CALL FOR PAPERS

MAKING MUTATIONS: OBJECTS, PRACTICES, CONTEXTS
Cultural History of Heredity Workshop
at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
13-15 January 2009

This workshop aims to investigate mutation as a relatively unexplored phenomenon
of interest in the history of biology. Analytical approaches to be employed may
include the study of mutations as objects (mutants), as technical and social
practices (mutagenesis, models, and networks), and in their many varied
political and cultural contexts, from the dawn of genetics through the atomic
era.

Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 June 2008.


Abstract 
	
Throughout the twentieth century, mutations have been at the heart of the
sciences of heredity—from the publication of Hugo de Vries’ Die Mutationstheorie
in 1901 to the rise of classical genetics, theoretical population genetics,
molecular biology and beyond. Although mutations have played central roles in
the emergence of each of these fields, they have been generally overshadowed by
an overwhelming popular and scholarly attention to the related concept of the
gene. Recent scholarship has reminded us, however, that genetics was understood
and practiced in widely different ways among different communities of
practitioners, not all of whom were primarily concerned with the gene itself,
but many of whom engaged with the study and production of mutants and mutation
at various levels and contexts—in the field, the laboratory, and elsewhere.

From ever-transmuting concepts of mutation and shifts in discourse to novel
practices in the field and laboratory, to the distribution and regulation of
mutagens and broad-scale governmental involvement, mutation thus seems a
particularly fruitful way to explore how the study of heredity in the organism
and heredity in society intertwined, from Die Mutationstheorie until the dawn of
biotech. Engaging with mutations as our focus of study—rather than genes in
general—thus opens up new vistas for exploration as well as new approaches to
otherwise familiar material.

Objects

The place of mutants in the history of genetics has been thus far
underestimated. Time and again geneticists used mutants to understand heredity:
the mutant was that which violated the established order, the unexpected
surprising element that was both anathema to conceptual order and yet central to
experimental practices producing that order. At first unpredictable in their
occurrence and form, attempts were repeatedly made in the first half of the
twentieth century to induce mutants at will, to control evolution, and to
harness its power for human ends—with distinctly mixed results. Mutants often
remained surprising and were sometimes dangerous, as were frequently the
techniques used to produce them. Wily epistemic things, mutants provided always
new, and yet always familiar, ways for heredity to jump out again as an
unrestrained, unsolved phenomenon. Understanding mutants as objects can help us
begin to more fully explore their central role in the history of biology of this
period.

Practices

Mutants—and mutations more generally—proliferated throughout the first half of
the twentieth century. Understanding the production, amplification, and
domestication of mutation in this period entails close study of the varied
manners and contexts of practice:  from operative concepts and interpretations
of mutation to specific techniques and moral economies. Engaging with mutants
embedded in such practices can perhaps help us to begin to unpack the
relationships between “mutants” and “mutations” and those who dealt with
them—and with each other.

In the study of transmission heredity, for example, the induction of mutations
often entailed a mode of inquiry that included altering the environment partly
by means of new tools: radium, X-rays, and chemicals. Such new tools existed in
complex relationships with practices of characterizing and enumerating mutation:
what was a mutation? How could one detect its occurrence? Moreover, the use of
such mutation-inducing tools also points directly to relations with larger
society: the use of radiation and chemical compounds is inextricable from
broader processes of medicalization and industrialization in the first half of
the twentieth century. The study of mutation as both object and practice thus
also requires paying close attention to the ways in which social institutions,
agricultural imperatives, eugenical concerns, clinical hopes, and industrial
relations all aligned in particular configurations at particular junctures in
time.

Contexts and Connections

No longer merely a nodal point in a network of small-scale specialist
communities and practices, mutation thus came to embrace a variety of larger
social concerns in times of world-historical change, from eugenical worries and
matters of social welfare to the development of novel forms of risk assessment
able to face a brave new mutagenic world. As the role of state governments
proved central to the regulation of toxic mutagens, mutations were inherently
part of a broader biopolitics, a situation that became ever more true with the
dawning of the atomic age, fears of radioactive fall-out, the emergence of
concepts of “genetic load,” and the far-reaching environmental policies of the
nineteen-sixties. By mid-century, the environment was no longer merely a tool or
a resource for the scientific study of mutation. Rather, broader social and
industrial processes that made such novel mutagens available in the first place
had turned the environment into an arena of urgent social alarm. But biopolitics
operated at more conceptual and simultaneously explicitly “political” dimensions
as well: in altering the hereditary substance by changing environmental
conditions, for example, the use of mutagens placed dimensions of genetics in a
complicated position with respect to questions of Lamarckism and challenges from
Lysenkoism. Such macroscale dimensions of the history of mutation also are in
need of their histories.

Topics and Questions

Exploring the ways in which using mutation as an analytical lens can move us
from the laboratory to the world and back again is our goal. What new narratives
in the history of classical genetics, and of the interwoven texture of its
scientific and social dimensions, can we uncover with mutation as our
centerpiece? How can mutation as an analytical frame enrich our understanding of
the cultural history of heredity?

Such new narratives to be developed might include the following topics:

• the development of powerful new research traditions (such as “Oenotheory”)

• early attempts to induce mutation and to design synthetic new species and to
control evolution for human purposes

• discerning biological levels of mutation and varieties of mutagens

• addressing shifting and plural meanings of mutation in science, politics, and
popular culture

• exploring mutations as processes/tools

• examining mutants as products/model organisms (e.g., Drosophila, jimsonweed,
phage, humans)

• situating mutants as nodal points in networks of practices, moral economies,
and institutions

• comparing different national and transnational contexts of mutation research

Abstracts (500 words) and contact information should be sent to Luis Campos at
lcampos@drew.edu by 15 June 2008.

Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Boltzmannstraße 22
14195 Berlin

We envision being able to respond to all proposals by July 2008. Travel and
accommodation costs of speakers will be covered. Accepted participants should
prepare to present for 25-30 minutes, and will be expected to provide a final
draft of their work by 15 November 2008, in order to ensure commentators
sufficient time for response.

For in-depth information relating to the project “A Cultural History of Heredity,” 
see http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/workshops/en/HEREDITY/

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