Noah Tamarkin

NOAH TAMARKIN, then a graduate student at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, was awarded funding in April 2016 to aid research on ‘Juridical Genetics: Scientific Citizenship and Genetic Justice in South Africa.’ Genomic science has become increasingly important as a means to know the past and to pursue rights and justice in the present. But how does DNA become socially, politically, and legally meaningful? How do differently situated people transform genetic data into genetic evidence and what are the consequences for how science and citizenship are lived and experienced? This project addresses these questions through an ethnographic investigation of South Africa’s recently passed DNA Act, the national DNA database that it mandates, and related research and social justice activities. It examines how people who work in the varied spaces of non-governmental organizations, consultancy companies, universities, police stations, forensic laboratories, and courtrooms negotiate the implications and meanings of DNA as they together transform genetic data into genetic evidence. This project advances anthropological theory by grounding questions about the social, political, and legal significance of genomics in active, relational struggles over cultural meaning, value, and practice. The objective of the project is to illuminate what happens when DNA becomes a prominent part of a legal framework in a postcolonial context where science, race, and law have all been deeply contested.