Genetics, Community, and Identity

Abstract The chapter explores the growing body of genetic research into Jewish history that has been widely commented on in the mass media and broader non-academic sources and has attracted the attention of social anthropologists providing wide-ranging theoretical perspectives on the cultural and sociopolitical significance of such testing. The chapter considers the implications that this research has for the studied communities and argues that while it leaves room for the emergence of alternative genealogies and epistemological regimes that should not be viewed in a hierarchical way in relation to the knowledge offered by geneticists, the readiness to use genetic information to affirm preferred modes of self-identification could be seen as a symptom of wider sociopolitical tendencies that privilege naturalist accounts of human difference.