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Date of Award

Spring 2020

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Historical & Political Studies; College of Arts & Sciences

First Advisor

Hilary Parsons Dick

Abstract

Recently, there has been an increase in companies selling products to individual consumers that collect your data (DNA), and return to you information about the ethnic, racial, and national categories associated with the genetic markers found in your genes, also often referred to as ‘your roots’. These tests categorize results in groups based off of existing racial, ethnic, and national constructed identities. The implications made about identity as a result of the discourse surrounding these tests are explored. Using a culmination of ethnographic discourse analysis methods, analysis of indexes, deictics, and cross event configuration of meaning are traced through commercials, reaction videos, and websites from the companies 23andme, AncestryDNA, National Geographic Geno 2.0 and MyHeritageDNA. The relationship between DNA and ethno-racial-national identity is explored as they index one another, becoming a normalized association through the cross event configuration of multiple examples (all three types of media analyzed). Accompanied by the negation of lived and learned ethno-racial-national identities, scientific discourse validates the iconization of DNA to identity which is presented as the truest form of self, found in the results of these commercialized genetic tests. Discourse presented in media representing commercialized genetic tests in ads, reaction videos, and on company websites collectively iconize a discoverable ‘true’ identity as rooted in a person’s genetic makeup (DNA), understood as defined by one’s group identity through previously constructed ethno-racial-national frameworks; all of which is re-affirmed through the negation of previously learned identities and the use of scientific discourse.

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Commercially Geneticizing Race, Ethnicity and Nation: The Implications of Discourse Surrounding Commercialized Genetic Tests about Identity

Recently, there has been an increase in companies selling products to individual consumers that collect your data (DNA), and return to you information about the ethnic, racial, and national categories associated with the genetic markers found in your genes, also often referred to as ‘your roots’. These tests categorize results in groups based off of existing racial, ethnic, and national constructed identities. The implications made about identity as a result of the discourse surrounding these tests are explored. Using a culmination of ethnographic discourse analysis methods, analysis of indexes, deictics, and cross event configuration of meaning are traced through commercials, reaction videos, and websites from the companies 23andme, AncestryDNA, National Geographic Geno 2.0 and MyHeritageDNA. The relationship between DNA and ethno-racial-national identity is explored as they index one another, becoming a normalized association through the cross event configuration of multiple examples (all three types of media analyzed). Accompanied by the negation of lived and learned ethno-racial-national identities, scientific discourse validates the iconization of DNA to identity which is presented as the truest form of self, found in the results of these commercialized genetic tests. Discourse presented in media representing commercialized genetic tests in ads, reaction videos, and on company websites collectively iconize a discoverable ‘true’ identity as rooted in a person’s genetic makeup (DNA), understood as defined by one’s group identity through previously constructed ethno-racial-national frameworks; all of which is re-affirmed through the negation of previously learned identities and the use of scientific discourse.