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Article ID: CBB001421068

Blood Groups and Human Groups: Collecting and Calibrating Genetic Data after World War Two (2014)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 47, Part A
Issue: Part A
Pages: 74-86
Publication date: 2014
Language: English

Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special section: “Heredity and The Study of Human Populations After 1945”

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Human genetics Physical anthropology Laboratories Public health Human geography Blood Blood transfusion Science and race Colonialism 20th century

Arthur Mourant's The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups (1954) was an indispensable reference book on the anthropology of blood groups containing a vast collection of human genetic data. It was based on the results of blood-grouping tests carried out on half-a-million people and drew together studies on diverse populations around the world: from rural communities, to religious exiles, to volunteer transfusion donors. This paper pieces together sequential stages in the production of a small fraction of the blood-group data in Mourant's book, to examine how he and his colleagues made genetic data from people. Using sources from several collecting projects, I follow how blood was encountered, how it was inscribed, and how it was turned into a laboratory resource. I trace Mourant's analytical and representational strategies to make blood groups both credibly `genetic' and understood as relevant to human ancestry, race and history. In this story, `populations' were not simply given, but were produced through public health, colonial and post-colonial institutions, and by the labour and expertise of subjects, assistants and mediators. Genetic data were not self-evidently `biological', but were shaped by existing historical and geographical identities, by political relationships, and by notions of kinship and belonging.

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Article Bangham, Jenny; Chadarevian, Soraya de (2014) Human Heredity after 1945: Moving Populations Centre Stage. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 45-49). unapi

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