ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will look at the role of the public in genetics and society. I explore research into public opinions about genetics, criticizing the narrow ways in which people and their knowledge and understandings are conceived in this kind of research. I also look at other research into the public understanding of genetics that focuses much more upon the social contexts in which people come across genetics and give their views about its social and ethical consequences. Drawing on some recent findings, I will argue that although this work is much more sophisticated than public opinion research, the public are still represented in fairly narrow terms. Social researchers tend to position members of the public who they interview as citizens, but their research subjects often reposition themselves as other kinds of experts, and disassociate themselves from what they present as an ignorant and amorphous public. The ill-educated and fearful public remains a powerful notion in the contemporary governance of genetics.
