integrate based on which presumed characteristics. We find that Dutch civic integration policies aim at barring “migrants with poor prospects”. In sharp contrast with a long history of Dutch social policies, politicians deny state responsibility for migrants’ emancipation based on a discursive racialization of these migrants as unassimilable. While class has hitherto been largely ignored in the literature on migration and the politics of belonging, we show that class, intersecting with culture and gender, is key in this process of racialization.
In this seminar, Saskia Bonjour will present the paper: “The “migrant with poor prospects”: racialized intersections of class and culture in Dutch civic integration debates”. The paper is co-authored with Jan Willem Duyvendak.
About the lecturer
Saskia Bonjour is assistant professor in political science. She teaches mostly in the field of gender & politics and intersectionality. Her research focuses on the politics of migration and citizenship in the Netherlands and in Europe. She is especially interested in family migration, civic integration, gender and migration, and Europeanisation.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
http://stichting-dmc.nl/ Dear colleagues, I would like to draw your attention to this fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants, who wash up in the south of Tunisia. Recently we initiated... more
http://stichting-dmc.nl/
Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to this fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants, who wash up in the south of Tunisia.
Recently we initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery as to help realize a dignifying cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia).
To this end we will work together with local officials, volunteers and NGOs. In addition, we are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies.
On the website you will find background information for this initiative.
We hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros as soon as possible with a social media campaign. So we need your help.
Your donation is welcome! But we also ask you to spread this fundraising call as widely as possible.
http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French)
Thank you very much,
On behalf of the board of the DMC Foundation,
Amade M’charek.
Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to this fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants, who wash up in the south of Tunisia.
Recently we initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery as to help realize a dignifying cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia).
To this end we will work together with local officials, volunteers and NGOs. In addition, we are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies.
On the website you will find background information for this initiative.
We hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros as soon as possible with a social media campaign. So we need your help.
Your donation is welcome! But we also ask you to spread this fundraising call as widely as possible.
http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French)
Thank you very much,
On behalf of the board of the DMC Foundation,
Amade M’charek.
Abstract In this lecture, I will delve into my recent book "White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race" (Wekker 2016), which is an ethnography of dominant Dutch self – representation. After a general introduction to the main... more
Abstract
In this lecture, I will delve into my recent book "White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race" (Wekker 2016), which is an ethnography of dominant Dutch self – representation. After a general introduction to the main concepts and understandings I use, I will highlight two topics. First, I will address manifestations of “everyday racism” in the Netherlands in the popular - cultural sphere and , second, I will pay attention to White innocence in the academy. The dominant Dutch sense of self is characterized by the centrality of a (mostly) silent, but self-flattering conception of whiteness and race has, by dominant consensus, been declared missing in action in The Netherlands: "we do not do race".
About the lecturer
Gloria Wekker is emeritus Professor in Gender Studies, Faculty of the Humanities, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. A social and cultural anthropologist, she specializes in Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, African- American and Caribbean Studies.
Some of her major publications include The Politics of Passion; Women´s sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora (Columbia University Press, 2006), for which she won the Ruth Benedict Prize of American Anthropological Association in 2007. Her last book is White Innocence; Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, which was published in April 2016 by Duke University Press.
She has recently served on two committees that made proposals to restructure the University of Amsterdam, after the Occupation of the Maagdenhuis: The committee on Democratization and Decentralization (D &D) and she was the chair of the Diversity committee.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
In this lecture, I will delve into my recent book "White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race" (Wekker 2016), which is an ethnography of dominant Dutch self – representation. After a general introduction to the main concepts and understandings I use, I will highlight two topics. First, I will address manifestations of “everyday racism” in the Netherlands in the popular - cultural sphere and , second, I will pay attention to White innocence in the academy. The dominant Dutch sense of self is characterized by the centrality of a (mostly) silent, but self-flattering conception of whiteness and race has, by dominant consensus, been declared missing in action in The Netherlands: "we do not do race".
About the lecturer
Gloria Wekker is emeritus Professor in Gender Studies, Faculty of the Humanities, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. A social and cultural anthropologist, she specializes in Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, African- American and Caribbean Studies.
Some of her major publications include The Politics of Passion; Women´s sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora (Columbia University Press, 2006), for which she won the Ruth Benedict Prize of American Anthropological Association in 2007. Her last book is White Innocence; Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, which was published in April 2016 by Duke University Press.
She has recently served on two committees that made proposals to restructure the University of Amsterdam, after the Occupation of the Maagdenhuis: The committee on Democratization and Decentralization (D &D) and she was the chair of the Diversity committee.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
As Oscar Wilde observes, because there is so much to be gained by observing surfaces, their study should not be seen as shallow, superficial or trivial. Nonetheless, a few pages after declaring allegiance to the realm of appearances,... more
As Oscar Wilde observes, because there is so much to be gained by observing surfaces, their study should not be seen as shallow, superficial or trivial. Nonetheless, a few pages after declaring allegiance to the realm of appearances, Wilde cautioned: “those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril”. With this warning in mind, I argue it has become necessary for anthropology and social-science to place itself in greater “peril” by venturing beneath the observable and audible surfaces of social life in order to gain a better understanding of the interior dialogues and imaginative life worlds that constitute people’s everyday lives and practices. The capacity for a rich and imaginative inner life—that simultaneously encompasses streams of inner dialogue and reverie, as well as inchoate, non-linguistic or image based forms of thought and expression that exist beyond third-party observation— is an integral part of what makes us human and is central to the negotiation of social life. Without some form of inner expression there would be no self-understanding or social existence, at least not in a form we would recognise, and it constitutes a broad range of experiences, from routine practices to extraordinary moments of existential crisis. This presents a deep-seated problem for disciplines like anthropology that are based on empirical evidence insofar as it is primarily a methodological and practical problem rather than a conceptual one.Often people’s interior expressions are seen as irrelevant or extraneous, rather than fundamental to embodied experience and they are rarely the primary focus of anthropological research or monographs. As such anthropology, the quintessential study of humanity, risks only being able to tell half the story of human life. Accordingly, this presentation attempts to open up a debate and attempt an ethnographically grounded account of the complex streams of consciousness and amalgams of inner expression, memory and imagination that emerge in social life, action and practice.
Andrew Irving is Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His research areas include sensory perception, time, illness, death, urban anthropology and experimental methods, film and multi-media. Recent books include Whose Cosmopolitanism? Critical Cosmopolitanisms, Relationalities and Discontents, (2014 with Nina Glick-Schiller. Berghahn Press); Beyond Text: Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology, (2016 with Rupert Cox and Christopher Wright. ManchesterUniversity Press), The Art of Life and Death (2016: Hau Monographs: University of Chicago), and Anthropology and Futures: Researching Emerging and Uncertain Worlds (2017 with Sarah Pink, Juan Salazar and Johannes Sjoberg. Bloomsbury).
Recent media works include Wandering Scholars: Or How to Get in Touch with Strangers: Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde, Vienna (2016); Live Edition: Plataforma Gallery, Bogota, Colombia (2015), and the playThe Man Who Almost Killed Himself (2014) in collaboration with Josh Azouz and Don Boyd, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, BBC Arts and Odeon Cinemas.
Andrew Irving is Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His research areas include sensory perception, time, illness, death, urban anthropology and experimental methods, film and multi-media. Recent books include Whose Cosmopolitanism? Critical Cosmopolitanisms, Relationalities and Discontents, (2014 with Nina Glick-Schiller. Berghahn Press); Beyond Text: Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology, (2016 with Rupert Cox and Christopher Wright. ManchesterUniversity Press), The Art of Life and Death (2016: Hau Monographs: University of Chicago), and Anthropology and Futures: Researching Emerging and Uncertain Worlds (2017 with Sarah Pink, Juan Salazar and Johannes Sjoberg. Bloomsbury).
Recent media works include Wandering Scholars: Or How to Get in Touch with Strangers: Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde, Vienna (2016); Live Edition: Plataforma Gallery, Bogota, Colombia (2015), and the playThe Man Who Almost Killed Himself (2014) in collaboration with Josh Azouz and Don Boyd, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, BBC Arts and Odeon Cinemas.
Revisiting Enlightenment Racial Classification Date: Monday, November 28 Time: 15:30-17:00 Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi Abstract In my PhD project, I... more
Revisiting Enlightenment Racial Classification
Date: Monday, November 28
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
In my PhD project, I investigate the tension between ideas of natural equality and racial classification in eighteenth-century encyclopaedias. In the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment, European naturalists developed the modern racial classificatory system. In the writings of its main architects, such as Carl Linnaeus, Georges Buffon and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Eurocentrism and thus inequality lay at the heart of a taxonomical system in which physical, intellectual, and aesthetic considerations coalesced into an explanatory and seemingly cohesive theory of human difference. Simultaneously, natural equality as a political concept, the idea that all human beings are equal based on our shared humanity and thus have certain rights, intensified in the eighteenth century, as the Enlightenment philosophes defended a set of egalitarian values that are foundational for political modernity – tolerance, liberty, and moral autonomy. The conflicting notions of natural equality and Eurocentrism which the Enlightenment philosophes transformed so significantly has led to the situation where the Enlightenment has been, and continues to be, both praised and blamed. In the paper I am presenting here, I focus on racial classification in particular and argue that if we analyse the concept of race contextually, then the seeming ‘paradox’ of Enlightenment discourses of equality and inequality evaporates. Of course, many eighteenth-century thinkers suffered from colour prejudice but the main function of the concept of race in key Enlightenment texts was to position humanity within the ambit of nature, as a species that possesses a deep history and a physical constitution susceptible to the influence of climate. Race is a biologically meaningless category but we still share something crucial with Enlightenment thinkers – any explanation of human physical diversity must be a naturalistic one. In this regard, as with our commitment to the value of equality, we must position ourselves within the legacy of the Enlightenment.
About the lecturer
Devin Vartija is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University in the Department of History and Art History. He holds a Master’s in History (cum laude) from Utrecht University and a Bachelor of Arts and Science (summa cum laude) from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. His chapter ‘Empathy, Equality, and the Radical Enlightenment’ is forthcoming in the bundle Reassessing the Radical Enlightenment (Routledge, 2017).
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
February 6: Ir/relevance of race seminar with Erik Bähre (Leiden University) - Contesting classifications: racial moralities in South Africa’s insurance industry
Date: Monday, November 28
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
In my PhD project, I investigate the tension between ideas of natural equality and racial classification in eighteenth-century encyclopaedias. In the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment, European naturalists developed the modern racial classificatory system. In the writings of its main architects, such as Carl Linnaeus, Georges Buffon and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Eurocentrism and thus inequality lay at the heart of a taxonomical system in which physical, intellectual, and aesthetic considerations coalesced into an explanatory and seemingly cohesive theory of human difference. Simultaneously, natural equality as a political concept, the idea that all human beings are equal based on our shared humanity and thus have certain rights, intensified in the eighteenth century, as the Enlightenment philosophes defended a set of egalitarian values that are foundational for political modernity – tolerance, liberty, and moral autonomy. The conflicting notions of natural equality and Eurocentrism which the Enlightenment philosophes transformed so significantly has led to the situation where the Enlightenment has been, and continues to be, both praised and blamed. In the paper I am presenting here, I focus on racial classification in particular and argue that if we analyse the concept of race contextually, then the seeming ‘paradox’ of Enlightenment discourses of equality and inequality evaporates. Of course, many eighteenth-century thinkers suffered from colour prejudice but the main function of the concept of race in key Enlightenment texts was to position humanity within the ambit of nature, as a species that possesses a deep history and a physical constitution susceptible to the influence of climate. Race is a biologically meaningless category but we still share something crucial with Enlightenment thinkers – any explanation of human physical diversity must be a naturalistic one. In this regard, as with our commitment to the value of equality, we must position ourselves within the legacy of the Enlightenment.
About the lecturer
Devin Vartija is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University in the Department of History and Art History. He holds a Master’s in History (cum laude) from Utrecht University and a Bachelor of Arts and Science (summa cum laude) from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. His chapter ‘Empathy, Equality, and the Radical Enlightenment’ is forthcoming in the bundle Reassessing the Radical Enlightenment (Routledge, 2017).
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
February 6: Ir/relevance of race seminar with Erik Bähre (Leiden University) - Contesting classifications: racial moralities in South Africa’s insurance industry
Biomedicine and everyday notions of ‘race’ in Brazil: the endurance of ideas about bodily difference Date: Monday, October 10 Time: 15:30-17:00 Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps... more
Biomedicine and everyday notions of ‘race’ in Brazil: the endurance of ideas about bodily difference
Date: Monday, October 10
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
How do ideas about ‘race’ as a biological reality endure? In which ways can they co-exist with understandings of ‘race’ as a social construct?
The historical role of biomedicine in crafting and legitimising notions of ‘race’ as a biological reality has long been documented. The current promises of applied genomics to tailoring of diagnosis and treatments to better fit the diversity of human populations are contributing to not only the continuing ‘racialisation’ of a variety of ailments and populations, but also to solidify the link between ‘race’ and ‘biology’ amongst the general public. At the same time, although key biomedical actors such as doctors and researchers generally adopt a discourse that emphasizes the universality and objectivity of their practices, biomedicine doesn’t operate in a conceptual and practical vacuum, unaffected by other narratives about ‘race’ and bodily difference, including ideas about ‘race’ being a social construct.
I will explore how this interaction between biomedical and everyday ideas about ‘race’ takes place in contemporary Brazil. Using ethnographic material from field-sites such as public health clinics, medical research and teaching contexts, policy-making spheres and patients’ support groups and family networks, I show how ‘race’ in biomedical contexts is articulated with local ideas and experiences about bodies, politics, and wider narratives about Brazilian history and its population. I argue that the reason why biomedicine is still an important locus for the production and spread of ideas about ‘race’ that echo amongst the general public is not only due to the prestige and pervasive presence the field has, but also because the enmeshing between ideas about ‘race’ as being both a biological and a social construct that also take place within biomedical practice resonate and corroborate general understandings of what ‘race’ is.
About the lecturer
Elena Calvo-González is an Anthropologist at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. For the past decade she has researched the ways in which biomedicine, particularly the intersection between low-complexity medical technologies, medical knowledge and clinical encounters, helps to (re)configure ideas about ‘race’ and bodily difference in general.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
November 28, Ir/relevance of race seminar with Devin Vartija (Utrecht University)
Date: Monday, October 10
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
How do ideas about ‘race’ as a biological reality endure? In which ways can they co-exist with understandings of ‘race’ as a social construct?
The historical role of biomedicine in crafting and legitimising notions of ‘race’ as a biological reality has long been documented. The current promises of applied genomics to tailoring of diagnosis and treatments to better fit the diversity of human populations are contributing to not only the continuing ‘racialisation’ of a variety of ailments and populations, but also to solidify the link between ‘race’ and ‘biology’ amongst the general public. At the same time, although key biomedical actors such as doctors and researchers generally adopt a discourse that emphasizes the universality and objectivity of their practices, biomedicine doesn’t operate in a conceptual and practical vacuum, unaffected by other narratives about ‘race’ and bodily difference, including ideas about ‘race’ being a social construct.
I will explore how this interaction between biomedical and everyday ideas about ‘race’ takes place in contemporary Brazil. Using ethnographic material from field-sites such as public health clinics, medical research and teaching contexts, policy-making spheres and patients’ support groups and family networks, I show how ‘race’ in biomedical contexts is articulated with local ideas and experiences about bodies, politics, and wider narratives about Brazilian history and its population. I argue that the reason why biomedicine is still an important locus for the production and spread of ideas about ‘race’ that echo amongst the general public is not only due to the prestige and pervasive presence the field has, but also because the enmeshing between ideas about ‘race’ as being both a biological and a social construct that also take place within biomedical practice resonate and corroborate general understandings of what ‘race’ is.
About the lecturer
Elena Calvo-González is an Anthropologist at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. For the past decade she has researched the ways in which biomedicine, particularly the intersection between low-complexity medical technologies, medical knowledge and clinical encounters, helps to (re)configure ideas about ‘race’ and bodily difference in general.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
November 28, Ir/relevance of race seminar with Devin Vartija (Utrecht University)
Bone gifts: Human remains research on anonymous war dead Date: Monday, September 12 Time: 15:30-17:00 Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi Abstract As one of war’s... more
Bone gifts: Human remains research on anonymous war dead
Date: Monday, September 12
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
As one of war’s most heinous effects, nameless remains vex the rights and rituals of postmortem care. But in their anonymous state, these same bodies often do powerful work—work of remembrance and work of innovation. In exploring the latter, this talk focuses on human remains research and the sets of reciprocal relations between the living and dead that arise in the wake of violent conflict. In particular, the examples of missing persons as victims of forced disappearance and unknown soldiers are especially useful in exposing the dynamics of this reciprocity, as their remains are called on to build new knowledge about human osteology and devise new methods of postmortem identification. Enrolled into such research through the principle of “beneficence,” remains become the object of scientific inquiry into questions of human diversity rather than strictly individual identity. Yet what do they compel in return? Scientific collections created from the remains of victims of the Srebrenica genocide, the war in Kosovo, and U.S. service members killed in the Korean War provide insight into the logics and problematics of research performed on those for whom all other social ties have been erased.
