Abstract

Critics have debated for the past decade or more whether race is dead or alive in the new genetics: Is genomics opening up novel terrains for social identities or is it reauthorizing race? I explore the relationship between race and the new genetics by considering whether this race is the same scientific object as that produced by race science and whether these race-making practices are animated by similar social and political logics. I consider the styles of reasoning characteristic of the scientific work together with the economic and political rationalities of neo-liberalism, including identity politics as it meets biological citizenship. I seek to understand why and how group-based diversity emerges as an object of value - something to be studied and specified, something to be fought for and embraced, and something that is profitable - in the networks that sustain the world of (post)genomics today.