The Genome Factor: What the Social Genomics Revolution Reveals about Ourselves, Our History, and the Future

262 Pages·2017·2.95 MB·English

by  Dalton Conley

THE GENOME FACTOR
THE GENOME FACTOR
What the Social Genomics Revolution Reveals about
Ourselves, Our History, and the Future
DALTON CONLEY
AND JASON FLETCHER
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Conley, Dalton, 1969– author. | Fletcher, Jason, author.
Title: The genome factor : what the social genomics revolution reveals about ourselves, our
history, and the future / Dalton Conley and Jason Fletcher.
Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2017] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016036571 | ISBN 9780691164748 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Genomics–
Social aspects. | Heredity, Human—Social aspects. | Equality. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE /
Sociology General. | SCIENCE Life Sciences Genetics & Genomics. | SOCIAL SCIENCE Disease &
Health Issues.
Classification: LCC QH438.7 .C656 2017 | DDC 576.5—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036571
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in
Sabon Next LT Pro & Montserrat.
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: Molecular Me: Welcome to the Coming Social Genomics 1
Revolution
CHAPTER 2: The Durability of Heritability: Genes and Inequality 12
CHAPTER 3: If Heritability Is So High, Why Can’t We Find It? 35
CHAPTER 4: Genetic Sorting and Cavorting in American Society 60
CHAPTER 5: Is Race Genetic? A New Take on the Most Fraught, Distracting, 84
and Nonsensical Question in the World
CHAPTER 6: The Wealth of Nations: Something in Our Genes? 113
CHAPTER 7: The Environment Strikes Back: The Promise and Perils of 136
Personalized Policy
CONCLUSION: Whither Genotocracy? 170
EPILOGUE: Genotocracy Rising, 2117 188
APPENDIX 1 196
APPENDIX 2 200
APPENDIX 3 204
APPENDIX 4 209
APPENDIX 5 219
APPENDIX 6 225
NOTES 233
INDEX 277
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At least three key programs helped set up the foundation for our
collaboration for this book. The first is the Integrating Genetics and
Social Science Conference (IGSS), directed by our friend and collaborator
Jason Boardman. One of our early interactions was Conley dismantling
Fletcher’s paper at the first annual conference, which is now in its
seventh year at the University of Colorado’s Institute for Behavioral
Science. This conference has formed the epicenter of much of the science
we highlight in the book, and we thank Jason Boardman, Jane Menken,
Richard Jessor as well as the staff and funders of the conference,
Population Association of America, the NICHD, IBS, and Colorado
Population Center, among others, for such an invigorating and engaging
(and continuing) set of events. The second is the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program at Columbia University.
Fletcher spent 2010–2012 in the program, which allowed us to discuss
joint work that set some of the groundwork for the book. Fletcher also
deeply thanks Peter Bearman, Bruce Link, and Zoe Donaldson for advice,
support, and engagement during this time as well as former colleagues at
Yale who cultivated this research direction, especially Paul Cleary, Joel
Gelernter, and Mark Schlesinger. Conley is grateful to the NYU biology
department for allowing him to go back to school to learn the difference
between siRNA and miRNA and piRNA. And thanks also to the NYU
administration that countenanced such an unusual arrangement—
especially to Provost David McLaughlin.
Along the way, we have benefited from advice and support from a
large number of colleagues and collaborators. Our friends and
collaborators in this domain of research include but surely are not
limited to (alphabetically): Dan Belsky, Daniel Benjamin, Jason
Boardman, Richard Bonneau, David Cesarini, Justin Cook, Christopher
Dawes, Ben Domingue, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Phillip Koellinger,
Thomas Laidley, Steve Lehrer, Patrick Magnusson, Matthew McQueen,
Michael Purugganan, Emily Rauscher, Niels Rietveld, Lauren Schmitz,
and Mark Siegal. They have all substantially enhanced our research
efforts as well as the wider field. We also thank Jason Boardman, Justin
Cook, Mitchell Duneier, Angela Forgues, Joel Gelernter, Joel Han, Ryne
Marksteiner, Ann Morning, Jessica Polos, Matthew Salganik, and Maria
Serakos for their extensive comments on various chapters of the book. In
the Princeton Sociology Department, Amanda Rowe copyedited several
versions of the manuscript, improving it with each pass.
We have been generously funded over the last years by a variety of
organizations.
Conley gratefully acknowledges the Russell Sage Foundation for both
his time as a visiting scholar in residence there as well as the subsequent
awarding of a research grant that supported some of this work (Grant #
83-15-29: “GxE and Health Inequality across the Life Course”). Conley
also thanks the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for its Individual
Fellowship (“In Search of Missing Heritability”). Finally, he would like to
acknowledge the National Science Foundation, which supported his
second Ph.D. studies in the form of the Alan T. Waterman Award (SES-
0540543). Internal research support from both New York University and
Princeton University also made this work possible. Visiting stints at the
University of Auckland, Bielefeld University, Yale University’s Center on
Inequality and the Life Course and at the Institute for Behavioral Science
at the University of Colorado at Boulder were all helpful opportunities
for Conley to develop the ideas herein. In particular, he would like to
thank hosts Richard Breen (Yale, now Oxford); Peter Davis (Auckland);
Martin Diewald (Bielefeld) and Jason Boardman (Colorado).
Fletcher gratefully acknowledges the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program and the William T. Grant
Foundation Scholars Program for career development support. Fletcher
is particularly grateful for the advice from Adam Gamoran, Richard
Murname, David Deming, Joshua Brown, Patrick Sharkey, and Jelena
Obradovic at the Scholars Retreat workshop. Fletcher also is grateful for
research support and generous colleagues from the La Follette School of
Public Affairs, Department of Sociology, Center for Demography and
Ecology, Center for Demography of Health and Aging, and Institute for
Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
We also have benefited from numerous kind souls at Princeton
University Press who have expertly helped us at every step. Thanks to
Eric Schwartz who acquired the book before decamping for Columbia
University Press. Meagan Levinson picked up where Schwartz left off by
providing exceptional guidance and a thoughtful and patient ear to keep
us on track and our audience in mind. Gail Schmitt provided excellent
copyediting. Leslie Grundfest and Karen Carter were very efficient
production editors. If you are reading this, it is probably due to the
efforts of Julia Haav and Caroline Priday in the PUP publicity
department. Conley, in particular, wants to thank Peter Dougherty, the
director of the press, who first wanted to publish him almost 20 years
earlier, when Conley was just out of graduate school (the first time) and
Dougherty was the sociology editor for the press. Lastly, the entire staff
helped smooth out all the wrinkles.
Last, but not least, we both have wonderful, supportive, loving
families to thank. Conley would like to express his gratitude to his kids E
and Yo for teaching him the power of genetics through their differences
and for providing the perfect audience for him to practice explaining his
ideas over take-out dinners; his parents, Steve and Ellen, for bequeathing
much more than their DNA; and to his partner, Tea Temim, who
challenges his assumptions (and math), always. Fletcher owes an
incalculable (but never tallied) debt to Erika, Anna, and Isaac for the gift
of time to concentrate on his first book project and their encouragement;
to Phil, Paula, Jim, Cindy, Ann, and Justin for active engagement and
interest in what he has been up to and their unconditional support.
And, finally, thanks to the untold generations before us who have
bequeathed both their genes and their culture, even if that dual-
patrimony makes our statistical models all the more complicated.