About the lecturer
Sarah Wagner is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University and author of To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing (University of California Press, 2008), and co-author with Lara Nettelfield of Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Her research has explored connections between the destructive and creative forces of war, focusing on the identification of missing persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, specifically victims of the Srebrenica genocide, and the United States military’s attempts to recover and identify service members Missing In Action (MIA) from the past century’s conflicts.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Date: Monday, September 12
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
As one of war’s most heinous effects, nameless remains vex the rights and rituals of postmortem care. But in their anonymous state, these same bodies often do powerful work—work of remembrance and work of innovation. In exploring the latter, this talk focuses on human remains research and the sets of reciprocal relations between the living and dead that arise in the wake of violent conflict. In particular, the examples of missing persons as victims of forced disappearance and unknown soldiers are especially useful in exposing the dynamics of this reciprocity, as their remains are called on to build new knowledge about human osteology and devise new methods of postmortem identification. Enrolled into such research through the principle of “beneficence,” remains become the object of scientific inquiry into questions of human diversity rather than strictly individual identity. Yet what do they compel in return? Scientific collections created from the remains of victims of the Srebrenica genocide, the war in Kosovo, and U.S. service members killed in the Korean War provide insight into the logics and problematics of research performed on those for whom all other social ties have been erased.
About the lecturer
Sarah Wagner is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University and author of To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing (University of California Press, 2008), and co-author with Lara Nettelfield of Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Her research has explored connections between the destructive and creative forces of war, focusing on the identification of missing persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, specifically victims of the Srebrenica genocide, and the United States military’s attempts to recover and identify service members Missing In Action (MIA) from the past century’s conflicts.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Research Interests:
‘Ras’: Terug van nooit weggeweest? Het debat over racisme in Nederland is op volle gang. Maar hoe zit het met ‘ras’? Is dat een feit of een fictie? Welke onuitgesproken aannames van verschillen liggen er ten grondslag aan het debat over... more
‘Ras’: Terug van nooit weggeweest?
Het debat over racisme in Nederland is op volle gang. Maar hoe zit het met ‘ras’? Is dat een feit of een fictie? Welke onuitgesproken aannames van verschillen liggen er ten grondslag aan het debat over racisme? En welke rol speelt de wetenschap uit het verleden en van nu bij het produceren van ‘ras’?
Daarover gaan Frank Westerman (journalist en schrijver), Claire Weeda (cultuurhistoricus) en Amade M’charek (wetenschapsantropoloog) met elkaar in gesprek, onder leiding van moderator Martijn van Calmthout (De Volkskrant) in een speciale editie van de ir/relevance of race seminar series op locatie in de Erfgoedsociëteit van de Bijzondere Collecties. De aanleiding is de tentoonstelling ‘Out of the Box’ die door de UvA Bijzondere Collecties is georganiseerd.
Als mede-gastconservatoren van deze tentoonstelling, kozen Amade M’charek en Lisette Jong boeken en instrumenten uit het erfgoed van de universiteit, die belangrijk zijn geweest bij het kennen en categoriseren van uiterlijke kenmerken (het fenotype). Deze hebben ze gecontrasteerd met een object dat het hedendaagse genetisch onderzoek verbeeldt. Hun ‘exhibit’ onder de titel “Return of the Phenotype” roept vragen op over hoe oude en nieuwe wetenschappen van het uiterlijk verschil zich tot elkaar verhouden - en hoe dat ons aan het denken zet over ‘ras’.
Het debat ‘Ras’: Terug van nooit weggeweest? beoogt niet nu eindelijk een antwoord te formuleren op de vraag of ‘ras’ feit of fictie is. Maar vraagt aandacht voor de toenemende biologisering van (uiterlijke) verschillen en de gevolgen daarvan. Daarbij zal ook uitgebreid gesproken worden over het doorwerken van oude wetenschappelijke manieren van ‘racialiseren’ in hedendaagse wetenschap en samenleving.
Datum: Maandag 11 juli
Tijd: 15:00-17:00
Locatie: Nina van Leerzaal - UvA Bijzondere Collecties, Oude Turfmarkt 129, Amsterdam. Zie kaart: https://goo.gl/maps/Tuxtb8WnufF2
U kunt zich hier aanmelden voor de bijeenkomst.
Panel
Claire Weeda is als cultuurhistoricus verbonden aan de Universiteit Leiden. Zij schreef haar proefschrift ‘Images of Ethnicity in Later Medieval Europe’ over etnische stereotypering in de middeleeuwen. Daarin laat zij zien dat zulke wijdverspreide beelden van etniciteit geworteld waren in klassieke medische theorieën en vroegmiddeleeuwse religieuze heilsverwachtingen, en bijdroegen aan Europese staatsvormingsprocessen in de late Middeleeuwen.
Frank Westerman werkte als journalist bij De Volkskrant en NRC en is bekend als schrijver van een oeuvre aan literaire reportages, waaronder De Graanrepubliek (1999) en Stikvallei (2013). In 2004 verscheen van zijn hand het boek ‘El Negro en ik’ waarin hij verslag doet van de omzwervingen van het opgezette lichaam van een Afrikaanse man. Het volgen van El Negro geeft aanleiding tot het bespreken van een geschiedenis van slavernij, kolonialisme en racisme en roept de vraag op: wat zegt El Negro over ons, hier en nu?
Amade M’charek is professor wetenschapsantropologie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Zij heeft onderzoek verricht in laboratoria om de productie van wetenschappelijke kennis over genetische diversiteit en ras in praktijk te onderzoeken. Recentelijk heeft ze een grote beurs ontvangen van de European Research Council voor het project RaceFaceID, een project dat het geven van een gezicht aan een onbekende persoon in de forensische praktijk onderzoekt. Daarbij staat centraal de vraag centraal in hoeverre noties van ras een rol spelen in dergelijke processen.
Moderator
Martijn van Calmthout is wetenschapsredacteur bij De Volkskrant en (mede)auteur van populair wetenschappelijke boeken. Daarnaast is hij gastheer in het maandelijkse KennisCafé in De Balie en radiopresentator bij De Kennis van Nu (NTR).
Borrel en tentoonstelling
Aansluitend is er een borrel verzorgd door de Bijzondere Collecties. Daarnaast zal de tentoonstelling na het debat tussen 17:00 en 18:00 speciaal voor u geopend zijn. Mocht u er niet bij kunnen zijn en toch eens een kijkje willen nemen, ‘Out of the Box’ is nog tot en met 4 september te bezichtigen bij Bijzondere Collecties op de Oude Turfmarkt.
Het debat over racisme in Nederland is op volle gang. Maar hoe zit het met ‘ras’? Is dat een feit of een fictie? Welke onuitgesproken aannames van verschillen liggen er ten grondslag aan het debat over racisme? En welke rol speelt de wetenschap uit het verleden en van nu bij het produceren van ‘ras’?
Daarover gaan Frank Westerman (journalist en schrijver), Claire Weeda (cultuurhistoricus) en Amade M’charek (wetenschapsantropoloog) met elkaar in gesprek, onder leiding van moderator Martijn van Calmthout (De Volkskrant) in een speciale editie van de ir/relevance of race seminar series op locatie in de Erfgoedsociëteit van de Bijzondere Collecties. De aanleiding is de tentoonstelling ‘Out of the Box’ die door de UvA Bijzondere Collecties is georganiseerd.
Als mede-gastconservatoren van deze tentoonstelling, kozen Amade M’charek en Lisette Jong boeken en instrumenten uit het erfgoed van de universiteit, die belangrijk zijn geweest bij het kennen en categoriseren van uiterlijke kenmerken (het fenotype). Deze hebben ze gecontrasteerd met een object dat het hedendaagse genetisch onderzoek verbeeldt. Hun ‘exhibit’ onder de titel “Return of the Phenotype” roept vragen op over hoe oude en nieuwe wetenschappen van het uiterlijk verschil zich tot elkaar verhouden - en hoe dat ons aan het denken zet over ‘ras’.
Het debat ‘Ras’: Terug van nooit weggeweest? beoogt niet nu eindelijk een antwoord te formuleren op de vraag of ‘ras’ feit of fictie is. Maar vraagt aandacht voor de toenemende biologisering van (uiterlijke) verschillen en de gevolgen daarvan. Daarbij zal ook uitgebreid gesproken worden over het doorwerken van oude wetenschappelijke manieren van ‘racialiseren’ in hedendaagse wetenschap en samenleving.
Datum: Maandag 11 juli
Tijd: 15:00-17:00
Locatie: Nina van Leerzaal - UvA Bijzondere Collecties, Oude Turfmarkt 129, Amsterdam. Zie kaart: https://goo.gl/maps/Tuxtb8WnufF2
U kunt zich hier aanmelden voor de bijeenkomst.
Panel
Claire Weeda is als cultuurhistoricus verbonden aan de Universiteit Leiden. Zij schreef haar proefschrift ‘Images of Ethnicity in Later Medieval Europe’ over etnische stereotypering in de middeleeuwen. Daarin laat zij zien dat zulke wijdverspreide beelden van etniciteit geworteld waren in klassieke medische theorieën en vroegmiddeleeuwse religieuze heilsverwachtingen, en bijdroegen aan Europese staatsvormingsprocessen in de late Middeleeuwen.
Frank Westerman werkte als journalist bij De Volkskrant en NRC en is bekend als schrijver van een oeuvre aan literaire reportages, waaronder De Graanrepubliek (1999) en Stikvallei (2013). In 2004 verscheen van zijn hand het boek ‘El Negro en ik’ waarin hij verslag doet van de omzwervingen van het opgezette lichaam van een Afrikaanse man. Het volgen van El Negro geeft aanleiding tot het bespreken van een geschiedenis van slavernij, kolonialisme en racisme en roept de vraag op: wat zegt El Negro over ons, hier en nu?
Amade M’charek is professor wetenschapsantropologie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Zij heeft onderzoek verricht in laboratoria om de productie van wetenschappelijke kennis over genetische diversiteit en ras in praktijk te onderzoeken. Recentelijk heeft ze een grote beurs ontvangen van de European Research Council voor het project RaceFaceID, een project dat het geven van een gezicht aan een onbekende persoon in de forensische praktijk onderzoekt. Daarbij staat centraal de vraag centraal in hoeverre noties van ras een rol spelen in dergelijke processen.
Moderator
Martijn van Calmthout is wetenschapsredacteur bij De Volkskrant en (mede)auteur van populair wetenschappelijke boeken. Daarnaast is hij gastheer in het maandelijkse KennisCafé in De Balie en radiopresentator bij De Kennis van Nu (NTR).
Borrel en tentoonstelling
Aansluitend is er een borrel verzorgd door de Bijzondere Collecties. Daarnaast zal de tentoonstelling na het debat tussen 17:00 en 18:00 speciaal voor u geopend zijn. Mocht u er niet bij kunnen zijn en toch eens een kijkje willen nemen, ‘Out of the Box’ is nog tot en met 4 september te bezichtigen bij Bijzondere Collecties op de Oude Turfmarkt.
Abstract How relevant to facial depiction from skeletal remains is the anthropological classification of race? Do we need to classify a person in relation to ancestry in order to understand and interpret facial morphology from skeletal... more
Abstract
How relevant to facial depiction from skeletal remains is the anthropological classification of race? Do we need to classify a person in relation to ancestry in order to understand and interpret facial morphology from skeletal analysis?
The classification of race or ancestry from skeletal assessment is one of the most controversial and challenging areas of forensic anthropology. In addition to the practical challenges, the question of relevance to a contemporary population and the importance of ancestry to our understanding of archaeological investigation and history are frequently debated.
This presentation attempts to offer some context for these challenges and discusses the application of ancestry estimation to this field.
About the lecturer
Caroline Wilkinson is Director of the Face Lab, a LJMU research group for forensic/archaeological research and consultancy work including craniofacial analysis, facial depiction and forensic art. Caroline has a background in art and science and her research and creative work sits at the forefront of art-science fusion and includes subjects as diverse as forensic art, human anatomy, medical art, face recognition, forensic science, anthropology, 3D visualisation, digital art and craniofacial identification.
Caroline is a graduate of the University of Manchester, where she also led the Unit of Art in Medicine 2000-2005 and received a NESTA fellowship to develop a 3D computerised facial reconstruction system for use in forensic and archaeological depiction. She moved to LJMU from the University of Dundee, where she was Head of Human Identification in the award-winning Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification. Her high profile facial depiction work includes facial depictions of Richard III, St Nicolas, J.S. Bach, Rameses II and Mary, Queen of Scots.
Caroline Wilkinson has collaborated frequently with museums and the media, especially relating to craniofacial depiction of people from the past and she has a high profile in public engagement relating to art and science. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and received the 2013 RSE Senior Award for Public Engagement. She also delivered the 2013 RSE Christmas Lecture (http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/958_ChristmasLecture.html). Her work is exhibited in museums around the world and she has appeared on TV and radio as an expert in relation to facial depiction and historical interpretation.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
How relevant to facial depiction from skeletal remains is the anthropological classification of race? Do we need to classify a person in relation to ancestry in order to understand and interpret facial morphology from skeletal analysis?
The classification of race or ancestry from skeletal assessment is one of the most controversial and challenging areas of forensic anthropology. In addition to the practical challenges, the question of relevance to a contemporary population and the importance of ancestry to our understanding of archaeological investigation and history are frequently debated.
This presentation attempts to offer some context for these challenges and discusses the application of ancestry estimation to this field.
About the lecturer
Caroline Wilkinson is Director of the Face Lab, a LJMU research group for forensic/archaeological research and consultancy work including craniofacial analysis, facial depiction and forensic art. Caroline has a background in art and science and her research and creative work sits at the forefront of art-science fusion and includes subjects as diverse as forensic art, human anatomy, medical art, face recognition, forensic science, anthropology, 3D visualisation, digital art and craniofacial identification.
Caroline is a graduate of the University of Manchester, where she also led the Unit of Art in Medicine 2000-2005 and received a NESTA fellowship to develop a 3D computerised facial reconstruction system for use in forensic and archaeological depiction. She moved to LJMU from the University of Dundee, where she was Head of Human Identification in the award-winning Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification. Her high profile facial depiction work includes facial depictions of Richard III, St Nicolas, J.S. Bach, Rameses II and Mary, Queen of Scots.
Caroline Wilkinson has collaborated frequently with museums and the media, especially relating to craniofacial depiction of people from the past and she has a high profile in public engagement relating to art and science. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and received the 2013 RSE Senior Award for Public Engagement. She also delivered the 2013 RSE Christmas Lecture (http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/958_ChristmasLecture.html). Her work is exhibited in museums around the world and she has appeared on TV and radio as an expert in relation to facial depiction and historical interpretation.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
‘These bottles contain lives’: Blood, race, and genetics in the mid-twentieth century Date: Monday, April 25 Time: 15:30-17:00 Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi... more
‘These bottles contain lives’: Blood, race, and genetics in the mid-twentieth century
Date: Monday, April 25
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
UNESCO’s race campaign in the early 1950s went in several mutually dependent directions. One path was to shift attention away from ‘race’ and focus on the ‘social’ realm of ‘ethnic groups’; another was to claim the term ‘race’ to be a purely biological (and therefore politically neutral) concept. The latter seized upon genetics as a pre-eminent example of a neutral, reforming, universalizing science, and took as its example extensive contemporary research on the human blood groups. At the time, blood groups were almost the only human traits with clear-cut Mendelian inheritance. Blood-group gene frequencies (the argument went) confirmed that biological differences existed between human populations, but also (apparently) flattened and neutralized racial hierarchies.
The mid-century study of blood group genetics was deeply embedded in the practices of blood transfusion. Focusing on Britain, my talk examines how the bureaucracies for managing people and blood produced the conditions for specifying human genetic difference. Citizenship, race, kinship and standardization converged in the practices of moving blood between bodies. A community of metropolitan geneticists used the resources and technologies of the centralized state-funded transfusion services to make and elaborate genetic notions of identity. I trace the medical and civic infrastructures, the social practices and the political agendas through which these scientists developed a postwar human genetics, and enabled genetics to be understood as a neutral mediator of human difference.
