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Book Review: Sahra Gibbon & Carlos Novas (Eds.), Biosocialities, Genetics and the Social Sciences. London: and New York: Routledge, 2008. 198 pp. Paperback: $41.95 (US), IBSN: 0415401388

Once scientists had finished mapping the human genome in April, 2003, they were amazed to discover that human DNA consisted of only 20,700 protein-coding genes – about a fifth of the 100,000 many had predicted, and about the same number as in the mouse genome. Sequencing the human genetic code may someday prove of equal scientific importance to developing the periodic table of the elements, but if so, much work remains to be done. We still understand little about what in our DNA makes us humans (rather than, say, mice), and how the particular set of genes we were born with programs us to become the individuals we are. Therefore, as important a landmark deciphering the human genetic code might eventually turn out to be, for now, its most practical consequences are in the area of medicine. Anthropologist Sahra Gibbon and sociologist Carlos Novas have produced an immensely satisfying collection of case studies documenting some of the social consequences of the human genome mapping initiative. They posit that just as the genome project required the development of new theories, concepts, tools, and techniques, social scientists also need novel concepts and methods to analyze and understand the consequences of genetic knowledge for society and social practices. They offer Paul Rabinow’s concept of “biosociality” as a springboard for doing so. In a brief Afterward (which would have been more usefully positioned as a Forward), Rabinow explains that he came up with the term in the early 1990s as the human genome mapping initiative was beginning in earnest. Because the histories of culture, society, and civilization are all fundamentally shaped by pathology and disease processes, he wanted a concept that would both advance meaningful study of the interrelations between biology, evolution, and society – and serve as a counterweight to the crude determinism of sociobiology, the concept much in vogue at the time (Rabinow, 1992). Studies of biosociality examine how the science of genetics is transforming sociality and what we understand to be human nature. In their intelligent and lucid introduction, the editors lay out the three main dimensions of the biosociality concept: (1) offering a framework for understanding the dynamics surrounding the formation of new kinds of social groups and identities (e.g., “health activists,” “genetic citizens”) based on their association with particular diseases; (2) revealing new understandings about permeability in the boundaries between what is considered nature and what is considered culture; and, (3) as an approach to examining the sites and conduct of biogenetic Book Reviews