Heredity V, Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century

organized by Staffan Mϋller-Wille (Exeter), Bernd Gausemeier (Berlin), Edmund Ramsden (Exeter)

ESRC Research Centre for Genomics in Society, University of Exeter, UK in collaboration with the Centre for Medical History University of Exeter, UK and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

Sponsored by the Wellcome Trust

Description

The Centre for Medical History and the ESRC Research Centre for Genomics in Society
(EGenIS) at the University of Exeter is inviting individual scholars to propose papers for
the forthcoming workshop “Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century”. This workshop,
scheduled for 2-4 September 2010, is part of a series that reflects a long term cooperative
research project between the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG)
in Berlin and the University of Exeter. The project deals with the agricultural, technical,
juridical, medical, and scientific practices through which the knowledge of biological
inheritance was developed, embedded, and transferred in successive periods. The overall
aim is to arrive at a better understanding of the genesis of present conceptions of human
heredity.

Previous workshops in the series took place in Berlin in May 2001, January 2003, and
January 2005, and in Exeter in December 2006. They dealt with the longue durée of
historical processes, tracing the first emergence of the notion of heredity in the eighteenth
century, through to the flourishing of concepts and methods in the nineteenth century,
and, finally, turning to “the century of the gene” (Evelyn Fox Keller 2000).

With the fifth international workshop, the project is turning its attention specifically to
the post war era, up until the 1970s, when the advent of new molecular techniques paved
the way to the age of genomics. World War II is often referred to by scientists and
historians as a watershed in the history of heredity research. While many of the
significant developments of this era originated in the discipline of genetics and its
laboratory-based research practices, fields such as medicine, anthropology, and
psychology have also developed and maintained their own ways to control and to analyze
human heredity. The conference aims to produce a comprehensive picture of these
various practices and ideas and the political and social frameworks in which they
developed. Participants are encouraged to reflect on the major breaks, shifts, and
continuities in this history, especially with respect to the question how the sciences of
human heredity have affected modern society and thought. We aim to address these
issues from three interrelated perspectives:

Concepts:
Analyzing concepts allows us to identify basic changes in the understanding of human
heredity, as well as differences and interrelations between similar notions employed in
various fields. Race, for example, is a concept that has persisted in discourses of human
heredity throughout the 20th century, but also one that has acquired very different
meanings. The distinction between endogenous and exogenous, genetic and
environmental factors has similarly been subject to continuous debate. In the realm of
medicine, notions such as susceptibility and resistance as well as basic nosological and
etiological assumptions have changed significantly in interdependence with the concepts
developed in genetics. More specific elements of genetic terminology, such as linkage,
balanced polymorphism, heterosis, cytoplasmic inheritance, or mutation point to the
transfer of concepts developed in experimental genetics to the human realm. Finally,
scholars are invited to explore how ideas about genetic variation and continuity were
received in ‘humanist’ disciplines such as geography, history, linguistics or social
anthropology.

Methods:
Some of the methods that have shaped modern knowledge about human heredity require
further attention - epidemiological survey techniques have been a major source of
medical ideas about the susceptibility to diseases; twin research has proven similarly
fundamental to human genetics. There are numerous anthropological, medical and
psychological methods which have developed in close conjunction with the study of
human heredity, e.g. intelligence testing or anthropometric measurement techniques. In
the post-WWII era, laboratory based techniques were exported into clinical settings and
field research, thus changing the landscape of human genetics and generating
interdisciplinary connections.

Institutions:
The long-term investigation of institutions allows us to contrast the impact of new
approaches and political contexts on the one hand and assess the persistence of structures
and habits on the other. The foundations of medical genetics were laid in the framework
of clinics and asylums, which combined research with diagnostic practices and genetic
counseling. Systematic research in human genetics was primarily initiated by eugenic
associations and developed widely in connection with novel techniques of population
control. In the post-WWII period, research in human heredity became increasingly
prompted by international programs and organizations transgressing boundaries between
nations and local populations. In this context, it seems that human heredity has become
reshaped by two divergent trends: a globalization and an individualization of research and
its applications.

Back to past Heredity Workshops.