reardon

Jenny Reardon

Jenny Reardon is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Adjunct Research Professor of Women's Studies and the Institute of Genome Sciences and Policy at Duke University. 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 a two-year Science and Justice Initiative at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In Press

“Democratizing Geonomic Studies on Human Variation, Paradoxes and Emerging Dilemmas,” in Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Sarah Richardson, eds., Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).

Forthcoming

“Constituting Participation: The Dilemma of Difference in a Genomic Age,” in Sheila Jasanoff ed. Reframing Rights: The Constitutional Implications of Technological Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

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

2007 “Democratic Mis-Haps: The Problem of Democratization in an Age of Biopolitics.” Biosocieties 2[2]:

2004 “Decoding Race and Human Difference in A Genomic Age.” differences 15[3]: 38-65.

2001 “The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Coproduction.” Social Studies of Science 31[3]: 357-388.

Chapters in Books

2006 “Creating Participatory Subjects: Race, Science and Democracy in a Genomic Age.” pp. xx-xx 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.

2006 with Brady Dunklee and Kara Wentworth, “Race and Crisis,” Social Science Research Council Forum on “Is ‘Race’ Real?” http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Reardon/.

Reviews of First Book

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.

Review

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.



Contact Information

College 8 Faculty Services
1156 High Street
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
831-459-1645
reardon1@ucsc.edu