[Sci-tech-public] Call for Papers: What's the Use of Race

[Debbie Meinbresse]

We would appreciate your assistance in distributing this call for 
papers to your colleagues.  We apologize for any cross postings you 
might receive.


>Call for Papers: What's the Use of Race?
>
>Conference: April 25-26, 2008
>Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology, and Medicine
>Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
>
>Submission Deadline: October 15th, 2007
>
>Despite long-standing critiques of the concept of race from
>biologists, anthropologists, and social scientists, race continues to
>thrive as a category of analysis among scholars, pundits, and the
>conventional wisdom.  State and federal institutions routinely
>collect data about race and ethnicity.  The National Institutes of
>Health requests that researchers include racially and ethnically
>diverse populations in their studies.  Journals in fields as diverse
>as genetics, public health, and sociology report data on race and
>ethnicity and use these variables as significant factors in their
>analyses.  This pursuit of race has produced overwhelming
>documentation of racial disparities, from birth rates to education,
>income, crime, punishment, disease, medical treatment, and life
>expectancy.  While many scholars believe that research must consider
>race if it is to understand fully human biology and experience,
>critics argue that race is a hollow and misleading concept that leads
>to invidious distinctions.  While advocates of social justice argue
>that racial disparities must be documented before they can be
>alleviated, our vast knowledge of disparities has not yet led to
>decisive social or political action against them.
>
>What should be done?  Should the concept of race be invoked to
>further the goals of science or social justice?  Do racial and ethnic
>distinctions produce natural categories for scholarly or political
>analysis?  Do the benefits of including diverse populations in
>research outweigh the potential harm caused by reifying racial and
>ethnic distinctions?  Will efforts to improve the precision of these
>categories with subtler distinctions based on ancestry or genetic
>markers increase the utility of the resulting data?  What role do
>funding agencies (whether governmental or philanthropic) and journal
>editors have as gatekeepers for the appropriate use of racial and
>ethnic categories?  What hopes and conflicts are embedded in analyses
>of race as a scientific, medical or social category?  This conference
>invites papers from any discipline -- medicine, history,
>anthropology, epidemiology, STS, genetics, sociology, law, ethics,
>and others -- that consider these debates about the uses of race.  We
>hope to describe and explore the competing interests that have made
>studies of race simultaneously feared and desired.
>
>Abstracts (300 words or less) should be submitted by October 15th to:
>
>David S. Jones, M.D., Ph.D.
>77 Massachusetts Avenue E51-290
>Cambridge, MA  02139
>dsjones at mit.edu (email submissions preferred)
>
>Additional information at web.mit.edu/csd
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