About the lecturer
Jenny Bangham is a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), where she is completing a book manuscript based on her PhD from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She has recently been awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship for a new project on community tools in science.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Date: Monday, April 25
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
UNESCO’s race campaign in the early 1950s went in several mutually dependent directions. One path was to shift attention away from ‘race’ and focus on the ‘social’ realm of ‘ethnic groups’; another was to claim the term ‘race’ to be a purely biological (and therefore politically neutral) concept. The latter seized upon genetics as a pre-eminent example of a neutral, reforming, universalizing science, and took as its example extensive contemporary research on the human blood groups. At the time, blood groups were almost the only human traits with clear-cut Mendelian inheritance. Blood-group gene frequencies (the argument went) confirmed that biological differences existed between human populations, but also (apparently) flattened and neutralized racial hierarchies.
The mid-century study of blood group genetics was deeply embedded in the practices of blood transfusion. Focusing on Britain, my talk examines how the bureaucracies for managing people and blood produced the conditions for specifying human genetic difference. Citizenship, race, kinship and standardization converged in the practices of moving blood between bodies. A community of metropolitan geneticists used the resources and technologies of the centralized state-funded transfusion services to make and elaborate genetic notions of identity. I trace the medical and civic infrastructures, the social practices and the political agendas through which these scientists developed a postwar human genetics, and enabled genetics to be understood as a neutral mediator of human difference.
About the lecturer
Jenny Bangham is a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), where she is completing a book manuscript based on her PhD from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She has recently been awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship for a new project on community tools in science.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Abstract By focusing on what I call the 'culturalization of everyday life' in a neighborhood in the Amsterdam district of New West where I pursued ethnographic research from 2009 to 2011, this paper examines the dialectics of urban... more
Abstract
By focusing on what I call the 'culturalization of everyday life' in a neighborhood in the Amsterdam district of New West where I pursued ethnographic research from 2009 to 2011, this paper examines the dialectics of urban super-diversity. Rather than understanding super-diversity in terms of an increasing 'normalcy of diversity', I argue that the contemporary global city is characterized by a 'dialectics of flow and closure' where increasing heterogeneity goes hand in glove with an ever more powerful focus on locality, belonging and identity 'fixture'. In a world characterized by flux, a great deal of energy is invested in fixing, controlling and freezing identities. In this paper, I argue that Dutch culturalism is a mode of controlling and fixing identity: the culturalist 'common sense' produces an increased awareness of the proximity and alterity of others. The resulting focus on autochthony is a process of boundary-making between those who belong and those who are construed as guests or strangers. In this process, a particular anatomo-politics is involved that signifies the continuing centrality of race and racism in the Netherlands. Culturalist boundary dynamics rely on the particular configuration of the sensory, the cultural and the biological which has historically defined the modern category of race.
About the lecturer
Paul Mepschen is a lecturer in social anthropology at Leiden University and a postdoc at the University of Amsterdam. He has recently defended his dissertation called Everyday autochthony. Difference, discontent and the politics of home in Amsterdam (cum laude). He is working on a new research project the European politics of LGBT-pride, while maintaining his interest in (the interconnections of) nationalist, class, cultural and sexual politics in post-Fordist Europe.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
Monday April 25, 2016: ir/relevance of race seminar with Jenny Bangham (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
By focusing on what I call the 'culturalization of everyday life' in a neighborhood in the Amsterdam district of New West where I pursued ethnographic research from 2009 to 2011, this paper examines the dialectics of urban super-diversity. Rather than understanding super-diversity in terms of an increasing 'normalcy of diversity', I argue that the contemporary global city is characterized by a 'dialectics of flow and closure' where increasing heterogeneity goes hand in glove with an ever more powerful focus on locality, belonging and identity 'fixture'. In a world characterized by flux, a great deal of energy is invested in fixing, controlling and freezing identities. In this paper, I argue that Dutch culturalism is a mode of controlling and fixing identity: the culturalist 'common sense' produces an increased awareness of the proximity and alterity of others. The resulting focus on autochthony is a process of boundary-making between those who belong and those who are construed as guests or strangers. In this process, a particular anatomo-politics is involved that signifies the continuing centrality of race and racism in the Netherlands. Culturalist boundary dynamics rely on the particular configuration of the sensory, the cultural and the biological which has historically defined the modern category of race.
About the lecturer
Paul Mepschen is a lecturer in social anthropology at Leiden University and a postdoc at the University of Amsterdam. He has recently defended his dissertation called Everyday autochthony. Difference, discontent and the politics of home in Amsterdam (cum laude). He is working on a new research project the European politics of LGBT-pride, while maintaining his interest in (the interconnections of) nationalist, class, cultural and sexual politics in post-Fordist Europe.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
Monday April 25, 2016: ir/relevance of race seminar with Jenny Bangham (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
“More than just an object”: race in the practices of collecting, studying and repatriating Namibian skulls from Germany Date: Monday, February 1 Time: 15:30-17:00 Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.... more
“More than just an object”: race in the practices of collecting, studying and repatriating Namibian skulls from Germany
Date: Monday, February 1
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
In September 2011 twenty Namibian skulls were repatriated from the collection of the Charité university hospital in Berlin. The remains had been in Germany for more than a hundred years: they belonged to victims of the German-Herero war (1904-1908) in German South-West Africa, a genocide that cost the lives of eighty per cent of the Herero and half the Nama population. Eighteen of the skulls had arrived in Berlin as preserved heads, and all twenty had been used for pseudo-scientific race research in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Despite the triumphant return of the skulls, not everything went smoothly. The Charité was criticized for failing to answer questions about the identity of the remains, and the Namibian government and Nama and Herero representatives failed to agree on their final resting place. This had everything to do with the complicated nature of the skulls involved. In the practices of collecting (1904-1910), studying (1910-1924) and repatriating (2011), the heads/ skulls - remains of individuals - became trophies, specimens, and evidence, symbols and relics. How they were handled, why, by whom, and in what context determined what they were. It even determined the racial identity of the skulls. In the hands of German soldiers in German South-West Africa, they were the remains of the colonial ‘Other’, while scientists in Berlin studied them as representatives of ‘Africans’ or ‘Farbigen’. Many years later, the SWAPO government welcomed the remains home as ‘Namibian’, while Herero and Nama representatives stressed the ‘Nama’ and ‘Herero’ identity of the skulls. This presentation explores how practices surrounding the skulls determined their racial identity, then and now.
About the lecturer
Leonor Faber-Jonker (1987) is a historian and independent author. She recently graduated with honors from the research master Modern History (1500-2000) at the University of Utrecht, specializing in body history and the colonial history of Southern Africa. Leonor presented her thesis ‘More than just an object’: a material analysis of the return and retention of Namibian skulls from Germany at the Namibia Country Meeting of the African Studies Center in Leiden and is currently preparing articles based on her research. Outside the academic field she has published the book No Future Nu (2012) a cultural history of punk in The Netherlands, and she regularly organizes talk shows, exhibitions, and music events.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Date: Monday, February 1
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
In September 2011 twenty Namibian skulls were repatriated from the collection of the Charité university hospital in Berlin. The remains had been in Germany for more than a hundred years: they belonged to victims of the German-Herero war (1904-1908) in German South-West Africa, a genocide that cost the lives of eighty per cent of the Herero and half the Nama population. Eighteen of the skulls had arrived in Berlin as preserved heads, and all twenty had been used for pseudo-scientific race research in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Despite the triumphant return of the skulls, not everything went smoothly. The Charité was criticized for failing to answer questions about the identity of the remains, and the Namibian government and Nama and Herero representatives failed to agree on their final resting place. This had everything to do with the complicated nature of the skulls involved. In the practices of collecting (1904-1910), studying (1910-1924) and repatriating (2011), the heads/ skulls - remains of individuals - became trophies, specimens, and evidence, symbols and relics. How they were handled, why, by whom, and in what context determined what they were. It even determined the racial identity of the skulls. In the hands of German soldiers in German South-West Africa, they were the remains of the colonial ‘Other’, while scientists in Berlin studied them as representatives of ‘Africans’ or ‘Farbigen’. Many years later, the SWAPO government welcomed the remains home as ‘Namibian’, while Herero and Nama representatives stressed the ‘Nama’ and ‘Herero’ identity of the skulls. This presentation explores how practices surrounding the skulls determined their racial identity, then and now.
About the lecturer
Leonor Faber-Jonker (1987) is a historian and independent author. She recently graduated with honors from the research master Modern History (1500-2000) at the University of Utrecht, specializing in body history and the colonial history of Southern Africa. Leonor presented her thesis ‘More than just an object’: a material analysis of the return and retention of Namibian skulls from Germany at the Namibia Country Meeting of the African Studies Center in Leiden and is currently preparing articles based on her research. Outside the academic field she has published the book No Future Nu (2012) a cultural history of punk in The Netherlands, and she regularly organizes talk shows, exhibitions, and music events.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
What Remains for the Poor and the Periphery? Racialized Forensics and California’s Genetic Database Date: Thursday December 17, 2015 Time: 15:30-17:00 Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps... more
What Remains for the Poor and the Periphery? Racialized Forensics and California’s Genetic Database
Date: Thursday December 17, 2015
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
Genomic technologies for biometric identification are said to have revolutionized the solving of crimes. California’s growing genetic database, which is the third-largest forensic DNA database worldwide, has become indispensable in efforts to keep up with innovative identification technologies. At this frontier site of technological meliorism, critics have called for bioethical management attuned to conditions of inequality, yet criminality and racialization remain deeply entangled in America. This project investigates how genomics is used in U.S. court cases, in order to analyze the social effects of involuntary interpellations into new molecular sciences and emerging data infrastructures. Speculating that growing genomic infrastructures variably implicate Americans and their risky – in the genomics industry their healthy – futures, the research is concerned with how participation in techno-science is imagined and plays out. In California, consumer genomics stands opposite uses of molecular data in criminal justice: while the former is produced by and engages wealthy white participants, the latter predominantly interpellate poor of color milieus. In this talk, Jabloner will discuss her comparative project on uses of genomics in health and criminology in the U.S. Attending to how race becomes implicated or re-energized in different ways in these fields, she will discuss how voluntary (self-)assessments through molecular race in personal genomics and biomedicine emerge on a large scale in parallel to involuntary interpellations – and external racializations – in criminological genomic database projects at the state level.
About the lecturer
Anna Jabloner is a socio-cultural anthropologist who received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2015. She has a Mag.a Phil. from the University of Vienna. Her research centers on the uses and imaginaries of science and technology, on race, gender and class in American science, and on the theories of nature that inform the currently expanding field of digital biology. Her dissertation, titled “Humanity Pending: Californian Genomics and the Politics of Biology,” examines genome science as a culturally situated phenomenon of knowledge production and consumption, an emerging biometric/biomedical infrastructure in U.S. society imagined as a revolution for health and the future. Jabloner has also analyzed feminist epistemology, publishing a book on Donna Haraway’s approaches to race titled Implodierende Grenzen: ‘Race’ und Ethnizität in Donna Haraways Technowissenschaft (Passagen, 2005).
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
Monday February 1, 2016: ir/relevance of race seminar with Leonor Jonker (Utrecht University graduate)
Monday April 25, 2016: ir/relevance of race seminar with Jenny Bangham (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
Date: Thursday December 17, 2015
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
Genomic technologies for biometric identification are said to have revolutionized the solving of crimes. California’s growing genetic database, which is the third-largest forensic DNA database worldwide, has become indispensable in efforts to keep up with innovative identification technologies. At this frontier site of technological meliorism, critics have called for bioethical management attuned to conditions of inequality, yet criminality and racialization remain deeply entangled in America. This project investigates how genomics is used in U.S. court cases, in order to analyze the social effects of involuntary interpellations into new molecular sciences and emerging data infrastructures. Speculating that growing genomic infrastructures variably implicate Americans and their risky – in the genomics industry their healthy – futures, the research is concerned with how participation in techno-science is imagined and plays out. In California, consumer genomics stands opposite uses of molecular data in criminal justice: while the former is produced by and engages wealthy white participants, the latter predominantly interpellate poor of color milieus. In this talk, Jabloner will discuss her comparative project on uses of genomics in health and criminology in the U.S. Attending to how race becomes implicated or re-energized in different ways in these fields, she will discuss how voluntary (self-)assessments through molecular race in personal genomics and biomedicine emerge on a large scale in parallel to involuntary interpellations – and external racializations – in criminological genomic database projects at the state level.
About the lecturer
Anna Jabloner is a socio-cultural anthropologist who received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2015. She has a Mag.a Phil. from the University of Vienna. Her research centers on the uses and imaginaries of science and technology, on race, gender and class in American science, and on the theories of nature that inform the currently expanding field of digital biology. Her dissertation, titled “Humanity Pending: Californian Genomics and the Politics of Biology,” examines genome science as a culturally situated phenomenon of knowledge production and consumption, an emerging biometric/biomedical infrastructure in U.S. society imagined as a revolution for health and the future. Jabloner has also analyzed feminist epistemology, publishing a book on Donna Haraway’s approaches to race titled Implodierende Grenzen: ‘Race’ und Ethnizität in Donna Haraways Technowissenschaft (Passagen, 2005).
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
Monday February 1, 2016: ir/relevance of race seminar with Leonor Jonker (Utrecht University graduate)
Monday April 25, 2016: ir/relevance of race seminar with Jenny Bangham (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
Aesthetic intersections: Racial repertoires in the evaluation of beauty in 5 European countries Date: Monday, November 9 Time: 15:30-17:00 Place: Common Room Anthropology REC B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps... more
Aesthetic intersections: Racial repertoires in the evaluation of beauty in 5 European countries
Date: Monday, November 9
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology REC B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
Racial repertoires are central to the evaluation of physical beauty. This is an important, and slightly unexpected result of a study of social differences in the evaluation of the beauty of female and male faces in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK. This study used a mixed method design to explore and compare ‘beauty tastes’ in these five European countries. 150 persons of different backgrounds were asked to sort images of female and male faces from most to least beautiful. These so-called ‘Q sorts’ allowed us to, first, inductively produce a quantitative ‘mapping’ of beauty tastes. Second, the sorting assignment also formed the basis of an open interview that explored ‘repertoires of evaluation’ of human beauty.
Four types of repertoires were found: aesthetic repertoires; subjectification versus objectification; gender-normative; and racial repertoires. These racial repertoires were all but absent in the interviews, as informants rarely explicitly mentioned race. However, in the analysis of the sorting assignment, it became clear that racial characteristics strongly structure the evaluation of beauty. Moreover, aesthetic evaluations of stereotypically racialized characteristics strongly intersect with notions of normality (making non-whites, for instance, either appealingly exotic or unsettlingly different) and with gendered repertoires (e.g., Asian males are not masculine, blonde women are especially sexy). This presentation first explores these racial repertoires, and the interesting discontinuity between interview discourse and sorting practice. Second, it explores the relation between racial and other repertoires of evaluation of physical beauty. Finally, it presents some comparative findings regarding the prominence of racial repertoires in different countries and social categories.
About the lecturer
Giselinde Kuipers is a professor of cultural sociology at the University of Amsterdam. She studied cultural anthropology at Utrecht University, with a brief stint at the University of Seville in Spain. In 2001, she received her PhD in sociology (with distinction) from the University of Amsterdam. Find out more about Giselinde Kuipers work and academic career on her website: www.giselinde.nl.
Giselinde has published widely in the fields of cultural sociology, the sociology of humor, media studies, and cultural globalization and transnational culture. In 2010, she started a new 5-year research project called "Towards a comparative sociology of beauty: The transnational modelling industry and the social shaping of beauty standards in six European countries". This project is funded with a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). It has its own website at www.sociologyofbeauty.nl.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
Thursday December 17, 2015: ir/relevance of race seminar with Anna Jabloner (University of Chicago)
Monday February 1, 2016: ir/relevance of race seminar with Leonor Jonker (Utrecht University graduate)
Date: Monday, November 9
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology REC B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
Racial repertoires are central to the evaluation of physical beauty. This is an important, and slightly unexpected result of a study of social differences in the evaluation of the beauty of female and male faces in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK. This study used a mixed method design to explore and compare ‘beauty tastes’ in these five European countries. 150 persons of different backgrounds were asked to sort images of female and male faces from most to least beautiful. These so-called ‘Q sorts’ allowed us to, first, inductively produce a quantitative ‘mapping’ of beauty tastes. Second, the sorting assignment also formed the basis of an open interview that explored ‘repertoires of evaluation’ of human beauty.
