Narrating ethnicity and diversity in Middle Eastern national genome projects

Abstract

Most Middle Eastern populations outside Israel have not been represented in Western-based international human genome sequencing efforts. In response, national-level projects have emerged throughout the Middle East to decode the Arab, Turkish and Iranian genomes. The discourses surrounding the ‘national genome’ that shape scientists’ representation of their work to local and international audiences evoke three intersecting analytics of nationalism: methodological, postcolonial and diasporic. Methodologically, ongoing human genome projects in Turkey and Iran follow the population logics of other national and international genome projects, for example justifying research with reference to projected health benefits to their fellow citizens. Meanwhile, assumptions about and representations of ethnicity and diversity are deeply inflected by local histories of scientific development and nationalist politics. While Iranian geneticists have transformed this paradigm to catalog national genetic diversity through a discourse of ‘Iranian ethnicities’, Turkish geneticists remain politically constrained from acknowledging ethnic diversity and struggle to distance their work from racialized narratives of Turkish national identity. Such nationally-framed narratives of genomic diversity are not confined to their original contexts, but travel abroad, as demonstrated by a US-based genome project that articulates a form of Iranian-American diasporic nationalism.

Mapping ‘bio geo-body’ of Southeast Asia: strategic differentiation and identification of ethnic identity in Vietnam and Singapore

“…While these genomic projects are mainly concerned with studying disease variations for pharmaceutical research, they also elucidate ancestral origins and history of population migration through comparing genome variants within their populations as well as across Asia. The implication is that extant notions of race, ethnicity and nationality become troubled as groups come to terms with new facets of their identity brought forth by population genomics (Whitmarsh 2009;Sung 2010;Liu 2010;Burton 2018).…”

Geostrategic interests of turkey and Iran in the Caspian region

“…Such a project once again testifies to the growth of the economic power of Azerbaijan. If in the early 1990s Turkish businessmen invested in Azerbaijan, now Azerbaijan plays an important role in the Turkish economy (Ibrayeva, 2018;Morozov, 2018;Burton, 2018). And this is an indicator that the strategic partnership between Turkey and Azerbaijan is becoming even more important.…”

Impossible, unknowable, accountable: Dramas and dilemmas of data law

“…National representations and narratives – as STS work on biobanking suggests – can serve as productive resources for constructing populations (Busby and Martin, 2006; Gottweis et al, 2011; Hinterberger, 2012; Mitchell and Waldby, 2010). As nationalities are imagined in particular ways, samples and data are taken to be imbued with the same national characteristics, which can then be referred back to as a source of legitimacy by the experts and institutions who process the data (Burton, 2018; Tarkkala and Tupasela, 2018; Tupasela et al, 2015). Resonant with the findings of the scholars noted above, researchers’ constructions of the Swedish population’s desire for research were also attributed to Swedish data as data ‘made for use’.…”