ACTANT (ACTOR): A term that reflects a central tenet in actor network theory, which states that humans are not the only relevant actors in the social world. In this way, “actant” expands the term “actor” in order to include the role of objects and non-humans in the production of social phenomena.
ACTOR NETWORK THEORY: A method of inquiry that does not limit in advance the types of beings populating the social world or the shape, size, heterogeneity, and combination of associations related to a particular topic under investigation. It allows the researcher to follow actants (actors) as they continually create new associations.
ADMIXTURE: The conglomeration of genetic material purportedly present in specific human groups due to the interbreeding of two or more groups often ethnoracially labeled. It is based on the assumption that distinct racial groups exist because they were geographically isolated from one another.
ADMIXTURE-SUSCEPTIBILITY HYPOTHESIS: The notion that members of admixed groups possess genetic material that makes them more susceptible to particular diseases than (pure) members of major racial groups.
ALLELE: The alternative form of a gene or DNA sequence that occurs at a given location on a chromosome. Some loci have only one allele, some have two, and some have many alternative forms. Alleles occur in pairs, one on each chromosome.*
BIOBANKS: Places where biological material and health-related information of individuals of a given population are stored for the purposes of medical and genetic research.
BIOCAPITAL: A form of capital that involves turning biomaterial into a commodity with both material and symbolic value.
BIOETHNIC CONSCRIPTION: The process whereby the social origins of human difference are folded in to a biogenetic or clinical claim.
BIOETHNICITY: Refers to the resultant product of the ways ethnicity comes to be constructed as meaningful for scientific research. Bioethnicity emphasizes that biological races do not exist and that ethnicity is conscripted into biological science stripped of its social meaning and origin.
BIOGENETIC (BIOGENESIS): The claim that biology is the origin of what is in fact a complex phenomenon.
BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM: The philosophy or belief that human behavior and social organization are fundamentally determined by innate biological characteristics, so that differences in behavior within and between groups are attributed to genetic variation rather than influences of environment, learning, or social arrangements.*
BIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONALISM: The tendency in the biological sciences to describe physiological structures and processes in utilitarian terms.
BIOPOLITICS (GOVERNMENTALITY): Biopolitics posits that modern governance operates through biopower, which is the organization of power over life centered on two sites: the individual body and the population. The individual body is disciplined to fit the norm through various methods (i.e., routine) at institutions like schools, hospitals, and prisons. Populations are regulated through the use of statistical information (i.e., life expectancy and mortality rates).
BIOREDUCTIONISM: Process whereby a complex phenomenon (e.g., disease) is presented strictly in biological terms.
BIOSOCIALITY: Describes a type of sociality and individual identities that have resulted from information made possible by genetic technologies.
BIOVALUE: Value generated through the exchange of biological material and information, which results in various forms of professional wealth in the field of genetics.
BLACK BOX: A term used in social and cultural studies of science to refer to taken-for-granted assumptions which are left (oftentimes deliberately) unquestioned and unexamined.
CELL: The smallest unit of life. Our human bodies are composed of more than 100 trillion cells. Inside the cell membrane is the nucleus. The cell nucleus is surrounded by cytoplasm.*
CHROMOSOME: Long strands of DNA found inside the cell nucleus. Human cells each contain 2.3 pairs of chromosomes, inherited from our parents.*
CLASSIFICATION: The ordering of items into groups on the basis of shared attributes. Classifications are cultural inventions and different cultures develop different ways of classifying the same phenomena (e.g., colors, plants, relatives, and other people).*
CLINE: A gradual, continuous change in a particular trait or trait frequency over space.*
COMPLEX TRAIT: A physical trait affected by more than one loci, which interact with environmental conditions. Most studied human traits are complex (e.g., height, body size, and skin color).*
CULTURAL CONSTRUCT: An idea or system of thought that is rooted in culture. It can include an invented system for classifying things or for classifying people, such as a racial system of classification.*
CULTURE: The full range of shared, learned, patterned behaviors, values, meanings, beliefs, ways of perceiving, systems of classification, and other knowledge acquired by people as members of a society; the processes or power dynamics that influence whether meanings and practices can be shared within a group or society.*
DIABETOGENESIS: The factors that contribute to the onset of diabetes.
