Loughborough University Institutional Repository Becoming a Viking: DNA testing, genetic ancestry and placeholder identity ThisitemwassubmittedtoLoughboroughUniversity’sInstitutionalRepository by the/an author. Citation: SCULLY, M.D., BROWN, S.D. and KING, T., 2016. Becoming a Viking: DNA testing, genetic ancestry and placeholder identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39 (2), pp.162-180. Additional Information: • This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethnic and Racial Studies on 14 Dec 2015, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1105991 Metadata Record: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/19565 Version: Accepted for publication Publisher: (cid:13)c Taylor & Francis Rights: This work is made available according to the conditions of the Cre- ative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Please cite the published version. Becoming a Viking: DNA Testing, genetic ancestry and placeholder identity Marc Scully*, Steven D. Brown** and Turi King***. * Department of Social Sciences, University of Loughborough, Loughborough, United Kingdom. ** School of Management, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom. *** Department of Genetics, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom. Abstract A consensus has developed among social and biological scientists around the problematic nature of genetic ancestry testing, specifically that its popularity will lead to greater genetic essentialism in social identities. Many of these arguments assume a relatively uncritical engagement with DNA, under ‘high-stakes’ conditions. We suggest that in a biosocial society, more pervasive ‘low-stakes’ engagement is more likely. Through qualitative interviews with participants in a study of the genetic legacy of the Vikings in Northern England, we investigate how genetic ancestry results are discursively worked through. The identities formed in ‘becoming a Viking’ through DNA are characterised by fluidity and reflexivity, rather than essentialism. DNA results are woven into a wider narrative of selfhood relating to the past, the value of which lies in its potential to be passed on within families. While not unproblematic, the relatively banal nature of such narratives within contemporary society is characteristic of the ‘biosociable’. Keywords: Popular science; biosocial; Viking ancestry; Applied Genetic History; Essentialism; Identity 1 Becoming a Viking: DNA Testing, genetic ancestry and placeholder identity1 Introduction Social scientists have become increasingly aware of how contemporary conceptual and technological innovations within the life sciences have begun to reformulate the category of the social, renewing the notion of a ‘biosocial’ domain of enquiry (Meloni, 2014 ; Ingold & Palsson, 2013; Rose 2013). One of the central issues here is that not only is it no longer the sole business of social scientists to define and analyse ‘the social’, but moreover that the very meaning and negotiation of matters like class, family, ancestry and belonging is now happening within contemporary societies through a direct engagement of citizens with practices such as personalized medicine, neurological enhancement and genetic ancestry testing (Schramm, Skinner & Rottenburg, 2012). This latter practice offers particular challenges since it seems to hold the promise, to users, of facilitating biological connections with distant populations and places, giving scientific weight to identification (Nordgren & Juengst, 2009). Small wonder that this apparent capacity to unsettle the past has critics bemoaning the unwelcome return of ‘race’ into the social sciences (Morning, 2014). Population geneticists are themselves extremely wary of the claims made for what genetics can and cannot do. As Jobling et al (this volume) explain, linking a given individual to a specific ancestral group involves cautious speculation on the balance of probabilities (see also Balding et al, 2013). Similarly, Thomas (2013) has refuted the idea of making straightforward claims to lineage, as promoted by commercial genetic ancestry testing companies, as in effect ‘genetic astrology’, a term that has gained currency in ‘skeptic’ circles. But these authoritative and informed claims about what genetics can and cannot do are to some extent distinct from the actual ‘on the ground’ practices of civil engagement with genetic ancestry testing services. Sommer (2012a) has elegantly critiqued the meditational process at work in ‘applied genetic history’, whereby the science of population genetics is presented by stakeholders as though it were a straightforward route of providing individuals with personally tailored information about their likely ancestry. Other critiques have focussed on how popular media (generally books and television) and genetic ancestry testing companies have often collaborated to encourage the belief that it is possible to read an individual’s DNA in such a way as to create a personal link with specific groups in the past. Examples of such critiques include Fortier’s (2011) analysis of the Channel 4 documentary Face of Britain, Nash’s analysis (2004) of the BBC Radio 4 series Surnames, Genes and Genealogy, and Nelson (2008) on the BBC documentary, Motherland: a Genetic Journey. 