ABSTRACT

There is a tendency to view diversity as a good in itself. One could, for example, think of cultural diversity or biodiversity. They almost automatically convey an appreciation of, and the giving of space to differences. By consequence differences and similarities are deemed given, and it is a matter of looking hard enough to see them. Yet we know that biodiversity is a totally different matter depending on whether a single-species approach or an ecological approach is used to investigate it. Similarly, in studies of human genetic diversity, boundaries between one population and another may shift and change, depending on the technologies that are being applied. In short, similarities and differences are not given, but made. They are effects of technology and their normative content is a matter of examination. The Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) has taught us that (genetic) diversity

is political to the point of being controversial. Individuality, population, race, sex, origin, descent, genealogy, history, they have all become topics of heated debates. There is nothing natural or inherently good about such categories. What then can we learn from the HGDP about the good and the bad of human diversity? To answer these questions I will first briefly introduce the diversity project, its goals (diversity studies), and the debates that have ensued. In the second part we will enter the laboratory to examine the intertwinement of technology and genetic diversity. There we will take one technology as our main object of analysis, a genetic marker. Focusing on such a technology I will show that genetic diversity is not a given but made: that is, it is part and parcel of the socio-material configuration of scientific practices. In the final part of this chapter we take these insights to discuss issues of population and race and the problems and possibilities of diversity studies.1