ABSTRACT
Genetic testing and screening comprise diverse fields of practice. They are being employed in medical and public health practice, in different fields of scientific research, in criminal investigations as well as in paternity testing and people’s attempts to determine their ancestry. They entangle individuals, families or populations at specific points in time, at specific stages during individual lives, and they follow different ends and produce outcomes, the interpretation and consequences of which are highly contingent upon the specific cultural, social, biological and technological constellations within which they take place (cf. Löwy and Gaudillière 2008). The diversity of these constellations depends to a significant degree on the way they are engaged with and positioned by a multitude of knowledge practices from science and beyond. We present only two examples from the medical domain in this paper and thus ask our readers to take this piece as a point of departure for their own thinking rather than expecting a comprehensive overview of current scholarly and practitioners’ debates.