Four types of repertoires were found: aesthetic repertoires; subjectification versus objectification; gender-normative; and racial repertoires. These racial repertoires were all but absent in the interviews, as informants rarely explicitly mentioned race. However, in the analysis of the sorting assignment, it became clear that racial characteristics strongly structure the evaluation of beauty. Moreover, aesthetic evaluations of stereotypically racialized characteristics strongly intersect with notions of normality (making non-whites, for instance, either appealingly exotic or unsettlingly different) and with gendered repertoires (e.g., Asian males are not masculine, blonde women are especially sexy). This presentation first explores these racial repertoires, and the interesting discontinuity between interview discourse and sorting practice. Second, it explores the relation between racial and other repertoires of evaluation of physical beauty. Finally, it presents some comparative findings regarding the prominence of racial repertoires in different countries and social categories.
About the lecturer
Giselinde Kuipers is a professor of cultural sociology at the University of Amsterdam. She studied cultural anthropology at Utrecht University, with a brief stint at the University of Seville in Spain. In 2001, she received her PhD in sociology (with distinction) from the University of Amsterdam. Find out more about Giselinde Kuipers work and academic career on her website: www.giselinde.nl.
Giselinde has published widely in the fields of cultural sociology, the sociology of humor, media studies, and cultural globalization and transnational culture. In 2010, she started a new 5-year research project called "Towards a comparative sociology of beauty: The transnational modelling industry and the social shaping of beauty standards in six European countries". This project is funded with a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). It has its own website at www.sociologyofbeauty.nl.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
Thursday December 17, 2015: ir/relevance of race seminar with Anna Jabloner (University of Chicago)
Monday February 1, 2016: ir/relevance of race seminar with Leonor Jonker (Utrecht University graduate)
On Friday, September 18th 2015, at 4.00 p.m., professor dr. A.A. M'charek, appointed as Professor of Anthropology of Science, will deliver her inaugural lecture, with the title: "Circulations: A new object for an Anthropology of... more
On Friday, September 18th 2015, at 4.00 p.m., professor dr. A.A. M'charek, appointed as Professor of Anthropology of Science, will deliver her inaugural lecture, with the title:
"Circulations: A new object for an Anthropology of Science".
Prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom, Rector Magnificus of the University of Amsterdam, requests the pleasure of your company in the Auditorium of the University (entrance
Singel 411, corner Spui).
"Circulations: A new object for an Anthropology of Science".
Prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom, Rector Magnificus of the University of Amsterdam, requests the pleasure of your company in the Auditorium of the University (entrance
Singel 411, corner Spui).
Abstract Social constructionism has been a dominant position in racial discourses of the late 20th century. Population biology and genetics have been widely interpreted as debunking the very idea of biological races and showing that... more
Abstract
Social constructionism has been a dominant position in racial discourses of the late 20th century. Population biology and genetics have been widely interpreted as debunking the very idea of biological races and showing that “race” is a topic for social scientists instead of biologists. In recent years, however, the constructionist mainstream has become challenged from various directions. Geneticists have postulated “genetic clusters” that look suspiciously like continental races and biomedical researchers have defended the use of racial categories as epidemiological proxies. Philosophers of science have used this research to defend races as serious biological entities and STS scholars have reflected on these developments by claiming that biological races are “gaining in reality”. The aim of my presentation is not to join this chorus of critics. Instead, I will argue that constructionist approaches remain of crucial relevance for understanding human diversity and for critically examining the reemergence of race as a biological category. I develop two notions of the “social construction of race” and argue that they are important tools for critical accounts of current debates about race. I conclude that both philosophers and STS scholars need to reclaim critical positions that engage with racialized biosciences from a self-consciously normative perspective.
About the lecturer
David Ludwig is a philosopher and historian of science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He received his PhD from Humboldt Universität Berlin (2012) and worked at Columbia University (2012-2014) before moving to the Netherlands. His veni project “Well-Ordered Ontologies in the Human Sciences” is concerned with the boundaries of entities such as race, sex, and mental disorder. Recent publications include “Against the New Metaphysics of Race” (2015, Philosophy of Science), “Indigenous and Scientific Kinds” (2015, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science), and A Pluralist Theory of the Mind (2015, Springer).
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Social constructionism has been a dominant position in racial discourses of the late 20th century. Population biology and genetics have been widely interpreted as debunking the very idea of biological races and showing that “race” is a topic for social scientists instead of biologists. In recent years, however, the constructionist mainstream has become challenged from various directions. Geneticists have postulated “genetic clusters” that look suspiciously like continental races and biomedical researchers have defended the use of racial categories as epidemiological proxies. Philosophers of science have used this research to defend races as serious biological entities and STS scholars have reflected on these developments by claiming that biological races are “gaining in reality”. The aim of my presentation is not to join this chorus of critics. Instead, I will argue that constructionist approaches remain of crucial relevance for understanding human diversity and for critically examining the reemergence of race as a biological category. I develop two notions of the “social construction of race” and argue that they are important tools for critical accounts of current debates about race. I conclude that both philosophers and STS scholars need to reclaim critical positions that engage with racialized biosciences from a self-consciously normative perspective.
About the lecturer
David Ludwig is a philosopher and historian of science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He received his PhD from Humboldt Universität Berlin (2012) and worked at Columbia University (2012-2014) before moving to the Netherlands. His veni project “Well-Ordered Ontologies in the Human Sciences” is concerned with the boundaries of entities such as race, sex, and mental disorder. Recent publications include “Against the New Metaphysics of Race” (2015, Philosophy of Science), “Indigenous and Scientific Kinds” (2015, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science), and A Pluralist Theory of the Mind (2015, Springer).
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Abstract Will follow About the lecturer André Menard holds a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), and is professor and researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the Universidad de... more
Abstract
Will follow
About the lecturer
André Menard holds a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), and is professor and researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the Universidad de Chile. His work has centred on Mapuche political history, focusing on the political uses of the notion of race in Chilean and Mapuche context. In this frame he has edited, with Jorge Pavez the photographic album Mapuche y Anglicanos, vestigios fotográficos de la Misión Araucana de Kepe (1896-1908) (Santiago de Chile: Ocho Libros, 2008), and more recently the manuscripts of the mystical Mapuche leader Manuel Aburto Panguilef Libro Diario del Presidente de la Federación Araucana, Manuel Aburto Panguilef (1940-1951) (Santiago de Chile: CoLibris, 2013). His current research focuses on the theories of fetish and their applications to the analysis of the legal and political status of indigenous peoples.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Will follow
About the lecturer
André Menard holds a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), and is professor and researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the Universidad de Chile. His work has centred on Mapuche political history, focusing on the political uses of the notion of race in Chilean and Mapuche context. In this frame he has edited, with Jorge Pavez the photographic album Mapuche y Anglicanos, vestigios fotográficos de la Misión Araucana de Kepe (1896-1908) (Santiago de Chile: Ocho Libros, 2008), and more recently the manuscripts of the mystical Mapuche leader Manuel Aburto Panguilef Libro Diario del Presidente de la Federación Araucana, Manuel Aburto Panguilef (1940-1951) (Santiago de Chile: CoLibris, 2013). His current research focuses on the theories of fetish and their applications to the analysis of the legal and political status of indigenous peoples.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Abstract The securitization of society is reinforcing forms of spatial governance in which potential deviants are expulsed from spaces in the city. Sinan Çankaya will talk about processes of inclusion and exclusion by focusing on police... more
Abstract
The securitization of society is reinforcing forms of spatial governance in which potential deviants are expulsed from spaces in the city. Sinan Çankaya will talk about processes of inclusion and exclusion by focusing on police officers’ images of potential suspects in the super-diverse city of Amsterdam. The cleansing of spaces through proactive stops and searches has consequences for the accessibility of public space and the personal lives of ‘risky’ subpopulations. In certain spaces, the mere visual presence of ‘non-white’ bodies is a transgression of spatial norms. The excessive desire for safety and the increasing focus on ‘risky’ subpopulations results in a racialized spatial fragmentation despite the celebratory optimism of Amsterdam’s “super-diversity”.
About the lecturer
Sinan Çankaya is a cultural anthropologist with a background in conflict resolution (Bradford University) and international relations/geopolitics (Université Vincennes-Saint Denis). His PhD was on the in- and exclusion processes of ethnic minority police officers (2011, Tilburg University). In 2012, Sinan published “The control of Martians and other scum” (De Controle van Marsmannetjes en ander Schorriemorrie), an ethnographic study on the praxis of racial profiling in the Netherlands. Currently he is conducting a research on aggression and violence in the emergency department of Dutch hospitals, commissioned by The Hague University of Applied Sciences.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming
Monday July 13, André Menard, "Race, Spirit and Untranscended Materiality: a fetishistic approach to the Indigenous People's Spiritual Rights". André Menard holds a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), and is professor and researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the Universidad de Chile.
The securitization of society is reinforcing forms of spatial governance in which potential deviants are expulsed from spaces in the city. Sinan Çankaya will talk about processes of inclusion and exclusion by focusing on police officers’ images of potential suspects in the super-diverse city of Amsterdam. The cleansing of spaces through proactive stops and searches has consequences for the accessibility of public space and the personal lives of ‘risky’ subpopulations. In certain spaces, the mere visual presence of ‘non-white’ bodies is a transgression of spatial norms. The excessive desire for safety and the increasing focus on ‘risky’ subpopulations results in a racialized spatial fragmentation despite the celebratory optimism of Amsterdam’s “super-diversity”.
About the lecturer
Sinan Çankaya is a cultural anthropologist with a background in conflict resolution (Bradford University) and international relations/geopolitics (Université Vincennes-Saint Denis). His PhD was on the in- and exclusion processes of ethnic minority police officers (2011, Tilburg University). In 2012, Sinan published “The control of Martians and other scum” (De Controle van Marsmannetjes en ander Schorriemorrie), an ethnographic study on the praxis of racial profiling in the Netherlands. Currently he is conducting a research on aggression and violence in the emergency department of Dutch hospitals, commissioned by The Hague University of Applied Sciences.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming
Monday July 13, André Menard, "Race, Spirit and Untranscended Materiality: a fetishistic approach to the Indigenous People's Spiritual Rights". André Menard holds a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), and is professor and researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the Universidad de Chile.
Abstract Social justice movements, such as feminism, anti-racism, and postcolonialism, have produced a standpoint methodology that is more competent to maximize objectivity than the conventional requirement that natural and social... more
Abstract
Social justice movements, such as feminism, anti-racism, and postcolonialism, have produced a standpoint methodology that is more competent to maximize objectivity than the conventional requirement that natural and social science research be value-free. The need for “strong objectivity” arises when research communities lack diversity and are isolated from democratic social tendencies. Research that starts off questioning nature and social relations from the daily lives of economically and politically vulnerable groups can increase its own reliability and predictive power. Such research insists on the conventional goals of fairness to the data and to its severest criticisms. It retains central commitments of the conventional notion of objectivity while escaping its limitations. In this presentation the focus will be on Latin American decoloniality standpoints and what they can tell us not only about coloniality and anti-coloniality in Latin America, but also about European modernity and its sciences and technologies.
About the lecturer
Sandra Harding is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology, and philosophy of science. She taught for two decades at the University of Delaware before moving to the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996. She directed the UCLA Center for the Study of Women from 1996 to 2000, and co-edited Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 2000 to 2005. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Education and Gender Studies at UCLA and a Distinguished Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Harding)
Social justice movements, such as feminism, anti-racism, and postcolonialism, have produced a standpoint methodology that is more competent to maximize objectivity than the conventional requirement that natural and social science research be value-free. The need for “strong objectivity” arises when research communities lack diversity and are isolated from democratic social tendencies. Research that starts off questioning nature and social relations from the daily lives of economically and politically vulnerable groups can increase its own reliability and predictive power. Such research insists on the conventional goals of fairness to the data and to its severest criticisms. It retains central commitments of the conventional notion of objectivity while escaping its limitations. In this presentation the focus will be on Latin American decoloniality standpoints and what they can tell us not only about coloniality and anti-coloniality in Latin America, but also about European modernity and its sciences and technologies.
About the lecturer
Sandra Harding is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology, and philosophy of science. She taught for two decades at the University of Delaware before moving to the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996. She directed the UCLA Center for the Study of Women from 1996 to 2000, and co-edited Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 2000 to 2005. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Education and Gender Studies at UCLA and a Distinguished Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Harding)
Abstract This paper asks for the ir/relevance of race in post-Soviet life sciences. It explores the strange temporalities enacted in databasing and visualization practices in human population genetics. Taking up the statements by... more
Abstract
This paper asks for the ir/relevance of race in post-Soviet life sciences. It explores the strange temporalities enacted in databasing and visualization practices in human population genetics.
Taking up the statements by geneticists themselves that the past is always contained in the present, I ask how contemporary assemblages contain, make and enact specific temporalities and understandings of population. As genetic data are made and mapped on a geographic grid, scientists model the empirical data from few scattered data points.
This paper carves out what is folded into these computer-aided visualization techniques that generate cybernetic versions of populations as systemic entities, as exposed to certain temporal forces. Instead of discussing their representational character, I follow genetic visualizations to explore what folds into them and describe the layering and realigning of contexts within them, especially in view of the shifts in the practices and meanings of genetics.
Modelling procedures enact specific mathematical-systemic versions of population, evolution, and difference.
While popular versions amalgamate Russian imperial anthropology and early Soviet traditions, later sciences are grounded in post-Lysenko Soviet genetics as much as in the international circulation of methods, reagents and concepts during the Cold War.
About the lecturer
Susanne Bauer is junior professor in sociology of science at Goethe University Frankfurt/ Main. Her main focus in teaching and research is in STS and her work particularly deals with the life sciences, genomics, epidemiology and environmental health in Scandinavia, Germany and post-Soviet countries. She was senior fellow at IFK Vienna, visiting professor at Indiana University Bloomington and research scholar at the MPIWG and at Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University Berlin. Selected publications: Virtual Geographies of Belonging. The Case of Soviet and Post-Soviet Human Genetic Diversity Research. Science, Technology & Human Values 39(4), 2014: 511-537; From Administrative Infrastructure to Biomedical Resource: Population Registries, the Danish Laboratory, and the Epidemiologist’s Dream. Science in Context 27(2), 2014: 187-213; Modeling Population Health. Reflections on the Performativity of Epidemiological Techniques in the Age of Genomics. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27(4), 2013: 510-530.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming
Tuesday, April 14, Sandra Harding, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
This paper asks for the ir/relevance of race in post-Soviet life sciences. It explores the strange temporalities enacted in databasing and visualization practices in human population genetics.
Taking up the statements by geneticists themselves that the past is always contained in the present, I ask how contemporary assemblages contain, make and enact specific temporalities and understandings of population. As genetic data are made and mapped on a geographic grid, scientists model the empirical data from few scattered data points.
This paper carves out what is folded into these computer-aided visualization techniques that generate cybernetic versions of populations as systemic entities, as exposed to certain temporal forces. Instead of discussing their representational character, I follow genetic visualizations to explore what folds into them and describe the layering and realigning of contexts within them, especially in view of the shifts in the practices and meanings of genetics.
Modelling procedures enact specific mathematical-systemic versions of population, evolution, and difference.
While popular versions amalgamate Russian imperial anthropology and early Soviet traditions, later sciences are grounded in post-Lysenko Soviet genetics as much as in the international circulation of methods, reagents and concepts during the Cold War.
About the lecturer
Susanne Bauer is junior professor in sociology of science at Goethe University Frankfurt/ Main. Her main focus in teaching and research is in STS and her work particularly deals with the life sciences, genomics, epidemiology and environmental health in Scandinavia, Germany and post-Soviet countries. She was senior fellow at IFK Vienna, visiting professor at Indiana University Bloomington and research scholar at the MPIWG and at Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University Berlin. Selected publications: Virtual Geographies of Belonging. The Case of Soviet and Post-Soviet Human Genetic Diversity Research. Science, Technology & Human Values 39(4), 2014: 511-537; From Administrative Infrastructure to Biomedical Resource: Population Registries, the Danish Laboratory, and the Epidemiologist’s Dream. Science in Context 27(2), 2014: 187-213; Modeling Population Health. Reflections on the Performativity of Epidemiological Techniques in the Age of Genomics. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27(4), 2013: 510-530.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming
Tuesday, April 14, Sandra Harding, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Like many other cities in the West, Rotterdam actively imagines a future beyond its industrial past. The consensus among policy makers, economists and politicians has been for some time that the city needs to depart its industrial economy... more
Like many other cities in the West, Rotterdam actively imagines a future beyond its industrial past. The consensus among policy makers, economists and politicians has been for some time that the city needs to depart its industrial economy and invest in what is commonly referred to as a post-industrial economy: one of consumption and services. In policy efforts towards this imagined Rotterdam, desired and undesired populations are quite explicitly outlined and targeted. Commonly referred to as ‘opportunity rich’ and ‘opportunity poor’, populations are respectively actively attracted and displaced. For this presentation I will outline two particular spatial phenomena (the ‘city lounge’ and the ‘prohibition of assembly’) to show the gendered, classed and racial logic of the production of a post-industrial Rotterdam that looks something like a muscleman in pink stilettos.
