The DNA Mystique: The gene as a cultural icon (1996) 10/7/04. Reviewed by Jon Turney Dorothy Nelkin and Susan Lindee on the genome as the soul of the cell.

There is genetics, an ever-growing science that describes DNA and all its works. And there is 'gene talk', where everyone else tries to figure out what genes are and what they mean. The American Sociologist Dorothy Nelkin and Historian Susan Lindee were fascinated by gene talk. Where did it happen? Did it bear any resemblance to the science? And what might its effects be?

As the results of the Human Genome Project start to work their way into medicine and industry, the volume of gene talk is still rising. And Nelkin and Lindee's survey of how it goes is still a fascinating guide to the ways we chew over genes in the wider culture.

Their survey is broad in two ways. It goes back into history, to the days of concern for the 'germ plasm' and the early 20th-century preoccupation with eugenics, mainly in the US. And it looks at a host of different kinds of later examples – newspaper and magazine articles, of course, but also cartoons, comic strips, commercials and soap operas.

In all this they see continuities with past discussions. Some current presentations depict genes as the root of social problems just as the eugenicists saw hereditary flaws as the key to the burden of 'feeble-mindedness' and other allegedly innate qualities. And they find a great deal of gene talk which sees the genome as the essence of the person, a kind of secular equivalent of the soul. This is reinforced by much of the imagery deployed by some scientists talking up the genome project in its early days – who spoke of the Holy Grail of genetics, the Book of Man, or simply of compiling the Bible.

Their overall conclusion is that the 1990s saw a resurgence of popular genetic determinism, the idea that genes are all-powerful 'master-molecules' directing development and behaviour.

Their overall conclusion is that the 1990s saw a resurgence of popular genetic determinism, the idea that genes are all-powerful 'master-molecules' directing development and behaviour. Child-care manuals switched from advising how to maximise your baby's potential to learning to live with the traits it was born with.

For Nelkin and Lindee, this apparent dominance of genes in the popular imagination is a bad thing, because it obscures other causes of personal and social problems, and diverts attention from other kinds of solutions. That seems fair enough, although others have doubted if the determinist picture is quite as strongly drawn as they suggest, in spite of all those 'genes for' in newspaper headlines. 'The DNA Mystique' covers such a range of material that the survey can never be complete – this is not the kind of social science which comes with sampling frames and correlation coefficients. There have also been suggestions that what are taken to be determinist metaphors – the genes as a 'blueprint' is a common example – are not always heard or read that way by the consumers of this. Nevertheless, the book remains a challenging depiction of many aspects of the image of genes and DNA that circulate in our culture.

Book details

Paperback 286 pages (November 8, 1996)
Publisher: W H Freeman
ISBN: 0716730499