Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology

5. Conceiving Global Identities

“vanishing people”: the magic of the postmodern era “Racing the clock, two leaders in genetics and evolution are calling for an urgent effort to collect DNA from rapidly disappearing indigenous people” (Roberts 1991: 1614; italics added). These words are the first byline in an article by Leslie Roberts, entitled “A Genetic Survey of Vanishing People,” which highlights the purported significance of the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP). Published in the popular journal Science, the paper goes on to describe the seemingly heroic efforts of a dedicated team of researchers (mostly population geneticists and evolutionary biologists) whose intent is to document the “ethnic fingerprints” (R. Lewin 1993: 25) of some five hundred groups of indigenous peoples by sampling their genetic material before it passes out of existence. The study makes use of new techniques in molecular genetics that have become available as a consequence of the Human Genome Project. These procedures allow researchers to isolate minute differences in DNA sequences (known as polymorphisms) that exist not only within populations but between them as well. However, according to Roberts and the teams of scientists whose work he describes, time is running out. Indigenous peoples are “fast disappearing” across the globe, and as they vanish, “they are taking with them a wealth of informa1 5 0 five Conceiving Global Identities tion buried in their genes about human origins, evolution and diversity” (Roberts 1991: 1614). Although several recent writings convey a sense of sense of newfound urgency concerning the contemporary plight of Third World people (Associated Press 1996; Cavalli-Sforza 1991; Gillis 1994; Perlman 1993), the idea that indigenous peoples are on the brink of extinction is not new. One is reminded , for example, of Lévi-Strauss’s musings in “Tristes Tropiques” (1961), where he expresses a sense of nostalgia for the passing of authentic human differences. Having set out during the 1930s to find a society “reduced to its most basic expression,” he is confronted instead only with the “filth” of Western civilization. Shantytowns fill Africa, commercial and military aircraft zoom over South America, tourist shops in Asia stock souvenirs that sport the label “Made in the U.S.A.” Travel no longer puts the would-be adventurer face to face with “exotic” places and peoples. Instead, humanity now displays a kind of “monoculture” that has been precipitated by the expansion of Western commodity culture. And yet, if one seriously considers the message contained in these works, what exactly is on the brink of extinction? When we speak about “disappearing ” indigenous peoples, what exactly has (or is) “disappearing”? Certainly , people themselves have not simply “vanished” from the planet— they have not been the unwitting subjects of a conjuring act by a master magician. When Western scholars talk about the “disappearance” of indigenous peoples, what they are lamenting is the loss of a particular idea of what “otherness” entails. What is interesting to note within the present context is that the criterion that is used to define “otherness” has changed substantially over the past few decades. Where Lévi-Strauss once saw “otherness ” as entailing divergent sociocultural traditions, today it is increasingly represented in biological terms as a constellation of different gene frequencies . Biology now competes with the notion of culture as the most salient feature of what it means to be a “people.” In this chapter, I pursue this theme in greater detail. More specifically, I examine how biology is coming to be evoked as a social and moral value in emerging forms of global discourse. In earlier chapters, I have argued that a biological paradigm significantly shapes how Europeans and North Americans imagine gender, persons, bodies, kinship, and our relationship to other life forms on the planet. I also suggested that the world looks very different when it is seen through Kamea eyes. In recent years, however, and at an ever increasing pace, a biological framework is being exported as a c o n c e i v i n g g l o b a l i d e n t i t i e s 1 5 1 c o n c e i v i n g g l o b a l i d e n t i t i e s 1 5 2 worldview to other parts of the globe as part of the international flow of power, capital, and meanings. In this chapter I consider the consequences of...