About the lecturer
Marguerite van den Berg is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Marguerite's work is positioned where urban studies, gender studies and sociologies of culture overlap. She has published on paternalism, sexualities, policy practices, urban revanchism, city marketing, genderfication and Madonna.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
About the lecturer
Marguerite van den Berg is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Marguerite's work is positioned where urban studies, gender studies and sociologies of culture overlap. She has published on paternalism, sexualities, policy practices, urban revanchism, city marketing, genderfication and Madonna.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Abstract In cities across the world, people increasingly rely on a broad range of interconnected security providers: in addition to public security forces such as the police, they look to uniformed security guards, voluntary neighborhood... more
Abstract
In cities across the world, people increasingly rely on a broad range of interconnected security providers: in addition to public security forces such as the police, they look to uniformed security guards, voluntary neighborhood watches, and armed vigilantes to safeguard their lives and property. If protecting citizens and maintaining public order have traditionally been seen as core state functions, what does it mean when the state actively shares this monopoly and encourages ³plural policing²? Instances of ethnic and racial profiling by the police are well documented, but we know much less about the role of private security providers in shaping racialized categories of danger and innocence. This talk discusses the ERC-funded research project on security and citizenship that I have recently started, and presents some preliminary findings from Jamaica. The talk explores how the privatisation and pluralisation of security provision affects citizenship; I discuss how political subjectivities shift, and differentiated citizenship can become more entrenched, as a result of these modes of security governance.
About the lecturer
Dr. Rivke Jaffe is an associate professor at the Centre for Urban Studies and the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her anthropological research focuses primarily on intersections of the urban and the political, and specifically on the spatialization of power, difference and inequality within cities. Rivke has recently started a five-year research program on public-private security assemblages in Kingston, Jerusalem, Miami, Nairobi and Recife. This research, funded by an ERC Starting Grant and an NWO VIDI grant, investigates to what extent security assemblages function as hybrid governance structures, and the implications this has for how different groups enact and experience citizenship.
In cities across the world, people increasingly rely on a broad range of interconnected security providers: in addition to public security forces such as the police, they look to uniformed security guards, voluntary neighborhood watches, and armed vigilantes to safeguard their lives and property. If protecting citizens and maintaining public order have traditionally been seen as core state functions, what does it mean when the state actively shares this monopoly and encourages ³plural policing²? Instances of ethnic and racial profiling by the police are well documented, but we know much less about the role of private security providers in shaping racialized categories of danger and innocence. This talk discusses the ERC-funded research project on security and citizenship that I have recently started, and presents some preliminary findings from Jamaica. The talk explores how the privatisation and pluralisation of security provision affects citizenship; I discuss how political subjectivities shift, and differentiated citizenship can become more entrenched, as a result of these modes of security governance.
About the lecturer
Dr. Rivke Jaffe is an associate professor at the Centre for Urban Studies and the Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her anthropological research focuses primarily on intersections of the urban and the political, and specifically on the spatialization of power, difference and inequality within cities. Rivke has recently started a five-year research program on public-private security assemblages in Kingston, Jerusalem, Miami, Nairobi and Recife. This research, funded by an ERC Starting Grant and an NWO VIDI grant, investigates to what extent security assemblages function as hybrid governance structures, and the implications this has for how different groups enact and experience citizenship.
In social theory, kinship and citizenship have been theorized as the main political institutions of traditional and modern societies, respectively. In societies organized on the basis of kinship and exchange, persons have been seen as... more
In social theory, kinship and citizenship have been theorized as the main political institutions of traditional and modern societies, respectively. In societies organized on the basis of kinship and exchange, persons have been seen as embedded in webs of social relations. In contractual societies, the welfare state and impersonal economic transactions presumably generate autonomous and independent individuals. Although the consideration of personhood in non-western stateless societies has been based on ethnographic studies of everyday life, the notion of the Western individual is grounded in the study of discourses and ideals. In the last few decades, anthropologists shifted the regional focus of the study of kinship and started doing fieldwork in the west. Paradoxically, these studies generally do not pay close attention to the role of the state and the market in the constitution of kinship and personhood. This talk will question what it means to be a citizen as a person and how the way the state establishes its relation with its subjects—in particular, documentation—affects processes of kinship. The talk will also analyze how the relation between an identity document and a person is established especially during border crossings when personhood and state membership is controlled and contested by immigration authorities.
About the lecturer
Apostolos Andrikopoulos is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. His dissertation examines how legally unauthorised West African migrants use, or even make, kinship to access resources that they are excluded from (international mobility, registered employment, citizenship). He has done multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, Ghana and Greece.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
About the lecturer
Apostolos Andrikopoulos is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. His dissertation examines how legally unauthorised West African migrants use, or even make, kinship to access resources that they are excluded from (international mobility, registered employment, citizenship). He has done multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, Ghana and Greece.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
As powerful US institutions fail to digest the inassimilable inner city poor through gentrification, cleansing or violent containment, a collective dissent remakes politics scrambling assumptions that transform ecologies of illness into... more
As powerful US institutions fail to digest the inassimilable inner city poor through gentrification, cleansing or violent containment, a collective dissent remakes politics scrambling assumptions that transform ecologies of illness into ecologies of wellbeing. As both the media through which we live as well as the specific social geography of our life, ecology surrounds us as we make it and it makes us (Canghuilem 2001). In this paper, I draw upon a long term place-based initiative designed to improve one inner city urban ecology, to explore the embrace of the insurgent, multiple, unclosed futures where the art of "the ecological" pushing back, human and non human together and at once, emerges to perturb biosocial metabolic pathways that disrupt wellbeing.
Michael J. Montoya holds faculty appointments in the departments of Anthropology & Chicano/Latino Studies, in the School of Social Sciences, The Program in Public Health and the Program in Nursing Science in the College of Health Sciences, and is faculty for The Program in Medical Education for the Latin Community (PRIME-LC), in the School of Medicine at the University of California -Irvine. Additionally, Montoya serves as the Director of Research for the Community Engagement Unit of the Institute for Clinical Translational Science in the School of Medicine at UC-Irvine. For more information see: http://www.anthropology.uci.edu/anthr_bios/mmontoya & www.communityknowledgeproject.org
Michael J. Montoya holds faculty appointments in the departments of Anthropology & Chicano/Latino Studies, in the School of Social Sciences, The Program in Public Health and the Program in Nursing Science in the College of Health Sciences, and is faculty for The Program in Medical Education for the Latin Community (PRIME-LC), in the School of Medicine at the University of California -Irvine. Additionally, Montoya serves as the Director of Research for the Community Engagement Unit of the Institute for Clinical Translational Science in the School of Medicine at UC-Irvine. For more information see: http://www.anthropology.uci.edu/anthr_bios/mmontoya & www.communityknowledgeproject.org
Abstract Will follow About the lecturer Dienke Hondius is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at Free University Amsterdam. She holds an MA in History and a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam, and taught... more
Abstract
Will follow
About the lecturer
Dienke Hondius is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at Free University Amsterdam. She holds an MA in History and a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam, and taught at Erasmus University and Utrecht University. Among her books are “Lessons of War: trends in education about World War II since 1945” (Bert Bakker, Amsterdam 2010); “Return: Holocaust Survivors and Dutch Anti-Semitism” (Praeger/Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 2003), and “Memories of the Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam, 1941-43” (Vassallucci, Amsterdam 2001). Her PhD was a study of the acceptance of interracial, interethnic and interreligious relations (“Gemengde Huwelijken, Gemengde Gevoelens”. SDU, Den Haag 1999 and 2001). Her latest book is called “Blackness in Western Europe: Racial Patterns of Paternalism and Exclusion” (Transaction Publishers, New Jersey 2014), and on July 1 of this year the “Amsterdam Guide Slavery Heritage. 100+ Locations, with maps and illustrations” (LM Publishers, Arnhem 2014) will be published, authored by Dienke Hondius, Nancy Jouwe, Dineke Stam, Jennifer Tosch & Annemarie de Wildt. She launched a new research initiative to make maps of the Amsterdam, Dutch and European urban involvement in the history of slavery and the slave trade with the presentation of a first Google map of Amsterdam slave owners in 1863. Other activities include teaching at the summer school Black Europe : Dimensions of Citizenship, Race, and Ethnic Relations (Amsterdam), and a board membership of the international humanitarian student leadership organisation Humanity in Action.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race are being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explore when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Will follow
About the lecturer
Dienke Hondius is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at Free University Amsterdam. She holds an MA in History and a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam, and taught at Erasmus University and Utrecht University. Among her books are “Lessons of War: trends in education about World War II since 1945” (Bert Bakker, Amsterdam 2010); “Return: Holocaust Survivors and Dutch Anti-Semitism” (Praeger/Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 2003), and “Memories of the Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam, 1941-43” (Vassallucci, Amsterdam 2001). Her PhD was a study of the acceptance of interracial, interethnic and interreligious relations (“Gemengde Huwelijken, Gemengde Gevoelens”. SDU, Den Haag 1999 and 2001). Her latest book is called “Blackness in Western Europe: Racial Patterns of Paternalism and Exclusion” (Transaction Publishers, New Jersey 2014), and on July 1 of this year the “Amsterdam Guide Slavery Heritage. 100+ Locations, with maps and illustrations” (LM Publishers, Arnhem 2014) will be published, authored by Dienke Hondius, Nancy Jouwe, Dineke Stam, Jennifer Tosch & Annemarie de Wildt. She launched a new research initiative to make maps of the Amsterdam, Dutch and European urban involvement in the history of slavery and the slave trade with the presentation of a first Google map of Amsterdam slave owners in 1863. Other activities include teaching at the summer school Black Europe : Dimensions of Citizenship, Race, and Ethnic Relations (Amsterdam), and a board membership of the international humanitarian student leadership organisation Humanity in Action.
About the Seminar Series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race are being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explore when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
This presentation will be about a specific Dutch popular song genre called levenslied (literally ‘song of life’) and the way in which jointly levenslied singing embodies sentiments of Dutchness. What sets levenslied apart from other song... more
This presentation will be about a specific Dutch popular song genre called levenslied (literally ‘song of life’) and the way in which jointly levenslied singing embodies sentiments of Dutchness. What sets levenslied apart from other song genres (children's songs, pop songs, opera) is its feature of being a mainstream white, autochtonous ‘adult’ sing-along culture. The songs, generally easy in text and melody and addressing topics like the love, hardship and loneliness of ‘ordinary people’ (volks), are known by heart by millions of Dutch. Whether during a night out in the pub, in carnival-like settings, at family birthday parties or public feasts, levenslied songs may be sung out loud. Many present-day Dutch celebrities are levenslied performers, their concerts attracting tens of thousands of people time and again. Although the genre is mainstream now, there is still a connotation of levenslied as belonging to, or originating from, the (urban) lower-class, lower-educated sections of society, a dimension that for many gives the genre a nostalgic touch. Yet, this development dates only from the 1990s and may be understood as reflecting a revaluation of ‘things Dutch’ in response to globalization and diversity.
Empirically, this presentation focuses on the current resurrection of the ‘Uncrowned King of the levenslied’, André Hazes. Hazes and his repertoire have remained popular ever since the singer’s untimely death in 2004. Embedded in commerce, the unexpected successes of the musical on Hazes’ life (Hij gelooft in mij/Hij gelooft in mij) and a new series of annual sing-along events (Holland zingt Hazes/Holland sings Hazes), designate levenslied culture as an institutionalised public presence, encapsulated into neoliberal ‘cultural consortia’ dominated by the most influential and wealthy stakeholders in Dutch popular culture.
Empirically, this presentation focuses on the current resurrection of the ‘Uncrowned King of the levenslied’, André Hazes. Hazes and his repertoire have remained popular ever since the singer’s untimely death in 2004. Embedded in commerce, the unexpected successes of the musical on Hazes’ life (Hij gelooft in mij/Hij gelooft in mij) and a new series of annual sing-along events (Holland zingt Hazes/Holland sings Hazes), designate levenslied culture as an institutionalised public presence, encapsulated into neoliberal ‘cultural consortia’ dominated by the most influential and wealthy stakeholders in Dutch popular culture.
National character - the notion that national differences are found and can be described through the analysis of character types - has been immensely important in the articulation of nationalisms, particularly in Europe. In the past... more
National character - the notion that national differences are found and can be described through the analysis of character types - has been immensely important in the articulation of nationalisms, particularly in Europe. In the past decades, this notion has been problematized. A significant reason for doing so has been its association with naturalized and, indeed, racialized boundaries, deemed politically anachronistic and normatively repugnant. In the case of Dutchness, there has been an ostentatious replacement of 'national character' with 'national identity' in public and political discourse. This replacement was accompanied by an increasing insistence that problems of diversity were to be discussed in ethno-cultural terms, while somatic-racial differences were deemed out of order. While it is certainly true that the replacement of character by identity did not resolve questions of national distinctiveness, or what in Dutch is called 'eigenheid', I will argue that the discursive swap indicates more than a matter of conversational propriety. On the basis of my doctoral research I will argue that it is part of a much broader rearrangement of problems, questions, solutions and contestations through which Dutchness is grasped and enacted. Public discourse provides one site among many in which to study what this entails. By analyzing the public and political disagreements over Dutchness between 1980 and 2010 I try to show how Dutchness has become a public problem. Remarkably, the shifting politics of Dutchness has been concerned with an idealized post-racism, yet the very enactment of this ideal in public discourse enables a politics of un-crossable boundaries.
Border control in Europe increasingly combines migration and security policies with a technological apparatus for the control of the movements of citizens. The interoperability of databases making use of biometrics combined with iris... more
Border control in Europe increasingly combines migration and security policies with a technological apparatus for the control of the movements of citizens. The interoperability of databases making use of biometrics combined with iris scans, GIS technology, bone scans, radar images, infrared and satellite technology, and statistical risk calculation creates a network to store and exchange all kinds of data extracted from migrants and travellers.
These technologies give rise to new questions since they affect migrants’ and travellers’ privacy, bodily integrity, mobility, quality of data, information storage and exchange, and opportunities for correction. Information systems do not just mould the movements of travellers and migrants. Proposals to prevent the arrival of unwelcome migrants by tracking, tracing and blocking them, and facilitate their return, are arguably confronted with the fact that these registrations shape new data and new information. As a result, social sorting of migrants and travellers based on data stored in information systems is at the centre of border controls and mobility management in Europe. However, recent literature finds that the inclusion-exclusion distinction is insufficiently equipped to do justice to the variety of classifications that is applied. Instead, a proliferation of refined categorisations determines the outcome of visa and permit applications.
In his presentation, Huub Dijstelbloem explores the “administrative ecology” in between the two extremes of inclusion and exclusion. He will claim information technologies encourage the emergence of an intermediary category of “non-publics” situated between the level of groups and the level of individuals. The ontological and normative status of these “non-publics” will be analysed by using some key notions of Actor-Network Theory. In addition, he will explore how these developments are picked up in public debate or, more likely, remain invisible, and how NGOs and watch organizations respond to this technological turn in migration policy by using counter surveillance and counter mapping as a tactic.
These technologies give rise to new questions since they affect migrants’ and travellers’ privacy, bodily integrity, mobility, quality of data, information storage and exchange, and opportunities for correction. Information systems do not just mould the movements of travellers and migrants. Proposals to prevent the arrival of unwelcome migrants by tracking, tracing and blocking them, and facilitate their return, are arguably confronted with the fact that these registrations shape new data and new information. As a result, social sorting of migrants and travellers based on data stored in information systems is at the centre of border controls and mobility management in Europe. However, recent literature finds that the inclusion-exclusion distinction is insufficiently equipped to do justice to the variety of classifications that is applied. Instead, a proliferation of refined categorisations determines the outcome of visa and permit applications.
