Event — Lecture

Chinese DNA. How China Uses Genome Projects to construct Chineseness

04/12/2007 - 19:30

 

Chinese DNA

4 December 2007
19.30 - 21.00 hrs

Lecture by Dr Wen-Ching Sung
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada

Are people around the world genetically the same or different? In the early 1990s, two international human genome research projects with opposite assumptions were set up: the ‘Human Genome Project' (HGP), presuming that all populations share a common thread, and the ‘Human Genome Diversity Project' (HGDP) focusing on the variations of human genomes. While the HGDP has come to a standstill because of the strong criticism of scientific racism, many human genome projects aiming to collect databanks of regional or national genomes have bloomed in the USA, Iceland, Quebec in Canada, the United Kingdom, and China.

China is unique among these countries which look for "localized genome": it is the only country participating in both the HGP and the HGDP. This talk will analyze how China uses such a Janus-faced nature of the genomic research to construct Chineseness.This lecture is the fourth in the series 'Asian DNA at the Forefront' organised within the context of the ‘Socio-genetic Marginalisation Programme' (SMAP) at IIAS. For information on this programme, see www.iias.nl/smap.

Venue
Lipsius Building
Cleveringaplaats 1
room 005
Leiden, the Netherlands

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Cleveringaplaats 1
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For information
Ms Saskia Jans
Fellowship Coordinator
International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)
T +31-71 527 54 90
iiasfellowships@let.leidenuniv.nl