Departmental Papers (HSS)
Through a broad range of scholarly projects, HSS faculty research examines relations between the technical practice of scientists, engineers, medical researchers, and clinicians, and the material, social, political and cultural context in which those practices occur.
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Publication Creating Natural Distinctions(1997) Nelkin, Dorothy; Lindee, Susan MAt the 1991 CLAGS conference on "The Homosexual Brain," Dorothy Nelkin argued that linking homosexual behavior to brain structure reflects in part the growing preoccupation with biological determinism in American culture. Responding to the expectation that defining homosexuality as a biological status will reduce prejudice, she suggested that genetic explanations in fact can serve multiple social agendas. In particular, they have in the past been used to justify social stereotypes and persistent inequities as "natural" and therefore inevitable. Thus, while biological claims could lead to greater tolerance for human differences, they can also lead to pernicious abuse. Ultimately, it is not biology but common beliefs and social biases that shape social policies. The appropriation of genetic explanations is the subject of a book by Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. The following material, excerpted from this book, contains the core of Nelkin's 1991 remarks.Publication Cloning in the Popular Imagination(2001-01-01) Nelkin, Dorothy; Lindee, Susan MDolly is a cloned sheet born in July 1996 at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh by Ian Wilmut, a British embryologist. She was produced, after 276 failed attempts, from the genetic material of a six-year-old sheep. But Dolly is also a Rorschach test. The public response to the production of a lamb from an adult cell mirrors the futuristic fantasies and Frankenstein fears that have more broadly surrounded research in genetics, and especially genetic engineering. Dolly stands in for other monstrosities—both actual and fictional—that human knowledge and technique have produced. She provokes fear not so much because she is novel, but because she is such a familiar entity: a biological product of human design who appears to be a human surrogate. Dolly as "virtual" person is terrifying and seductive—despite her placid temperament.