In his presentation, Huub Dijstelbloem explores the “administrative ecology” in between the two extremes of inclusion and exclusion. He will claim information technologies encourage the emergence of an intermediary category of “non-publics” situated between the level of groups and the level of individuals. The ontological and normative status of these “non-publics” will be analysed by using some key notions of Actor-Network Theory. In addition, he will explore how these developments are picked up in public debate or, more likely, remain invisible, and how NGOs and watch organizations respond to this technological turn in migration policy by using counter surveillance and counter mapping as a tactic.
Masae Kato This presentation discusses the making of a region identity in archaeology practices in the Netherlands. In this practice of ‘knowing about our place and ourselves’, recently, DNA technology has become more and more involved... more
Masae Kato
This presentation discusses the making of a region identity in archaeology practices in the Netherlands. In this practice of ‘knowing about our place and ourselves’, recently, DNA technology has become more and more involved in the Netherlands. These practices are carried out on a local often municipal level. A close look at applications of DNA technology tells us however, that contrary to the belief in DNA as a provider for the truths of who we are, it needs supports to gain its voice, including for example the location and the manner in which buried individuals are found. DNA is not autonomous. An extension of this is, when knowledge about the history of a region, is yielded by the application of DNA technology, the region needs to be situated in pre-existing conditions; historically, geographically and more. In this presentation I will focus on interaction of region-ness and national-ness in practice of region identity making.
Jan van Baren-Nawrocka
Genes have the tendency to be caught up in stories of origin and belonging. The Genome of the Netherlands project is a case in point. In that project all kinds of connections are activated through choices that the researchers regard as merely practical. In this presentation I will show how in the Genome of the Netherlands project, connections are made between biobanks, genome databases, language, common-sense, (individual) bodies and the soil. Through these connections, belonging and non-belonging in the context of nationality become part of human biology on the molecular level.
This presentation is based on part of the published paper “The bioinformatics of genetic origins: how identities become embedded in the tools and practices of bioinformatics” in Life Sciences, Society and Policy 2013, 9:7
This presentation discusses the making of a region identity in archaeology practices in the Netherlands. In this practice of ‘knowing about our place and ourselves’, recently, DNA technology has become more and more involved in the Netherlands. These practices are carried out on a local often municipal level. A close look at applications of DNA technology tells us however, that contrary to the belief in DNA as a provider for the truths of who we are, it needs supports to gain its voice, including for example the location and the manner in which buried individuals are found. DNA is not autonomous. An extension of this is, when knowledge about the history of a region, is yielded by the application of DNA technology, the region needs to be situated in pre-existing conditions; historically, geographically and more. In this presentation I will focus on interaction of region-ness and national-ness in practice of region identity making.
Jan van Baren-Nawrocka
Genes have the tendency to be caught up in stories of origin and belonging. The Genome of the Netherlands project is a case in point. In that project all kinds of connections are activated through choices that the researchers regard as merely practical. In this presentation I will show how in the Genome of the Netherlands project, connections are made between biobanks, genome databases, language, common-sense, (individual) bodies and the soil. Through these connections, belonging and non-belonging in the context of nationality become part of human biology on the molecular level.
This presentation is based on part of the published paper “The bioinformatics of genetic origins: how identities become embedded in the tools and practices of bioinformatics” in Life Sciences, Society and Policy 2013, 9:7
One of the most striking features of the South African polity, as the 20th anniversary of democratization draws closer, is the intensity of public arguments about race that show no sign of abating any time soon. In the midst of worsening... more
One of the most striking features of the South African polity, as the 20th anniversary of democratization draws closer, is the intensity of public arguments about race that show no sign of abating any time soon. In the midst of worsening socio-economic inequality, it’s the economic question – of the terms of access to wealth, status and economic power, and of how to erase the residues of apartheid’s economic dispossession – that dominates these arguments. This lecture will focus on one strand of this argument, linked to the ANC Youth League and in particular, the provocative tenure of Julius Malema as its president, from 2008 to 2011 and his impact on the post-apartheid politicization of race.
"The last four years I have spent doing research in the NWO funded program headed by Evelien Tonkens, Jan Willem Duyvendak and Peter Geschiere, entitled the culturalization of citizenship. Succinctly put the latter was defined as “[t]he... more
"The last four years I have spent doing research in the NWO funded program headed by Evelien Tonkens, Jan Willem Duyvendak and Peter Geschiere, entitled the culturalization of citizenship.
Succinctly put the latter was defined as “[t]he increasing importance attached to culture and morality in shaping citizenship and integration policy… Its proponents emphasize the problematic aspects of cultural diversity and the need to construct, defend and promote European cultural heritage as an alternative to non-western influence” (Mepschen etal 2010: 964).
As the research was comparative one of his tasks was to research the impact of this supposed shift upon Dutch citizens born on the Dutch Caribbean isles or with kinship ties to these islands. I did so ethnographically and I soon realized the mismatch.
Supposedly no one had informed most of the persons I was engaging with that such a seismic shift had taken place. They wanted to speak about the continuing relevance of racism within the multicultural drift—the confused world of everyday contestations in which ethnic and racialized interpretations of diversity do not always necessarily latch on to hegemonic understandings of cultural identity.
In this presentation I will discuss how I responded to their response, and how it led me to conceive of a book of essays entitled “Race, Racism, and Confusion.”
Succinctly put the latter was defined as “[t]he increasing importance attached to culture and morality in shaping citizenship and integration policy… Its proponents emphasize the problematic aspects of cultural diversity and the need to construct, defend and promote European cultural heritage as an alternative to non-western influence” (Mepschen etal 2010: 964).
As the research was comparative one of his tasks was to research the impact of this supposed shift upon Dutch citizens born on the Dutch Caribbean isles or with kinship ties to these islands. I did so ethnographically and I soon realized the mismatch.
Supposedly no one had informed most of the persons I was engaging with that such a seismic shift had taken place. They wanted to speak about the continuing relevance of racism within the multicultural drift—the confused world of everyday contestations in which ethnic and racialized interpretations of diversity do not always necessarily latch on to hegemonic understandings of cultural identity.
In this presentation I will discuss how I responded to their response, and how it led me to conceive of a book of essays entitled “Race, Racism, and Confusion.”
The argument is often heard these days in Netherlands’ discussions of “race”that the term means, or is used to mean, “culture.” But against what position is this argument advanced? And on what evidence does it rest? I suspect that the... more
The argument is often heard these days in Netherlands’ discussions of “race”that the term means, or is used to mean, “culture.” But against what position is this argument advanced? And on what evidence does it rest? I suspect that the unspoken counterpoint is a Netherlands’ perception of the usage-meaning of “race” in the US to denote skin color, perhaps connoting class hierarchies as well, reflecting the US history of slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. But this misconstrues the usage of the term in US policy and administrative practices, as well as in some everyday, “ordinary language,” contexts. There, “race” is used to mean color, country, and culture. The US federal government named and defined its demographic categories for the first time in 1977, in the Office of Management and Budget Directive No. 15. Empirical research looking at those definitions, census categories since the 1790s, and contemporary police and other practices demonstrates this admixture of meanings. Moreover, documentary evidence from The Netherlands shows the same mixture. What, for instance, is being conveyed when a Netherlands medical clinic registration form, asking a question on “ethnic origin,” provides as possible answers “Caucasian,” “Negro,” and “Asian”? This talk presents the meanings of “race” in US public policy practices, drawing on prior and current research (Yanow 2003, Yanow and van der Haar 2013, Yanow, van der Haar, and Völke 2013).
Biological race has been declared dead, but it refuses to die. Despite a lot of declarations and many critiques from political actors, from the social sciences, and from within the bio sciences, race has not followed other outdated... more
Biological race has been declared dead, but it refuses to die. Despite a lot of declarations and many critiques from political actors, from the social sciences, and from within the bio sciences, race has not followed other outdated concepts of difference like phrenology or constitutional groups. After the Human Genome Project, there has even been an increase in racializing research using genetic tools.
The presentation will offer an overview of some recent research projects and new conceptualizations of human difference in the international life sciences and in the German-speaking countries. Based on a history of critiques of race, the leading question will be why racialized concepts remain central in some of the most modern scientific fields like medicine, forensics, epidemiology, and commercial ancestry tests. In order to provide an understanding of scientific conceptualizations of difference, I will argue for a social science perspective which follows processes like geneticization, molecularization and medicalization of race. I identify an ongoing change in the concept, a change which actually contradicts racial taxonomies as they were invented to specify unchanging natural differences and a static human order.
Unfortunately, in the international debate about race concepts in science there is a tendency to analyze contemporary developments using two modes of thought. On the one hand there are interpretations of racial concepts as continuities of old concepts of race, and on the other hand there are analyses which highlight a discontinuity or radical break with traditional meanings. But in addition to these two possibilities of analyzing race, the ongoing changes in the concept also raise new questions. So it’s difficult to decide how to deal with this new racialization from a scientific but also from an antiracist or political point of view. In the presentation I will argue for an analysis that goes beyond these two seemingly antithetical positions, and will propose an appropriate consideration of race in the life sciences. Therefore, a science studies perspective can help to resolve this dichotomy and provide us with a broad view that makes sense of human diversity. But it also leads to the question of what kind of problems are emerging with the newly productive focus on practices or new materialistic approaches.
The presentation will offer an overview of some recent research projects and new conceptualizations of human difference in the international life sciences and in the German-speaking countries. Based on a history of critiques of race, the leading question will be why racialized concepts remain central in some of the most modern scientific fields like medicine, forensics, epidemiology, and commercial ancestry tests. In order to provide an understanding of scientific conceptualizations of difference, I will argue for a social science perspective which follows processes like geneticization, molecularization and medicalization of race. I identify an ongoing change in the concept, a change which actually contradicts racial taxonomies as they were invented to specify unchanging natural differences and a static human order.
Unfortunately, in the international debate about race concepts in science there is a tendency to analyze contemporary developments using two modes of thought. On the one hand there are interpretations of racial concepts as continuities of old concepts of race, and on the other hand there are analyses which highlight a discontinuity or radical break with traditional meanings. But in addition to these two possibilities of analyzing race, the ongoing changes in the concept also raise new questions. So it’s difficult to decide how to deal with this new racialization from a scientific but also from an antiracist or political point of view. In the presentation I will argue for an analysis that goes beyond these two seemingly antithetical positions, and will propose an appropriate consideration of race in the life sciences. Therefore, a science studies perspective can help to resolve this dichotomy and provide us with a broad view that makes sense of human diversity. But it also leads to the question of what kind of problems are emerging with the newly productive focus on practices or new materialistic approaches.
The last decade in North America has witnessed a resurgence of virulent debate about the meaning of race and human difference in biomedical genome science. Canada has, however, bucked this trend. Like the US, Canada embarked on a... more
The last decade in North America has witnessed a resurgence of virulent debate about the meaning of race and human difference in biomedical genome science. Canada has, however, bucked this trend. Like the US, Canada embarked on a significant funding program with the intention of turning genomic science into genomic medicine. Yet debates about the relationship between human genome variation, race and difference have been largely absent from Canada’s multiple and large-scale genome projects. This absence of debate is puzzling. The last decade has seen the birth of Genome Canada, a funding body which has transformed human genetics research by “investing in life” for the “benefit of all Canadians”. However, investing in these forms of life requires investing in the study of human genomic variation without which the biological basis of disease cannot be understood. Investing in life thus requires investing in difference.
In this paper I offer a way to understand how changes in molecular biology and the consequent disaggregation of biology have gone hand-in-hand with the nationalisation of genome research and the conflation of group identities within the state as biological. I argue that Canada’s goal to become a major player in the global economy through genome science is supported by assumptions about human difference that are the product of Canada’s history as a settler colony, including the institutionalisation of multiculturalism and the bracketing off of indigenous peoples claim to sovereignty.
In this paper I offer a way to understand how changes in molecular biology and the consequent disaggregation of biology have gone hand-in-hand with the nationalisation of genome research and the conflation of group identities within the state as biological. I argue that Canada’s goal to become a major player in the global economy through genome science is supported by assumptions about human difference that are the product of Canada’s history as a settler colony, including the institutionalisation of multiculturalism and the bracketing off of indigenous peoples claim to sovereignty.
Throughout Western Europe, 'culture' has increasingly become the master narrative that informs politics of inclusion and exclusion. The increasing construction of Others as eminently cultural Others ties in with an ideology of... more
Throughout Western Europe, 'culture' has increasingly become the master narrative that informs politics of inclusion and exclusion. The increasing construction of Others as eminently cultural Others ties in with an ideology of colour-blindness, which proclaims a post-racial society that has supposedly left behind notions of 'race' as a mode of social distinction.
Accordingly, scholars have analysed these trends in terms of nativism or autochthony, drawing attention to the processes 'culturalization' that organize belonging and exclusion today. Some argue that these processes of 'culturalization' have replaced earlier forms of exclusion based on race.
In this presentation, I will argue that race as a politics of belonging, rather than being replaced by 'culture', continues to be operative as a marker of difference. The shift towards a culturalist paradigm of social distinction, however, calls for new approaches to understand precisely how nativism, autochthony, and race mutually inform and reinforce one another.
I specifically look at the commemoration of slavery in the Netherlands to understand these memory politics as a way of addressing the new 'culturalist' modes of binding and belonging. I argue that these memory politics take an ambiguous stance toward dominant modes of belonging; although they are highly critical, they also buy into them to a certain extent
Accordingly, scholars have analysed these trends in terms of nativism or autochthony, drawing attention to the processes 'culturalization' that organize belonging and exclusion today. Some argue that these processes of 'culturalization' have replaced earlier forms of exclusion based on race.
In this presentation, I will argue that race as a politics of belonging, rather than being replaced by 'culture', continues to be operative as a marker of difference. The shift towards a culturalist paradigm of social distinction, however, calls for new approaches to understand precisely how nativism, autochthony, and race mutually inform and reinforce one another.
I specifically look at the commemoration of slavery in the Netherlands to understand these memory politics as a way of addressing the new 'culturalist' modes of binding and belonging. I argue that these memory politics take an ambiguous stance toward dominant modes of belonging; although they are highly critical, they also buy into them to a certain extent
Francis Galton is often taken to have initiated the modern nature-nurture debate. I argue that the question of the relative importance of innate characteristics and institutional arrangements in explaining human differences was vehemently... more
Francis Galton is often taken to have initiated the modern nature-nurture debate. I argue that the question of the relative importance of innate characteristics and institutional arrangements in explaining human differences was vehemently contested in Britain during the first half of the 19th century. The central figure in these earlier debates—as well as many later ones—was the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill. In Mill’s view, human nature was fundamentally shaped by history and culture, factors that accounted for most mental and behavioral differences between men and women and among people of different classes, nationalities, and races. These views brought Mill into conflict with Thomas Carlyle and other prominent literary figures, and into both conflict and alliance with Charles Darwin. Analysis of these debates draws our attention to the colonial context of the early nature-nurture debate and to the fact that, for earlier thinkers, views on innateness did not necessarily have the political correlates that we now take for granted.
Between ca. 1890 and Indonesia’s independence, several generations of Dutch physical anthropologists visited the Dutch Indies to study the different ‘races’ of the archipelago. Their research included measurements of people, an intimate... more
Between ca. 1890 and Indonesia’s independence, several generations of Dutch physical anthropologists visited the Dutch Indies to study the different ‘races’ of the archipelago. Their research included measurements of people, an intimate activity that shows the ‘physicality’ of the colonial encounter. In this paper I focus on two sorts of places where anthropologists did their measurements and on the relation of these places with the nature of anthropological research. In their search for the purest representatives of ancient races, the ideal anthropological research objects were located in ‘remote’ places, outside direct colonial influence. Anthropologists travelling to these places had to persuade people to be measured and they did so with payments, medical help and/or intimidation. Sometimes however, they met with so much local resistance that measurements were impossible. Because of these difficulties, anthropologists also resorted to doing their research within the structures of the colonial state: in prisons, hospitals and schools. Bodies there were more docile, but the scientifically the results were less valuable for anthropologists because these people usually had different ethnic backgrounds and were thus seen as a racial mix. How did the choice between these two places of fieldwork influence anthropological research?