DNA (DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID): The molecule that encodes heredity information composed of four base pairs of proteins. Base pairs constitute the rungs of the DNA ladder, which are composed of four bases in pairs that specify genetic instructions: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). “A” always pairs with “T”, and “G” always pairs with “C”.*
DOMINANT ALLELE: An allele that masks the effect of the other allele (which is recessive) in a heterozygous genotype.*
EPISTEMIC (OR KNOWLEDGE-CENTERED) APPROACH: An approach designed to examine the making and effects of policies within and beyond the state. It focuses on uncovering how the “truths” that underlie particular policies came into existence.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRITIQUE: A type of critique that challenges settled ways of thinking and conceptualization. It is an analytical strategy that allows other cultural realities to lie alongside our own in order to gain a more adequate understanding of the process through which concepts become taken-for-granted truths.
ESSENTIALISM: The idea that all things have an underlying or true essence. Racial essentialists argue that all members of a specific racial group share certain basic characteristics or qualities that mark them as inherently different from members of other racial groups.*
ETHNICITY: An idea similar to race that groups people according to common origin or background. The term usually refers to social, cultural, religious, linguistic, and other affiliations although, like race, it is sometimes linked to perceived biological markers. Ethnicity is often characterized by cultural features, such as dress, language, religion, and social organization.*
ETHNORACE/ETHNORACIAL: A term used to describe practices that draw from both ethnic and racial categories.
EUGENICS: From Greek eugenes meaning wellborn. The eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sought to “improve” the human species and preserve racial “purity” through planned human breeding. Eugenicists supported antimiscegenation laws and more extreme measures such as sterilization.*
FOUNDER EFFECT: A type of genetic drift that occurs when all individuals in a population trace back to a small number of founding individuals. The small size of the founding population may result in allele frequencies very different from those of its original population. Examples of populations exhibiting founder effect include the French Acadians, the Amish, and the Hutterites.*
GENE: A unique combination of bases (see DNA) that creates a specific part of our body.*
GENE FLOW: A mechanism for evolutionary change involving genetic exchange across local populations. Gene flow introduces new alleles into a population and makes populations more similar genetically to one another.*
GENETIC DISTANCE: An average measure of relatedness between populations based on various traits. Genetic distances are used for understanding effects of genetic drift and gene flow, which should affect all loci to the same extent.*
GENETIC DRIFT: A mechanism for evolutionary change resulting from the random fluctuations of gene frequencies (e.g., from one generation to the next). In the absence of other evolutionary forces, genetic drift results in the eventual loss of all variation. See founder effect.*
genetic EPIDEMIOLOGY: The use of genetics to understand disease in populations.
GENETIC epidemiology: The use of populations to understand the genetics of disease.
GENETIC MARKERS: An identifiable physical location on a chromosome used to (a) look for genes known or suspected to be implicated in disease, and (b) to identify individuals or sort humans into groups.
GENETICS: The study of human heredity, its mechanisms and related biological variation. Heredity may be studied at the molecular, individual (organism), or population level.*
GENOME: One complete copy of all the genes and DNA for a species.*
GENOTYPE: The genetic endowment of an individual from the two alleles present at a given locus. See phenotype. The precise sequence of nucleotide base pairs.*
HAPLOTYPE: A series or combination of closely linked bits of genetic material usually inherited together.
HAPMAP: An international research effort to find genes associated with human diseases and those associated with response to pharmaceutical agents.*
HARDY-WEINBERG PRINCIPLE: The stable proportion of genotype frequencies that are the consequence of random mating in the absence of the genetic mutation, flow and drift.
HETEROZYGOUS: The two alleles at a given locus are different.*
HOMOZYGOUS: Both alleles at a given locus are identical.*
HUMAN GENOME DIVERSITY PROJECT: An international project that sought to understand the diversity and unity of the entire human species.
HUMAN GENOME PROJECT: An international research effort to sequence and map the human genome, all of the genes on every chromosome. The project was completed in 2003.*
IN SILICO: Anything reduced to data sets, transmitted electronically, and run through software programs.
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM: The embeddedness of racially discriminatory practices in the institutions, laws, and agreed upon values and practices of a society.*
INTERPELLATION (HAILING): A concept used to describe how individuals become subjected to the rules of the established order by behaving in accordance with the directives of a figurative authority or dominant norms.
LOCUS: The location of a particular gene or DNA sequence on a chromosome.*
MENDELIAN INHERITANCE PATTERN: The inheritance pattern based upon a single dominant or recessive allele at one location on a chromosome.
MUTATION: A mechanism for evolutionary change resulting from a spontaneous change in the base sequence of a DNA molecule.*
NUCLEOTIDES: DNA contains one of four nucleotide bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, or thymine. Genotyping reveals the precise sequence of nucleotides.
