Genetics, biosocial groups & the future of identity
Biosocial' is a new word, but its pedigree, although brief, is the best.Paul Rabinow, the anthropologist of the genome industry, wrote about 'biosociality' in 1992. 1 He invented the word partly as a joke, to counter the sociobiology that had been fashionable for some time.When he wrote, Rabinow was interested in groups and the criteria around which they form.Of course, human beings are biosocial beings: biological animals and social animals.But the fact that many groups of people can be loosely characterized in both biological and social ways, and that the 'bio' and the 'social' reinforce each other, prompted his term.This phenomenon is immediately evident: what are families or extended kinship structures if not biosocial groups?Currently, the genetic imperative-the drive to ½nd biological, but above all genetic, underpinnings for all things human, in sickness or in health, in success or in strife-is fueling fascination with this concept.