This report is the result of an exploratory project, commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), to examine factors that facilitate and constrain a focus on "diversity" in clinical research.... more
This report is the result of an exploratory project, commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), to examine factors that facilitate and constrain a focus on "diversity" in clinical research. To what extent do individual traits and circumstances influence health outcomes, and are these sufficiently investigated in clinical research? The project specifically aimed at assessing:
1. Why clinical research needs to take diversity as point of departure;
2. What conceptual, practical, ethical and methodological constraints hamper an appropriate consideration of diversity in clinical research; and
3. Which novel strategies can be used to facilitate more systematic attention for diversity in clinical research?
Our approach was multidisciplinary, and involved clinicians, epidemiologists, ethicists, sociologists and anthropologists. Jointly we wrote six reviews, exploring these questions from different angles. One of our first tasks was to agree on a definition of clinical research. We defined clinical research broadly as exploratory research on the aetiology of diseases and on health perceptions, and observational (quantitative and qualitative) or experimental research on the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of diseases. The assumption underlying the project was that diversity by age, sex and ethnicity in health and health outcomes is not sufficiently acknowledged in clinical research. However, in the course of the project, we found that many other dimensions of diversity exist and might need to be considered for clinical research to be relevant to health and health outcomes in different populations and individuals.
1. Why clinical research needs to take diversity as point of departure;
2. What conceptual, practical, ethical and methodological constraints hamper an appropriate consideration of diversity in clinical research; and
3. Which novel strategies can be used to facilitate more systematic attention for diversity in clinical research?
Our approach was multidisciplinary, and involved clinicians, epidemiologists, ethicists, sociologists and anthropologists. Jointly we wrote six reviews, exploring these questions from different angles. One of our first tasks was to agree on a definition of clinical research. We defined clinical research broadly as exploratory research on the aetiology of diseases and on health perceptions, and observational (quantitative and qualitative) or experimental research on the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of diseases. The assumption underlying the project was that diversity by age, sex and ethnicity in health and health outcomes is not sufficiently acknowledged in clinical research. However, in the course of the project, we found that many other dimensions of diversity exist and might need to be considered for clinical research to be relevant to health and health outcomes in different populations and individuals.
This book addresses the question of medical technology that used to be reserved for medical specialists, and is today applied by laymen. Five studies show how medical technology becomes everyday practice. Two are dedicated to technologies... more
This book addresses the question of medical technology that used to be reserved for medical specialists, and is today applied by laymen. Five studies show how medical technology becomes everyday practice. Two are dedicated to technologies that have become the most normal thing in modern society: the clinical thermometer and iodine prophylaxis (a means to combat iodine insufficiency). Two further studies cover technologies that, in spite of repeated attempts to make them everyday practice still are not: folic acid and painkillers. The fifth example is a study of the automatic external defibrillator (AED), a device that gives electric shocks to people having a heart attack to stimulate the heart to beat again. The AED is not yet a commonly used device, though certain parties in the Netherlands are investing best efforts to change that.
Research Interests:
In this contribution, we zoom in on a shape-shifting object: race. We seek to demonstrate how an actor network-theoretical, non-dualistic sensitivity to concrete practices has diffracted the study of race in politically and ontologically... more
In this contribution, we zoom in on a shape-shifting object: race. We seek to demonstrate how an actor network-theoretical, non-dualistic sensitivity to concrete practices has diffracted the study of race in politically and ontologically fruitful ways by raising new questions, shedding light on ill-understood practices, and opening up the possibility of finding a language with which to do justice to novel configurations of race. As such, ANT has been instrumental in attending to race as a relational and multiple object, and in doing so has challenged us to rethink its status as either a ‘fact’ or a ‘fiction’, or as a matter of ‘nature’ or a matter of ‘culture’. However, we not only pay attention to what ANT can do to ‘race’, we also want to attend to the question what ‘race’ does to ANT. As a shape-shifting object, race challenges certain ANT habits of thought, that is its emphasis on presence, and secondly, its emphasis on the present. With race, we are forced to think not only presence but also absence; and with race, we are required to attend not only to the here-and-now, but also to multiple histories, presents, and possible futures.
Research Interests:
As the taste for revolutions in many Arab countries was growing, the attention in Europe quickly turned away from political transformations, justice or democracy towards concerns over security and Europe’s own borders. Indeed, the world... more
As the taste for revolutions in many Arab countries was growing, the attention in Europe quickly turned away from political transformations, justice or democracy towards concerns over security and Europe’s own borders. Indeed, the world watched as the hopes of the Arab spring crashed on the rocks of European shores in the form of the bodies of refugees fleeing disruption and violence. In large part, security concerns drive the European response to the refugee crisis: efforts to secure Europe using various identification technologies, from travel documents to surveillance drones. However, EU border control also includes humanitarian policies and aspirations, and, between border security and human security, we find the problem of the dead migrant’s body. Over the past number of years, several thousand persons have perished en route to Europe. On the one hand, the dead bodies are a problem of evidence for the forensic infrastructure of identification. On the other hand, the dead bodies are the evidence of failed politics and policy. By attending to the emergent forensic infrastructure surrounding dead-bodies-at-the-border, this chapter explores the ethics of care for borders and for bodies-at-the-border in contemporary Europe.
Research Interests:
This report is the result of an exploratory project, commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), to examine factors that facilitate and constrain a focus on "diversity" in clinical research.... more
This report is the result of an exploratory project, commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), to examine factors that facilitate and constrain a focus on "diversity" in clinical research. To what extent do individual traits and circumstances influence health outcomes, and are these sufficiently investigated in clinical research? The project specifically aimed at assessing:
1. Why clinical research needs to take diversity as point of departure;
2. What conceptual, practical, ethical and methodological constraints hamper an appropriate consideration of diversity in clinical research; and
3. Which novel strategies can be used to facilitate more systematic attention for diversity in clinical research?
Our approach was multidisciplinary, and involved clinicians, epidemiologists, ethicists, sociologists and anthropologists. Jointly we wrote six reviews, exploring these questions from different angles. One of our first tasks was to agree on a definition of clinical research. We defined clinical research broadly as exploratory research on the aetiology of diseases and on health perceptions, and observational (quantitative and qualitative) or experimental research on the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of diseases. The assumption underlying the project was that diversity by age, sex and ethnicity in health and health outcomes is not sufficiently acknowledged in clinical research. However, in the course of the project, we found that many other dimensions of diversity exist and might need to be considered for clinical research to be relevant to health and health outcomes in different populations and individuals.
1. Why clinical research needs to take diversity as point of departure;
2. What conceptual, practical, ethical and methodological constraints hamper an appropriate consideration of diversity in clinical research; and
3. Which novel strategies can be used to facilitate more systematic attention for diversity in clinical research?
Our approach was multidisciplinary, and involved clinicians, epidemiologists, ethicists, sociologists and anthropologists. Jointly we wrote six reviews, exploring these questions from different angles. One of our first tasks was to agree on a definition of clinical research. We defined clinical research broadly as exploratory research on the aetiology of diseases and on health perceptions, and observational (quantitative and qualitative) or experimental research on the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of diseases. The assumption underlying the project was that diversity by age, sex and ethnicity in health and health outcomes is not sufficiently acknowledged in clinical research. However, in the course of the project, we found that many other dimensions of diversity exist and might need to be considered for clinical research to be relevant to health and health outcomes in different populations and individuals.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Op een heuvel aan de kust van Tunesië ziet Amade M’charek aan de ene kant bergen zout, bestemd voor Europa. Aan de andere kant anonieme graven voor migranten die Europa nooit bereikten. „We kunnen niet langer wegkijken.”
Op een voormalige vuilnisbelt bij Zarzis, in Tunesië, liggen honderden lijken van gevluchte mensen die de overkant niet haalden. Ernaast strekken de sebkha zich uit. Voor hoogleraar Amade M’charek staat er, sinds ze de Bergrede las, een... more
Op een voormalige vuilnisbelt bij Zarzis, in Tunesië, liggen honderden lijken van gevluchte mensen die de overkant niet haalden. Ernaast strekken de sebkha zich uit. Voor hoogleraar Amade M’charek staat er, sinds ze de Bergrede las, een ongelofelijke spanning op dit gebied. ‘Gij zijt het zout der aarde.’ Gij. Ze kijkt om zich heen: vuilnis, botresten en een koloniaal zoutwingebied.
"Onze menswaardigheid staat op het spel. We mogen niet wegkijken," zegt antropoloog en expert forensisch onderzoek Amade M’charek terwijl ze op het strand van de Tunesische kustplaats Zarzis foto’s maakt van een scheepswrak en... more
"Onze menswaardigheid staat op het spel. We mogen niet wegkijken," zegt antropoloog en expert forensisch onderzoek Amade M’charek terwijl ze op het strand van de Tunesische kustplaats Zarzis foto’s maakt van een scheepswrak en kledingstukken van omgekomen vluchtelingen.
Honderden verdronken vluchtelingen zijn daar de afgelopen jaren aangespoeld. M’charek woont sinds haar elfde in Nederland maar is in deze streek geboren en getogen. Zij helpt en steunt de vissers van Zarzis die zich bekommeren om de zielloze lichamen die ze vinden in de zee en op het strand. Omdat de autoriteiten de dode vluchtelingen niet willen begraven, hebben de vissers een eigen provisorische begraafplaats aangelegd waar de lichamen een liefdevol maar anoniem graf krijgen.
ZEMBLA onderzoekt in Tunesië de gevolgen van Fort Europa en volgt M’charek en de vissers in hun strijd om de anonieme vluchtelingen een naam te geven.
Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery
In Tunesië spoelen ieder jaar de lijken aan van verdronken migranten. De stroming drijft ze naar de stranden van het stadje Zarzis. De aangespoelde lichamen worden niet geregistreerd, niet gedocumenteerd en door vrijwilligers provisorisch begraven.
De hoofdpersoon in onze uitzending, antropoloog en expert forensisch onderzoek Amade M’charek, is voorzitter van Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery. De stichting zet zich in voor de aanleg van een verantwoorde begraafplaats voor verdronken migranten in Zarzis.
Lees meer op de website van Stichting DMC https://www.stichting-dmc.nl/nl/
Honderden verdronken vluchtelingen zijn daar de afgelopen jaren aangespoeld. M’charek woont sinds haar elfde in Nederland maar is in deze streek geboren en getogen. Zij helpt en steunt de vissers van Zarzis die zich bekommeren om de zielloze lichamen die ze vinden in de zee en op het strand. Omdat de autoriteiten de dode vluchtelingen niet willen begraven, hebben de vissers een eigen provisorische begraafplaats aangelegd waar de lichamen een liefdevol maar anoniem graf krijgen.
ZEMBLA onderzoekt in Tunesië de gevolgen van Fort Europa en volgt M’charek en de vissers in hun strijd om de anonieme vluchtelingen een naam te geven.
Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery
In Tunesië spoelen ieder jaar de lijken aan van verdronken migranten. De stroming drijft ze naar de stranden van het stadje Zarzis. De aangespoelde lichamen worden niet geregistreerd, niet gedocumenteerd en door vrijwilligers provisorisch begraven.
De hoofdpersoon in onze uitzending, antropoloog en expert forensisch onderzoek Amade M’charek, is voorzitter van Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery. De stichting zet zich in voor de aanleg van een verantwoorde begraafplaats voor verdronken migranten in Zarzis.
Lees meer op de website van Stichting DMC https://www.stichting-dmc.nl/nl/
Man darf den amerikanischen Begriff „race“ nicht mit dem deutschen Wort „Rasse“ verwechseln: Ein interdisziplinäres Plädoyer für mehr Vernunft
De nieuwe Wiv trekt de beschermde DNA-database van het NFI in het net van AIVD, waarschuwen de hoogleraren Amade M’charek en Peter de Knijff.
Nog iedere dag sterven vluchtelingen op de Middellandse Zee. Het viel UvA-hoogleraar Amade M’charek op dat niemand zich afvraagt wie deze mensen eigenlijk zijn. Ze wil hier verandering in brengen en begint daarmee in het Tunesische stadje... more
Nog iedere dag sterven vluchtelingen op de Middellandse Zee. Het viel UvA-hoogleraar Amade M’charek op dat niemand zich afvraagt wie deze mensen eigenlijk zijn. Ze wil hier verandering in brengen en begint daarmee in het Tunesische stadje Zarzis, waar ze oorspronkelijk vandaan komt. ‘Elk jaar spoelen hier nog honderd lichamen op het strand aan, maar die worden niet geïdentificeerd.’
Menschen aus verschiedenen Weltgegenden sehen unterschiedlich aus. Dies liegt teilweise an den Genen. Dennoch lassen sich anhand der Genetik keine Rassen definieren.
De neiging om mensen op een biologische manier op te delen, is niet alleen een Forum voor Democratie-hobby.
Van wetenschappers tot antiracismeactivisten, allen springen achteloos om met de term ‘ras’, constateert hoogleraar Amade M’charek. Om hokjesdenken te keren moeten we anders leren praten over de verschillen tussen groepen mensen. by... more
Van wetenschappers tot antiracismeactivisten, allen springen achteloos om met de term ‘ras’, constateert hoogleraar Amade M’charek. Om hokjesdenken te keren moeten we anders leren praten over de verschillen tussen groepen mensen.
by Dimitri Tokmetzis
by Dimitri Tokmetzis
door Merlijn Staps
Het voelt ongemakkelijk, maar juist daarom moeten we over ras praten. Dat ras niet bestaat is namelijk onzin. Maar wat is het precies? En hoe moeten we ons ertoe verhouden?
Het voelt ongemakkelijk, maar juist daarom moeten we over ras praten. Dat ras niet bestaat is namelijk onzin. Maar wat is het precies? En hoe moeten we ons ertoe verhouden?
door Saskia Naafs & Emiel Woutersen. De nieuwe Wet op de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten wil de AIVD voorzien van een eigen DNA-databank, om bijvoorbeeld zelfmoordterroristen te identificeren. Een grove inbreuk op de privacy van... more
door Saskia Naafs & Emiel Woutersen.
De nieuwe Wet op de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten wil de AIVD voorzien van een eigen DNA-databank, om bijvoorbeeld zelfmoordterroristen te identificeren. Een grove inbreuk op de privacy van onschuldige burgers. En het kan al op andere manieren.
De nieuwe Wet op de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten wil de AIVD voorzien van een eigen DNA-databank, om bijvoorbeeld zelfmoordterroristen te identificeren. Een grove inbreuk op de privacy van onschuldige burgers. En het kan al op andere manieren.
(slot 07:00-08:00; interview starts at min. 18:45)
Amade M'charek, kind van Tunesische ouders die nooit een dag naar school zijn geweest, is hoogleraar in de wetenschapsantropologie. Ze doet spraakmakend internationaal onderzoek naar ras en gentechnologie: hoe werken raciale denkbeelden... more
Amade M'charek, kind van Tunesische ouders die nooit een dag naar school zijn geweest, is hoogleraar in de wetenschapsantropologie. Ze doet spraakmakend internationaal onderzoek naar ras en gentechnologie: hoe werken raciale denkbeelden door in de wetenschap
en inforensisch onderzoek? 'Als het probleem ingewikkeld is, kan het antwoord niet simpel zijn.'
en inforensisch onderzoek? 'Als het probleem ingewikkeld is, kan het antwoord niet simpel zijn.'
Amade M’charek, professor in de antropologie van de wetenschap, doet onderzoek naar de wijze waarop de genetica en forensisch onderzoek zich tot de samenleving verhoudt. Ze analyseert de manier waarop wetenschappelijke bevindingen tot... more
Amade M’charek, professor in de antropologie van de wetenschap, doet onderzoek naar de wijze waarop de genetica en forensisch onderzoek zich tot de samenleving verhoudt. Ze analyseert de manier waarop wetenschappelijke bevindingen tot stand komen, en hoe deze vervolgens geïnterpreteerd worden in het publieke domein. In haar werk richt M’charek zich veelal op contexten waarin ras, of racisme, gezien of ongezien aan de orde zijn. Ze laat zien welke rol feiten en ficties hierin spelen.
Professor Amade M’charek’s work in the field of genetics
and forensics is helping to unpack the mystery of science
and how it shapes society. Here, she explains that science,
as well as race, is not as ‘black and white’ as it may seem…
and forensics is helping to unpack the mystery of science
and how it shapes society. Here, she explains that science,
as well as race, is not as ‘black and white’ as it may seem…
Amade M’charek, professor in de antropologie van de wetenschap, doet onderzoek naar de wijze waarop de genetica en forensisch onderzoek zich tot de samenleving verhoudt. Ze analyseert de manier waarop wetenschappelijke bevindingen tot... more
Amade M’charek, professor in de antropologie van de wetenschap, doet onderzoek naar de wijze waarop de genetica en forensisch onderzoek zich tot de samenleving verhoudt. Ze analyseert de manier waarop wetenschappelijke bevindingen tot stand komen, en hoe deze vervolgens geïnterpreteerd worden in het publieke domein. In haar werk richt M’charek zich veelal op contexten waarin ras, of racisme, gezien of ongezien aan de orde zijn. Ze laat zien welke rol feiten en ficties hierin spelen.