ONTOLOGICAL: Inquiry about or concerning what exists, what is, the nature of being, and relationships between fundamental categories of things. E.g., What is “race”?
PHENOTYPE: The observable or detectable characteristics of an individual organism. A person’s phenotype includes easily visible traits such as hair or eye color as well as abilities such as tongue rolling or curling.*
POLYGENE: Any two or more bits of genetic material whose inheritance pattern and action work together. As distinct from a single-gene Mendelian inheritance pattern.
POLYMORPHISM: A discrete genetic trait in which there are at least two alleles at a locus having frequencies greater than 0.01.*
RACE/RACIAL: A recent idea created by western Europeans following exploration across the world to account for differences among people and justify colonization, conquest, enslavement, and social hierarchy among humans. The term is used to refer to groupings of people according to common origin or background and is associated with perceived biological traits. Among humans there are no races except the human race. In biology, the term has limited use, usually associated with organisms or populations that are able to interbreed. Ideas about race are culturally and socially transmitted and form the basis of racism, racial classification, and often complex racial identities.*
RACIAL CLASSIFICATION: The practice of classifying people into distinct racial groups based on certain characteristics such as skin color or geographic region, often for the purpose of ranking them based on believed innate differences between the groups.*
RACIAL IDENTITY/ETHNORACIAL IDENTITY: This concept operates at two levels: (1) self-identity or conceptualization based upon perceptions of one’s race and (2.) society’s perception and definition of a person’s race. Ethnoracial is a term used to describe classificatory practices that draw from both ethnic and racial categories.*
RACIALIZATION: The process by which individuals and groups of people are viewed through a racial lens using a socially invented racial framework. Racialization is often referred to as racialism.*
RACIAL PROFILING: The use of race (and often nationality or religion) to identify a person as a criminal suspect or potential suspect. Racial profiling is one of the ways that racism is manifested and perpetuated.*
SICKLE-CELL ANEMIA: A genetic disease that occurs in a person homozygous for the sickle-cell allele, which alters the structure of red blood cells, giving it a “sickled” shape. These abnormally shaped red blood cells are less efficient in transporting oxygen throughout the body, which can cause pain and organ damage.*
SINGLE-NUCLEOTIDE POLYMORPHISMS (SNP; PRONOUNCED “SNIP”): A single base pair within a DNA sequence that can vary among individuals. An example of a SNP is the change from A to T in the sequences AATGCT and ATTGCT.*
SITUATED KNOWLEDGE: An account or narrative that makes explicit the multiple factors that contribute to knowledge claims made by the author in order to allow the reader to adequately evaluate them. It is based on the notion that true objectivity in all forms of knowledge production is an impossibility.
SUBJECTIFICATION (SUBJECTIVITY): Foucault’s theory of the process through which various institutions (i.e., prisons) create subject positions (i.e., the prisoner) which are constituted by particular notions of normality. These institutions, through various methods (i.e., routine), discipline individuals to fit the norm. Through experience with these disciplinary practices, these norms become internalized to such an extent that individuals continue to behave and expect others to behave within the norm even when no authority figure is present. Each individual occupies a myriad of subject positions, and his or her subjectivity is the sum total of these subject positions.
TAXONOMY: The science of describing and classifying organisms. Taxa/taxon are units or a unit of classification.*
THRIFTY GENOTYPE HYPOTHESIS: This unproven hypothesis was proposed by James Neel in 1962 as an explanation for the increased prevalence of obesity, and by extension diabetes, in contemporary society. Neel argued that during 99.9 percent of human existence we existed as hunter-gatherers who experienced frequent cycles of alternating feast and famine. As a result we developed a genotype exceptionally efficient in the absorption, storage, or utilization of nutrients, which has now become maladaptive in a context of sustained energy (calorie) surplus. The initial form of the hypothesis was not racialized but was, instead, an attempt to explain the sudden rise in diabetes in the modified social environments of the modern world.
TOTIONTOLOGICAL: The concept that an object is not ontologically fixed. At different moments and under various circumstances a single object has the potential to be very different things.
TRAIT: A characteristic or aspect of a phenotype or genotype.*
WET LAB: In the biological sciences, a wet lab identifies the place where standard experiments using biological material take place, as opposed to dry labs where computer analysis occurs.
Note: Definitions marked with an asterisk are taken from the American Anthropological Association, Race: Are We So Different? resource glossary, http://www.understandingrace.org/resources/glossary.html.