One Day Workshop: Reproduction in the Century of the Gene

organized by Christina Brandt (Berlin), Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter)

Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

Announcement

In the context of the two year Academic Research Collaboration programme between research groups at the ESRC Research Centre for Genomics in Society (EGenIS) at the University of Exeter and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science a second one-day-workshop took place in Berlin this time on March 30th, 2006. “How did the rise of genetics in the last century change our concepts of inheritance?” This was the central question of the last one-day-workshop in Exeter. A variety of short contributions and statements addressed different topics, such as: philosophical analysis of different gene concepts throughout the 20th century life sciences; the introduction of the gene concept in Johannsen´s approach and the division of labor, that stood behind this approach; questions on socio-economical impacts throughout the 20th century life sciences, ranging from issues of gene patenting to the changing structure of research funding; issues on biopolitics and eugenics in Italy and Germany and the changing use of genealogical representations. The second one-day-workshop aimed to continue this informal discussion. Again, participants were asked to give short presentations (10 to 15 min.) in which they were supposed to draw a “big picture” on developments in the 20th century. We suggested to continue our discussion with the following two main issues: 1. Reproduction in the century of the gene One provocative question which came up during the last discussion was whether the notion of heredity became somewhat obsolete at least within some fields of life science during the 20th century, especially with respect to the scientific development that often has been called “molecularization of life”, that is: with molecular genetics and the rise of new model objects (viruses etc.). Here, questions about reproduction are much intertwined with questions on the concept of “replication”. Furthermore, to focus on questions related to the notion of “reproduction” could provide us with a perspective that will take into account the complex interrelation between genetics, medicine and economics. A big issue related to reproduction would be to discuss the socio-economic dimensions. This concerns not only recent developments in reproductive biomedicine but also early 20th century developments in agricultural and breeding research. Another line we could follow up concerns changes in genealogical representations and their use in socio-political attempts to control heredity and reproduction. 2. Sex/gender (and maybe race) in the century of the gene Here also, we could have a lot of interesting lines for the discussion, such as the historical analysis of the impact of genetics on the constitution of categories like gender/sex (or race), which is an issue directly related to socio- political and scientific attempts to control reproduction. Another important and yet almost unexplored aspect concerns the role of sex dichotomies for the arising science of genetics in early 20th century. At least for the German community one gets the impression that questions on sexuality, on sexual and asexual reproduction were at center stage for the emerging knowledge in genetics around 1900 and in the first decades of the century. Thus, we could follow the interrelations between these concepts and the new research practices of the arising field of genetics.

Back to past related workshops.