The politics of genealogical incorporation: ethnic difference, genetic relatedness and national belonging

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the relationship between genomic accounts of ethnic origins and distinctiveness and genealogical models of ethnic and national similarity and difference. It does so by focusing on genetic investigations of Irish Traveller origins in the context of ongoing campaigns for state recognition of Irish Travellers as an ethnic group, and in relation to the politics of national belonging. The ostensibly ethical practice of liberal genomics is entangled with the fraught politics of the Irish state’s commitments to addressing ethnic minority rights, insistence on differentiating between Travellers and other ethnic groups on the basis of genealogical difference, and the genealogical incorporation of Travellers within the national community of shared descent. Though ideas of ancestral relatedness across social or cultural boundaries are often figured as politically progressive, locating groups within a national family tree on the basis of genealogical relatedness can simultaneously deny ethnic difference and naturalize exclusive models of nationhood.