1 CONTACT Marc Scully, [email protected], @marcdonnchadh 2 These critiques have tended to focus on the framing of genetic knowledge in media and popular science accounts. But what this does not necessarily tell us is of the effect this framing has upon its intended audience. How do the potential consumers or participants of genetic ancestry testing interpret and make use of the knowledge they are provided by the service? The ‘genetic astrology’ critique of the ‘just so’ stories offered by genetic ancestry testing companies, implicitly represents the users of genetic ancestry data as either entirely credulous, or engaged in an activity that is entirely recreational, even frivolous. Such a representation may not allow for the possibility of a more critical engagement with such data on the part of the public, or indeed the role of individual agency. In this paper, we seek to introduce more nuance to this picture through a social psychological study of individual accounts of ‘lay’ engagement with personalized genetic data. We address the ‘reception’ and ‘enactment’ of genetic knowledge through interviews with participants in an academic study of ‘Surnames and the Y Chromosome’. Through quantitative and qualitative data gathered alongside this study, both at the moment of testing, and following the return of DNA results , we are able to explore the representation and expectations this group has of population genetics and show the ways in which the results of genetic testing are incorporated into narratives around ancestry and current identity. The participants in the study were based in the North of England, with the majority being based in Yorkshire. This is a region of the country where there are strong cultural narratives around the legacy of the Viking raids and presence between the latter part and turn of the first millennium (roughly 793 – 1066). The legacy is heavily promoted locally, notably in the Jorvik Viking Centre on York’s Coppergate, and is subject to considerable reconstruction with a contemporary gloss (Addyman, 1990; Halewood & Hannam, 2001; Townend 2014). A Jorvik Viking Festival is now held annually in the streets of York, while associations with the Viking past now appear to be an established part of Yorkshire’s ‘brand identity’; for instance, Yorkshire’s One-Day cricket team were recently rebranded as the ‘Yorkshire Vikings’, with the launch event taking place at the Jorvik Centre. For many participants in the study, possible Viking ancestry is a coveted identity, which has in some cases been subject to family speculation over several generations, and any evidence in support of the claim is a source of strong personal value. However, the potential claim to Viking origins needs to be seen as one that has comparatively ‘low stakes’ in comparison to some of the other ancestry claims discussed in the literature. Duster’s (2011) incisive analysis demonstrates how genetic ancestry testing holds out the possibility to African-Americans of establishing their place in the complex histories of slavery and colonialism, whilst often proving to be corrosive of extant forms of kinship and association. Duster’s examples, 3 along with those from Hamilton (2012) and Golbeck and Roth (2012), have relatively ‘high stakes’, where settling questions of ancestry is entangled with current disputes over rights and benefits. The problem is the manner in which ‘applied population genetics’ is thought to result in an essentialization (or in some cases re-essentialization) of identity that occludes complex social, political and juridical questions (Brodwin, 2005). Indeed, as Phelan et al. (2014) describe, exposure to media coverage around genetic tests of ‘racial admixture’ appears to contribute towards beliefs that ‘races’ are essentially different rather than to challenge traditional racial categories (which have little meaning for contemporary population genetics). However, it is debateable whether this form of essentialization is an inevitable consequence of engaging with ‘applied genetic history’, or whether the normalization of biosocial practices of engagement is associated with greater levels of nuance and individual agency. As such, attention to ‘low stakes’ situations may provide a more realistic picture of the future position of ‘applied genetic history’ in the biosocial. In attending to ‘low stakes’ conditions, we are also aware that the division between these and ‘high-stakes’ engagements is not necessarily clear cut; as illustrated by Lee (2013), low-stakes ‘recreational’ genetic ancestry testing has the capacity to suddenly shift to ‘high-stakes’ outcomes. Despite the lack of any substantive gain, participation in the present study nevertheless represented a form of exchange. In return for their ‘gift of spit’, as Harris et al (2013) describe the saliva sample provided for testing, most participants expected some form of reciprocity. For the majority, this was to learn something about their family history, or ‘origins’, however partial and inconclusive this might be. This echoes Richard Tutton’s (2002, 2004) analysis of interviews with Orkney-based participants in the ‘European Genome Diversity Project’, who saw the donation of their sample (in this case blood rather than saliva) as a way of exploring their family genealogy from a position that was clearly rooted in their current identity as ‘Orcadian’ with its associated social ties. Similarly, the participants here were all to some degree ‘secure’ in their local regional identity, but saw the research as being able to extend and enrich the intersection of their family history with their contemporary regional identification (see Scully et al, 2013). But as both Tutton, and Sommer (2012b) show, gaining knowledge that may inform family genealogy is typically not done for purely personal satisfaction. It is knowledge that can be exchanged or ‘gifted’ to others, notably family members, and in so doing has a role in fostering current family and community bonds. The question then arises as to how this nested set of exchanges, between researcher and participant and then participant and family/community members, mediates the knowledge gained from genetic testing, and the social actions it accomplishes in the course of this process. Whilst population geneticists seek to aggregate individual DNA results to explore past migrations at a population level 4 (Jobling et al., 2014), participants are, arguably, looking for a personalized ‘usable’ past. In other words, they seek knowledge that may assist them in elaborating or constructing a narrative around the past that has some relevance for understanding the present. This may take the form of knowledge that allows a family tree to be extended beyond the limits of existing record keeping - to find a lineage that goes far beyond five or six generations (see Scully et al, 2013). But since the results of genetic testing concern genetic markers that, taken in isolation, provide little anchoring for other kinds of information, the kinds of narratives that they resource concern what Simpson (2000) calls ‘imagined genetic communities’. That is, a representation of collectivity and ‘being like us’ that has its basis in the effort to elaborate the rather minimal and fragmentary information provided by the results of genetic testing. Here one of the obstacles to constructing a ‘usable past’ is the complexity of the results themselves, particularly when they are presented in a relatively unmediated form. As Catherine Nash (2004, 2015) has eloquently argued, the very idea of ‘genetic kinship’ is a highly unstable notion that requires enormous situated cultural ‘work’ to offer any meaning. It does not provide ready-made narratives for participants, and may in fact do precisely the reverse by destabilising existing narratives of past origins. As our colleagues Jobling et al (this volume) make clear, the ‘markers of identity’ offered by population genetics are by definition unsuited to the work of fixing individual identity. However, as a body of research has shown, this does not stop the recipients of genetic knowledge in experimenting with creative identification around such markers. For instance, Sommer (2012b) outlines the light- hearted, playful way in which Swiss customers of the iGENEA company engaged with their newly- determined ‘Scottish’ or ‘Viking’ roots. However, she also warns that despite the intentions of either company or consumers, this form of recreational genomics cannot be entirely separated from wider political disputes about Swiss identity and culture. In the same way that for Michael Billig (1995), ‘banal’ did not necessarily imply ‘benign’, here too ‘playful’ does not necessarily imply ‘harmless’. In applying the term ‘marker’ to this kind of experimentation, it is perhaps best to use the metaphor of a bookmark, or a ‘placeholder of identity’ that temporarily positions genetic knowledge within narratives of identity. A placeholder is a means of indicating a provisional identity in advance of determining its meaning or utility. As such, it points to the work that is yet to be done, or seeks to keep something in play that might otherwise be lost. For example, in Hurst’s (2014) research on genealogical connections in the North-East of England, participants would retain vague or apparently irrelevant information in the hope that it might at some point result in ‘adding to the story’ (Hurst, 2014, p. 148). Placeholders of identity – such as information on haplogroups – have a kind of deferred status. They may be something of a puzzle for now, or as with Sommer’s participants, an 5 oddity that provokes humour rather than serious identification, but they nevertheless accrue value within the exchanges between researchers, participants and communities. The guiding thread for this paper will then be the focus on how the results of genetic testing are mediated through a series of nested exchanges, the constitution of placeholders of identity in the course of constructing usuable personal pasts and the social uses to which genetic knowledge is then put by participants and their families. Methodology and Context The study occurs in the context of Turi’s on-going project on ‘Surnames & the Y chromosome’, which aims to build a picture of the genetic legacy of the Vikings in Northern England, in relation to surnames that are inherited, like the Y chromosome, through the male line (King & Jobling, 2009). All participants interviewed by us were first recruited for this current study, which sought men with highly localized, relatively rare, surnames and who had an established genealogical connection to the local region. Sampling sessions were carried out in January 2012 in York, Harrogate, Lancaster and Keswick, following advertisements in local media as well as genealogical websites. At each of these sessions, participants were asked to fill in a participant-motivation survey (see Scully et al 2013 for further details). Participants were twice provided with information about the wider use to which the data were being put, as well as the necessary caveats about drawing inferences about ancestry from individual DNA results: at the sampling session, and again accompanying the returned results. The information sheet accompanying the results contains a map illustrating the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups in contemporary Europe, as well as some information about the geographical history of each haplogroup. A haplogroup is a classification of a man’s Y-chromosome that is based on mutations (insertions or deletions of DNA and ‘single nucleotide polymorphisms’ or SNPs) that have occurred in the DNA sequence over generations. There are 20 main haplogroups referred to with letters (e.g. A, B, C etc) based on mutations that occurred thousands of years ago and subdivisions within each group (e.g. R1a, R1b etc) based on more recent mutations. Population geneticists are able to make approximate calculations as to when these mutations occurred, and map their contemporary geographical clustering. Haplogroups R1a and I1 are frequent in Scandinavia, and therefore more likely to have been carried by Viking populations. However the information sheet provided with the study is careful not to suggest that a man with one of these Y chromosome types will definitively have Viking ancestry through the male line. Unlike some commercial companies, individual results are returned but the results are not linked to any historical cultural group, and thus 6 not presented as proof of Viking ancestry. The researchers stress that the Y-chromosome only contains information about one strand of genetic ancestry (i.e. that of the male-line only). From Turi’s experience, while it is clear that many participants do appreciate the complexities of the research, there are others who see this complexity as an obstacle to direct proof of Viking ancestry. Participants were asked to supply contact details if they were willing to participate in follow-up interviews after their DNA results had been returned to them. A decision was taken to narrow the focus of this follow-up study to Yorkshire, both for logistical reasons and due to the growing extent to which Yorkshire now trades on its Viking heritage, as previously discussed. After DNA results were returned in June 2013, we approached participants who had attended the sessions in York and Harrogate, and asked them to participate in a follow-up interview. Not all of those who had initially indicated willingness replied; while there may be many reasons for this, it is possible that at least some of those who were disappointed with their results, wanted no more to do with the project. Overall, 18 interviews were conducted between July and December 2013, mostly in participants’ own homes in Yorkshire. In the majority of cases, the interviews were carried out on a one-to-one basis, but it was not unusual for family members to be present and occasionally contribute to the conversation. In keeping with the demographic profile of the sampling sessions, participants were mostly men in late middle-age, or past retirement. Marc conducted the interviews, which were semi-structured. While some were relatively brief, lasting approximately half an hour, the majority lasted an hour or more. Each interview covered the topics of the participants’ own interest in family history, local history and the Vikings; their sense of local and national identity as related to their ancestry; their awareness and understanding of population genetics, and their reaction to their results. Analysis, as carried out by Marc and Steve, initially focused on how participants drew on genealogical, genetic and wider socio-cultural resources to position themselves in relation to the past. Below, we have focused specifically on how participants made sense of their results with reference to the potential of being of Viking descent; in particular we were interested in how participants narrate the process of becoming involved in the research, receiving and interpreting their results. We were also interested in how these narratives inform the stories they have told their friends and family members about their ‘Viking heritage’ (or lack thereof). The question therefore is how the participants’ DNA results are rhetorically organized in order to allow them to make claims about their own identities. 7 Prior Knowledge: ‘This is incredible use of genetic research’ All of the respondents who took part in the study had some form of prior understanding of genetics, which underpinned their motivation and interest in participating. For the majority, this knowledge was mediated by history and popular science television programmes which featured genetic ancestry testing. In the first extract, Miles makes reference to the BBC TV show Meet the Ancestors: Extract 1: Marc: How did this come onto your radar, the fact that this was something you could get done? Miles: Oh, erm well, there'd been various programs on the telly. Uh and one that really struck me there was a Meet the Ancestors and they'd found a skull in Dorset or Devon. And it was a village rather like [participant’s home village] where people didn't leave. And so they'd found this skull and they'd dated it to two thousand BC. And they had a reconstruction made of the face and they did DNA checks with the villagers who could indicate that their ancestors had been there for some time. And at the end of the program they had this *remarkable* scene, where they got the head on a stand on the stage of the village hall with a cover over it. And they said to all the people in the audience there is somebody who is related to this person. Can Mr so-and-so come up on stage. And so they stood him alongside of this reconstructed head under the cover. And then they took the cover off and they could have been twins. It was absolutely amazing. Over four thousand years. And at the time, I thought, this is incredible use of genetic research. I just got completely fascinated by the idea that uh- and it kind of reinforced what I said earlier about people being essentially the same over long periods of history, y'know, they're physically the same and probably have the same ambitions and most people just want a quiet life, bring the kids up, see them doing well, y'know, and that's been the same throughout history, I think. This particular ‘remarkable’ scene in a long running series appears to have convinced Miles of the ‘incredible’ power of genetics to enable authoritative accounts of ancestry stretching back into the deep past (‘over four thousand years’). Genetics is here part of an evidential package that includes other forms of evidence, such as archaeological materials and facial reconstruction, which together can demonstrate a direct link to the past. To some extent this understanding of the power of genetics when combined with other techniques is broadly informed by its framing within Meet the Ancestors, where the archaeological excavation of 8 human remains was presented in each episode using the narrative tropes of ‘cold case’ detective mysteries. In the episode in question, the results of genetic testing are delivered as part of a ‘reveal’ set up, where the past-in-the-present is dramatically revealed. This allows Miles to see himself as part of something like an ‘imagined genetic community’ that stretches back over thousands of years. However it is noteworthy that whilst genetics is one of the means to uncovering this continuity over time, it does not appear to be the ‘essential’ property that links Miles to Iron Age Britons. Although Miles proposes that people are ‘physically the same’, he rapidly adds a list of unvarying social attributes that have persisted over time, such as a desire for a ‘quiet life’ and to see ‘the kids’ do well. So rather than arriving at genetic or biological reductionism, it appears that for Miles the application of genetics here leads to a socio-cultural essentialism where prior beliefs in the unchanging nature of those who have dwelt in the same local area across the centuries is enriched or confirmed by genetic ancestry testing. However, respondents were aware that genetic testing could also challenge longstanding convictions around ancestry. In extract 2, Lawrence (accompanied by his daughter Rosemary) refers to the popular genealogy TV programme Who Do You Think You Are?: Extract 2: Lawrence: Well if you watch Who Do You Think You Are you know a lot of them people have got the DNA and thinking they’re half this and that and then all of a sudden they get the DNA and they find out they’re not you know, ooh that would be interesting, but I still felt that I was you know, I was a northerner and I was, you know, of Viking origin or Scandinavian origin so it’s Rosemary: Well there was that as well wasn’t there, there was this, when that came out Marc: This is the, the Face of Britain Rosemary: The Face of Britain one which had, it was like, yeah can I get on one of them studies. You were desperate to get on one of them studies, weren’t you? How do I get my DNA taken yeah [Lawrence: to prove it] yeah (laughs). Marc: So when the opportunity came up then you really jumped at, yeah, yeah Rosemary: We’ve never heard the last of it for years (laughs). 9