Event

Ruha Benjamin 

The Emperor's New Genes: Mapping and Marketing Populations in a Global Context

In this talk, Professor Benjamin will discuss her ongoing research on the way genomic science in different countries reflects, reinforces, and sometimes challenges racial and caste hierarchies. Drawing upon developments in Mexico, South Africa, and India, she finds the question of what the state owes particular groups increasingly connected to scientific definitions of what constitutes a group in the first place. And, ultimately, she argues that the epistemic and normative dexterity of the field not its strict reinforcement of social hierarchy — is what makes it powerful, problematic, and for some, profitable. 

Ruha Benjamin is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Faculty Associate in the Program on History of Science at Princeton University.  She is an interdisciplinary scholar who examines the relationship between science, technology, medicine, and society, and is the author of People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (Stanford University Press, 2013).

For more info: www.ruhabenjamin.com 

**This event is co-sponsored with the Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania**