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- Title
基因科學與認同政治: 原住民DNA、台灣人起源與生物多元文化 主義的興起.
- Authors
Yu-yueh Tsai
- Abstract
In the global age, the close connection of genetic knowledge and technology with local identity politics has stimulated the development of a "biopolitical paradigm." In Taiwan, the biopolitical paradigm shaped by the intimate relationship between the development of biomedicine and identity politics has involved not only racial/ethnic issues but also national identity. Scientific research regarding the ancestral origins and genetic attributes of the Taiwanese emerged in the early 1990s after the rule by martial law ended. This research has focused on mixed-blood hybridity of the Taiwanese and the percentage of indigenous blood in their genes. This research interest represents a common feature of global identity politics since the late twentieth century: a counter-discourse shaped by decolonialism. Based on Sheila Jasanoff's idea of "co-production," this article explores the "inward invasion" of social factors into the production of scientific knowledge and the "outward spillover" of scientific knowledge to the society. It analyzes how the production and consumption of scientific knowledge about the ancestral origins and genetic attributes of the Taiwanese have been embedded in local identity politics, including the emergence of the "four great ethnic groups" categorization, multiculturalism, and Taiwanese nationalism, and shaped by the identity and difference based on specific human classification. The article also examines how the scientific knowledge produced in the lab has spilled over to the Taiwanese society in general through conferences, journals, media, and the like since the 1990s and brought about significant social impacts as part of the phenomena of the "ethnicization of biomedicine" and the "biomedicalization of ethnicity." Taking the perspective of "reflexive biosociality," the article concludes with the suggestion that it is necessary for sociologists to investigate the contemporary production of biomedicalized knowledge about identity and that scientists themselves should take a reflexive view of this production methodologically.
- Publication
Taiwanese Sociology, 2014, Issue 28, p1
- ISSN
1680-2969
- Publication type
Article