Wie racisme wil bestrijden zou er volgens Amade M’charek, professor in de antropologie van de wetenschap, goed aan doen om te kijken hoe ras wordt ge(re)produceerd. Ze bestudeert situaties waarin ras of racisme aan de orde komen. Zo werd... more
Wie racisme wil bestrijden zou er volgens Amade M’charek, professor in de antropologie van de wetenschap, goed aan doen om te kijken hoe ras wordt ge(re)produceerd. Ze bestudeert situaties waarin ras of racisme aan de orde komen. Zo werd in 2002 in Eindhoven een skelet van een kindje uit 1300 AD gevonden. M’charek onderzocht hoe de reconstructie van het skelet tot stand kwam. Ze toonde aan dat die niet alleen door feiten werd gestuurd, maar ook door ficties hoe een Nederlander eruit hoort te zien.
https://www.oneworld.nl/overig/racisme-niet-te-bestrijden-met-feiten-alleen/
https://www.oneworld.nl/overig/racisme-niet-te-bestrijden-met-feiten-alleen/
Research Interests:
Al meer dan 10.000 migranten vonden de afgelopen 3 jaar de verdrinkingsdood tijdens hun oversteek van de Middellandse zee. Exacte cijfers zijn moeilijk te geven omdat dit de mensen zijn die uit het water zijn gehaald, of op het strand... more
Al meer dan 10.000 migranten vonden de afgelopen 3 jaar de verdrinkingsdood tijdens hun oversteek van de Middellandse zee. Exacte cijfers zijn moeilijk te geven omdat dit de mensen zijn die uit het water zijn gehaald, of op het strand zijn gevonden.
De meeste lichamen hebben geen naam. Van veel drenkelingen is niet bekend wie ze zijn. Dat moet anders, zegt hoogleraar Antropologie Amade M’charek. Ze reisde naar Tunesië om te onderzoeken hoe de identificatie kan worden verbeterd.
De meeste lichamen hebben geen naam. Van veel drenkelingen is niet bekend wie ze zijn. Dat moet anders, zegt hoogleraar Antropologie Amade M’charek. Ze reisde naar Tunesië om te onderzoeken hoe de identificatie kan worden verbeterd.
Hoe identificeer je aangespoelde lichamen van vluchtelingen nadat ze zijn verdronken in de Middellandse Zee? Met die vraag houdt hoogleraar Antropologie Amade M'charek zich bezig.
Research Interests:
Mensen zijn genetisch voor 99,9 procent gelijk. Zoveel hebben we van het Human Genome Project geleerd. Toch is de diversiteit groot. Er zijn niet alleen uiterlijke verschillen tussen groepen mensen, maar ook verschillen in reacties op... more
Mensen zijn genetisch voor 99,9 procent gelijk. Zoveel hebben we van het Human Genome Project geleerd. Toch is de diversiteit groot. Er zijn niet alleen uiterlijke verschillen tussen groepen mensen, maar ook verschillen in reacties op medicatie en in gezondheid.
Well, it may seem commonplace today, but it wasn't so long ago that DNA testing was a breakthrough technology for police investigating crimes. Once a suspect had been identified, a sample of their DNA could persuasively put them at the... more
Well, it may seem commonplace today, but it wasn't so long ago that DNA testing was a breakthrough technology for police investigating crimes.
Once a suspect had been identified, a sample of their DNA could persuasively put them at the scene of the crime.
Now, police forces are getting ready for another breakthrough from DNA... but one that works the other way around. It's called DNA phenotyping.
And it starts with traces of DNA found at the scene of the crime. The new technique can analyze that DNA and build a profile of the suspect, including some physical traits. Police can then narrow their search for suspects.
Detective Sergeant Stacy Gallant is with the Toronto Police Service Homicide Squad which has had some success with DNA Phenotyping.
Susan Walsh is working on developing this technology. She is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
While the technology may be new to Canada, law enforcement in the Netherlands has been using DNA phenotyping since 2003. The country also has at least five pieces of legislation expressly dealing with its use. In some ways, the Netherlands is an example of where the debate about DNA phenotyping could end up.
Amade M'charek is a professor of anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and has spent years looking into the problems that can arise from the use of profiling technologies.
This segment was produced by The Current's Naheed Mustafa, Kristin Nelson and Ines Colabrese.
Once a suspect had been identified, a sample of their DNA could persuasively put them at the scene of the crime.
Now, police forces are getting ready for another breakthrough from DNA... but one that works the other way around. It's called DNA phenotyping.
And it starts with traces of DNA found at the scene of the crime. The new technique can analyze that DNA and build a profile of the suspect, including some physical traits. Police can then narrow their search for suspects.
Detective Sergeant Stacy Gallant is with the Toronto Police Service Homicide Squad which has had some success with DNA Phenotyping.
Susan Walsh is working on developing this technology. She is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
While the technology may be new to Canada, law enforcement in the Netherlands has been using DNA phenotyping since 2003. The country also has at least five pieces of legislation expressly dealing with its use. In some ways, the Netherlands is an example of where the debate about DNA phenotyping could end up.
Amade M'charek is a professor of anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and has spent years looking into the problems that can arise from the use of profiling technologies.
This segment was produced by The Current's Naheed Mustafa, Kristin Nelson and Ines Colabrese.
Dit stuk is een verkorte versie van de lezing die Amade M'charek gaf tijdens een expertmeeting georganiseerd door het Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Seksualiteit (FWOS).Amade M’charek is hoogleraar anthropology of science aan de... more
Dit stuk is een verkorte versie van de lezing die Amade M'charek gaf tijdens een expertmeeting georganiseerd door het Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Seksualiteit (FWOS).Amade M’charek is hoogleraar anthropology of science aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Ze is doet onder andere onderzoek naar etniciteit en de (ir)relevantie van ‘ras’ in forensisch onderzoek.
Around the world, racist discourses, attitudes, and practices have moved from the fringes into the mainstream, putting core democratic values under pressure. Familiar racial orders have resurfaced and reinforced racist borders, both... more
Around the world, racist discourses, attitudes, and practices have moved from the fringes into the mainstream, putting core democratic values under pressure. Familiar racial orders have resurfaced and reinforced racist borders, both metaphorical and material. The sixth annual conference of the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS) invites papers that examine how forms, discourses and practices of racism have materialized in various institutional contexts. Organized in cooperation with the collaborative research centre Dynamics of Security at the Universities of Giessen and Marburg, Germany, the conference’s main conceptual focus is on the institutional dimensions of racism. How and by whom has racism been ‘mainstreamed’ in different countries and regions around the globe? What kinds of discourses, techniques, strategies and tactics have been mobilized to mainstream racism? And how does this take shape in diverse institutional settings, including politics, education, international institutions, the media, cultural foundations, the police, and the legal system? In the wake of unrestrained, state-led xenophobia and populist nationalism, the function of race as a building block of culture, education, finance, nationalism and democracy can no longer be dissolved into ethnicity, nationalism and religion. Thus, the function of race cannot be hidden behind modernity, the Enlightenment, multiculturalism or civilization, deferred to the histories of ‘other’ places and ‘other’ peoples, or relegated to a past that was ostensibly erased with the end of the Holocaust and the birth of modern institutions such as the European Union and the United Nations. We need to employ the full range of research tools and approaches to take stock of how race and racism have continued to underscore state histories and institutions, as well as everyday practices, habits, gestures, affects, languages, aesthetics and representations alike.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Philosophy, Media Studies, Humanities, and 15 moreSocial Sciences, Globalization, Political Theory, Critical Race Studies, Human Rights, Race and Racism, Political Science, Legal Theory, Critical Security Studies, Political Extremism/Radicalism/Populism, Nationalism, Populism, Migration Studies, Citizenship, and Science and Technology Studies
Ein Essay desGenetikers David Reich, erschienen am 23. März in der New York Times, löste eine heftige internationale Diskussion aus. Der Text mit dem Titel „How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‚Race‘“ (Wie die Genforschung unser... more
Ein Essay desGenetikers David Reich, erschienen am 23. März in der New York Times, löste eine heftige internationale Diskussion aus. Der Text mit dem Titel „How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‚Race‘“ (Wie die Genforschung unser Verständnis von „Rasse“ verändert) erntete sowohl Kritik als auch Zustimmung, auf die Reich in einem zweiten Artikel antwortete.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In den Niederlanden dient DNA-Technologie da-zu, Geschichte und Geschichten im Kontext ar-chäologischer Ausgrabungen zu erzeugen. Ein Beitrag zu den Effekten jener neuen Genetik.
This report is the result of an exploratory project, commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), to examine factors that facilitate and constrain a focus on "diversity" in... more
This report is the result of an exploratory project, commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), to examine factors that facilitate and constrain a focus on "diversity" in clinical research. To what extent do individual traits and circumstances influence health outcomes, and are these sufficiently investigated in clinical research? The project specifically aimed at assessing: 1. Why clinical research needs to take diversity as point of departure; 2. What conceptual, practical, ethical and methodological constraints hamper an appropriate consideration of diversity in clinical research; and 3. Which novel strategies can be used to facilitate more systematic attention for diversity in clinical research? Our approach was multidisciplinary, and involved clinicians, epidemiologists, ethicists, sociologists and anthropologists. Jointly we wrote six reviews, exploring these questions from different angles. One of our first tasks was to agree on a definition of clinical research. We defined clinical research broadly as exploratory research on the aetiology of diseases and on health perceptions, and observational (quantitative and qualitative) or experimental research on the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of diseases. The assumption underlying the project was that diversity by age, sex and ethnicity in health and health outcomes is not sufficiently acknowledged in clinical research. However, in the course of the project, we found that many other dimensions of diversity exist and might need to be considered for clinical research to be relevant to health and health outcomes in different populations and individuals.
Research Interests:
This report is the result of an exploratory project, commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), to examine factors that facilitate and constrain a focus on "diversity" in... more
This report is the result of an exploratory project, commissioned by the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), to examine factors that facilitate and constrain a focus on "diversity" in clinical research. To what extent do individual traits and circumstances influence health outcomes, and are these sufficiently investigated in clinical research? The project specifically aimed at assessing: 1. Why clinical research needs to take diversity as point of departure; 2. What conceptual, practical, ethical and methodological constraints hamper an appropriate consideration of diversity in clinical research; and 3. Which novel strategies can be used to facilitate more systematic attention for diversity in clinical research? Our approach was multidisciplinary, and involved clinicians, epidemiologists, ethicists, sociologists and anthropologists. Jointly we wrote six reviews, exploring these questions from different angles. One of our first tasks was to agree on a definition of clinical research. We defined clinical research broadly as exploratory research on the aetiology of diseases and on health perceptions, and observational (quantitative and qualitative) or experimental research on the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of diseases. The assumption underlying the project was that diversity by age, sex and ethnicity in health and health outcomes is not sufficiently acknowledged in clinical research. However, in the course of the project, we found that many other dimensions of diversity exist and might need to be considered for clinical research to be relevant to health and health outcomes in different populations and individuals.
In den Niederlanden dient DNA-Technologie da-zu, Geschichte und Geschichten im Kontext ar-chäologischer Ausgrabungen zu erzeugen. Ein Beitrag zu den Effekten jener neuen Genetik.
External visible characteristics and familial searching are becoming prominent investigative forensic technologies for policing purposes. As such, these genetic technologies promise to contribute to judicial truth and hence to justice. At... more
External visible characteristics and familial searching are becoming prominent investigative forensic technologies for policing purposes. As such, these genetic technologies promise to contribute to judicial truth and hence to justice. At the same time, both technologies produce new kinds of ‘suspect’ or ‘interesting’ persons. The question being asked in this contribution what vocabulary we need in attempting to balance the use of these technologies against infringements of civil rights and legal principles of these newly produced categories.
PDF can also be downloaded here: http://dare.uva.nl/record/382724
PDF can also be downloaded here: http://dare.uva.nl/record/382724
Research Interests:
In a recent special issue of the journal on new trends in forensic genetics, Manfred Kayser contributed a review of developments, opportunities and challenges of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP). In his article he argues that FDP... more
In a recent special issue of the journal on new trends in forensic genetics, Manfred Kayser contributed a review of developments, opportunities and challenges of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP). In his article he argues that FDP technologies—such as determining eye, hair and skin color—should be considered as akin to a "biological witness" with the potential of providing more accurate information than traditional eye witnesses. We share with Manfred Kayser the goal of supporting the scientific progress of forensic genetics. We are, however, less convinced by the assumption that the power to improve the safety of our society lies simply (or even primarily) in technology. Technologies are—as decades of research in Science and Technology Studies have shown—never merely material vehicles of progress. Instead they are a multi-faceted conglomerate of scientific and societal practices. In other words, technology is always technology-in-practice. This is exactly the reason why the ethical evaluation of technological innovation, when done well, is such a difficult trade: a merely principle-driven ethics—although it may be easiest to do—never grasps and addresses the messiness of how technologies are understood and used in the real world. It is in this light that we are concerned about Kayser's call to expedite FDP research, when coupled with his narrow treatment of both personal safety and individual rights. Such a reductionist understanding cannot capture the richness of ethical discussions about notions such as individual freedom, autonomy, and solidarity. Rather, it foregrounds technology without giving due consideration to wider ethical, legal and social dimensions as well as issues around the practical implementation of FDP technologies.
Research Interests:
" Wat we zien bij het politiegeweld tegen zwarte mensen in Amerika is overduidelijk racisme. Maar er is veel meer aan de hand. " Amade M'charek Hoogleraar Wetenschapsantropologie Woede en machteloosheid gaan door merg en been bij het... more
" Wat we zien bij het politiegeweld tegen zwarte mensen in Amerika is overduidelijk racisme. Maar er is veel meer aan de hand. " Amade M'charek Hoogleraar Wetenschapsantropologie Woede en machteloosheid gaan door merg en been bij het bekijken van de beelden van het politiegeweld tegen zwarte mensen in de Verenigde Staten. Getuige gemaakt " The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just 'cause of the wide-set nose " , zou de politieagent hebben aangevoerd die even later Philando Castile in zijn auto doodschiet. Tegelijkertijd verstomt de stem van de kijker: de rustige partner die niet alleen het geweld en onrecht optekent, maar het ook adresseert en de politieagent ter verantwoording roept; het kleine meisje, muisstil op de achterbank; het gesprek over de aanwezigheid van een vuurwapen en de licentie daarvoor; de politieagent die door zijn angst en onkunde bijna medelijden opwekt; de dood van Alton Sterling een paar dagen eerder en de enorme lijst van politiemisdaden. We worden getuige gemaakt, maar waarvan eigenlijk? Meer dan racisme Wat we zien is ontegenzeggelijk racisme, maar ook het gebrek aan professionaliteit en opleiding van politieagenten, routineus etnisch profileren, de alomtegenwoordigheid van vuurwapens waardoor de politie in een 'war zone' opereert midden in de samenleving. Wat we ook zien is een meer dan gebrekkig schoolsysteem en de bittere economische werkelijkheid die grote groepen mensen kansloos achterlaat. Wat we zien is veel meer dan alleen racisme.
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http://stichting-dmc.nl/ Dear colleagues, I would like to draw your attention tot this fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants who wash up in the south of Tunisia. Recently we initiated the... more
http://stichting-dmc.nl/
Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention tot this fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants who wash up in the south of Tunisia.
Recently we initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery as to help realising a dignifying cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia).
To this end we will work together with local officials, volunteers and NGOs. In addition, we are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies.
On the website you will find background information for this initiative.
We hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros as soon as possible with a social media campaign. So we need your help.
Your donation is welcome! But we also ask you to spread this fundraising call as widely as possible.
http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French)
Thank you very much,
On behalf of the board of the DMC Foundation,
Amade M’charek.
Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention tot this fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants who wash up in the south of Tunisia.
Recently we initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery as to help realising a dignifying cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia).
To this end we will work together with local officials, volunteers and NGOs. In addition, we are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies.
On the website you will find background information for this initiative.
We hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros as soon as possible with a social media campaign. So we need your help.
Your donation is welcome! But we also ask you to spread this fundraising call as widely as possible.
http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French)
Thank you very much,
On behalf of the board of the DMC Foundation,
Amade M’charek.