ABSTRACT
Curiosity and concern about difference persist because, on the one hand, itinforms the ways in which social entities (groups) imagine and recognize themselves as collectives and, on the other hand, it defines the boundaries across which groups (social entities) compete for recognition, rights and resources, the three-pronged grid of power. Community manifests itself as a collective and subjective experience that is projected through idioms of identity. In this context, the intuitive and visceral sense of belonging becomes a sentiment that is culturally comprehensible within the community and articulated through degrees of inclusion and exclusion. How we conceptualize difference*/how we interact with, live alongside and integrate with it*/is reflected in and thought through the corollary and opposite idea, sameness . These epistemological and philosophical concerns have been stretched to become epidemiological ones in biomedical research. My intention in this article, prefaced by reflections on the vocabulary of race and concluding with a critique of the metaphor genetic signature , is to consider the implications of thinking through the prism of ‘difference’ and ‘race’ in biomedical and genetic research while bearing in mind the following principle: the concept of ‘race’ cannot be sanitized, salvaged or made palatable.
