A different kind of association between socio-histories and health.

In the last 15 years, genetics researchers have developed new molecular genomic technologies for analysing human differences at the level of DNA. This was soon followed by an explosion of studies that aimed to find genetic explanations for the differential health outcomes between individuals and groups by examining association between DNA and disease. Meanwhile, other geneticists have used the new molecular technologies to examine DNA differences between individuals and groups to build theories about migration, language, and ancestry in human history. Many of these studies have organized DNA differences into groups that oftentimes correspond to institutionallyestablished racial categories as they currently exist in the USA. Some of this new research has rekindled debates about the relationship between biology and race in many fields, including sociology. In tandem with this new research on DNA differences is an explosion of social scientific research critiquing the revitalization of research on biological differences by race.Troy Duster is the originator of and inspiration for much of this critical research (Duster 2003, originally published in 1990). More significantly, Duster has in this BJS article assembled the findings of the research referred to below to show how these different fragments come together to make a coherent story about the ‘creeping molecularization’ (personal communication) of race in very different realms. Many have critiqued what Duster calls the creeping molecularization of race in genetics research because it threatens to reinvigorate the belief that human social classification systems like race have a biological, ‘natural’ basis. Some of these social scientific studies described the new genetic classificatory research as examples of a ‘genetic reinscription of race’ (Abu El-Haj 2007) and the ‘molecularization’ (Fullwiley 2007), ‘biologization’ and ‘geneticization’ of race (Gannett 2001; Ossorio and Duster 2005, Duster 2005, 2006; Montoya 2007; Bolnick 2008; Fullwiley 2008; Roberts 2011; TallBear 2013; Rajagopalan and Fujimura 2012; Kahn 2013; Toom 2014), or as ‘genome geography’ (Fujimura and Rajagopalan 2011). Others have argued that interpretations of DNA clusters as signifying a biological basis for US institutionalized race categories is