Jenny Reardon
 Jenny Reardon is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate in the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University in August 2002. From Fall 1999-Spring 2002, she was a Fellow in Science, Technology and Public Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She taught in the Division of Biology and Medicine at Brown University from 2002-2004, and was a fellow at the Institute of Genome Sciences and Policy and a research assistant professor Women’s Studies at Duke University from 2004-2005. |
Her book, Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics, was published with Princeton University Press in 2005.
Under a sole-investigator grant from the National Science Foundation, Reardon is currently investigating the paradoxes and dilemmas that confront researchers, policy makers and potential research subjects who seek to address the problems of governance and research design created by the focus on human groups as objects of genomic analysis. She is also engaged in a study of the emergence of genomic medicine. This study seeks to clarify the concepts and practices of health, illness, justice, individual, race, population, and environment that both shape and are formed by efforts to translate genomic information into medical practice.
In all her research, Reardon seeks to extend our emerging understanding of how science and the social order are constituted together, and explores how such understandings might help us to more adequately address questions of social justice in a technoscientific age. She is a primary organizer of the Science and Justice Initiative at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
She is currently working on her second book, The Post-Genomic Condition: Technoscience at the Limits of Liberal Democratic Imaginaries.
Published Writings and Creative Activities
Books and Monographs
2005 Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University).
Articles in Professional Journals
Reardon, Jenny. 2011. The ‘persons’ and ‘genomics’ of personalized genomics. Reproduced from Personalized medicine 8(1), 95-107 (2011) with permission of Expert Reviews Ltd.
Reardon, Jenny. 2009. “Anti-Colonial Genomic Practice? Learning from Chacmool and the Genographic Project.” International Journal of Cultural Property 16(2): 199-204.
Reardon, Jenny with Barbara Prainsack, Jeantine E. Lunshof, Herbert Gottweis, Richard Hindmarch and Ursual Naue. 2008. “Personal genomes: Misdirected precaution.” Nature 456: 34-35
Reardon, Jenny. 2008. “Race and Biology: Beyond the Perpetual Return of Crisis.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin (NTM Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine) 16(3): 373-77.
Reardon, Jenny. 2008. “Reckless Driving: Race Through Mass Spec and Global Capital on Highway” darkmatter 1:2 (http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2008/02/23/reckless-driving/).
Bolnick, D., Fullwiley, D., Duster, T., Cooper, R., Fujimura, J., Kahn, J., Kauffman, J., Marks, J., Morning, A., Nelson, A., Ossario, P., Reverby, S., Reardon, J, Tallbear, K. 2007. “The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry Testing.” Science 318: 399-400
Reardon, Jenny. 2007. “Democratic Mis-Haps: The Problem of Democratization in a Time of Biopolitics.” BioSocieties 2: 239-256.
Reardon, Jenny. 2004. “Decoding Race and Human Difference in A Genomic Age.” differences 15(3): 38-65.
Reardon, Jenny. 2001. “The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Coproduction.” Social Studies of Science 31(3): 357-388.
Chapters in Books
Reardon, Jenny. 2008. “Race Without Salvation: Beyond the Science/Society Divide in Genomic Studies of Human Differences.” In Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Sarah Richardson, eds., Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press): 304-319.
Reardon, Jenny. 2006. “Creating Participatory Subjects: Race, Science and Democracy in a Genomic Age.” In Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore eds., The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press): 351-377.
Web-based Publications
Reardon, Jenny with Malia Fullerton. 2009. “Does A Genomics that Works for Some Mean A Genomics that Does Not Work for All?” Genomics Law Reporter (November 23).
| Reardon, Jenny with Brady Dunklee and Kara Wentworth. 2006. “Race and Crisis.” Social Science Research Council Forum on “Is ‘Race’ Real?” .
Multi-Media Reckless Driving. As “Reckless” notes, historians of race pronounced race a 19th century concept that fell out of use in biology by the mid-20th century. “Reckless” is an effort to communicate that what was happening on the ground was far more complicated: not only had scientists not given up on race, it was a central tool in their efforts to find medically important genetic differences. It also seeks to explore the reasons for and effects of the dissonance between the widespread claim that ‘race’ had no meaning in biology, and the continued use of racial categories. Forthcoming
“Human Population Genomics and The Dilemma of Difference,” in Sheila Jasanoff ed. Reframing Rights: The Constitutional Implications of Technological Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Reviews of Race to the Finish
Steven Epstein, University of California, San Diego, author of “Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge” : In this gracefully written, subtle, and thorough account of a failed scientific endeavor, Jenny Reardon effectively accomplishes several important goals. First, she tells a fascinating story of how a well-intentioned scientific effort to explore the diversity of the human species foundered on the shoals of controversy that sprung in part from the fundamental inability of scientists to apprehend the sociopolitical world in which their efforts were situated. Second, she illuminates her analysis with a theoretical perspective that emphasizes the simultaneous ‘co-production’ of social order and natural order. Third, Reardon is at the cutting edge of new work on race and science that seeks to understand the complex role of new sciences such as genetics in the remaking of racial classifications, identities, and politics. She does all this with impressive clarity, never losing sight of the appeal of the story itself. Alan H. Goodman, President-Elect, American Anthropological Association, editor of “Genetic Nature/Culture”: This book ranks as the seminal history of the Human Genome Diversity Project. Jenny Reardon tells an entertaining and enlightening story of the very social and political field of human diversity research. Review Essays about Race to the Finish 2006 Cunningham, Hilary. “Reviewed Works(s): Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics.”American Anthropologist 108{1}: 256-7. 2006 Barnes, Barry. “Review of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics.” Isis 97[2]: 383-4. 2005 Kaplan, Karen. “Ancestry in a Drop of Blood.” LA Times (August 30). 2005 Rothman, David J. and Sheila Rothman. “Race Without Racism?” The New Republic (November 14): 27-30. 2005 Paul, Diane. “Diversity and Controversy,” Nature 437: 621-2. 2005 Greely, Henry T. “Lessons from the HGDP?” Science 308: 1554-5. 2005 Cavalli-Sforza, Luca L. “Studying Diversity.” EMBO 6[8]: 713. Contact InformationCollege 8 Faculty Services |