The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (51 page)

community-wide institutions for many decades'' (Duncan, 1999a, p. 152).

The strong sense of civic life that exists in Gray Mountain has existed in the

face of both class and ethnic differences. The differences are not minor, but they did not become the dividing lines along which resources and political and

economic participation were distributed. Duncan (1999a) explains this as a

result of the community's tradition of public investment, limited economic

inequality, and a large, stable middle class. She attributes the differences between Blackwell, Dahlia, and Gray Mountain to differences in thè`political economy

and the social relations that economy generated'' (p. 200).

Duncan's argument suggests the need to examine closely the social relations of

rural communities and the nature of political, economic, and civic participation in an effort to understand why and how change occurs or is blocked. The legacy

of inequality and racial exclusion provides the basis for social relations that are still in place today. In some areas, particularly in the rural South, these relations have remained in place despite government interventions (Hyland and Timberlake, 1993, p. 87). In some instances, as she points out in the cases of Dahlia and Blackwell, new industries did not invest in these areas, not because of the skills of workers but because the coal and plantation owners actively discouraged

them in order to limit competition for their workforce. In my own research in the Mississippi Delta, I found that economic development was often centered on

maintaining the traditional paternalistic relationships between traditional white elites and poor blacks. In these counties, economic developers specifically sought low-wage industries. These minimum wage industries, such as the catfish

processing plants in Mississippi, tended to employ a disproportionately large

Rediscovering Rural America

209

number of women until unionization became more widespread and/or wages

increased. In the case of catfish processing, the percentage of female workers in unionized plants dropped from approximately 90 to 50 percent after 1987 when

some plants were unionized and wages rose.

Conclusion: Rural Building Blocks

The literature on rural poverty clearly indicates that place matters. Living in

rural communities subjects children, women, and families to greater risks of

poverty. In the case of children of color, these risks are compounded because

many of them and their families live in places where institutions historically

designed to oppress and exclude their people still shape economic, political, and social relations.

Improving outcomes for children will require improved economic opportun-

ities for families, especially for mothers on whom so many solely depend. And

improving economic opportunities will require a reinvestment in communities

and in the people who live there. While the challenges to this kind of rebuilding are great, there are people, programs, and institutions which can provide a basis for beginning this work. The aspirations of many local people and their willingness to work hard is the first building block for improving the lives of poor rural children.

Most low-income rural families, like families throughout the United States,

aspire to have their children, if not themselves, participate in the mainstream of the economy. Although they might not know all of the means to that end and

may lack the social capital to facilitate those outcomes, education is generally recognized as an essential first step. In my research in Mississippi and Tennessee, the overwhelming majority of the women identified education as an important

goal for themselves and especially for their children. The women we interviewed

saw education in this way despite the fact that the route to educational uplift is a difficult one, and its rewards, in the counties we studied, were limited (Dill,

1998).

Duncan (1999a) argues that the one policy that would immediately help the

poor in both rural and urban America is creating good public schools. According

to Duncan, however, education is important not only for individual mobility but

also as a catalyst for political change (p. 206). When one reads this argument, in light of Stack's (1996) work on return migration, it is apparent that education

includes schooling but goes beyond that to include exposure to new ideas, new

ways of working together, and a willingness to challenge the status quo. What

Stack (1996) finds in her research is that the millions of migrants and return

migrants who have moved from the Midwest and East to the rural Sunbelt have

brought with them new ways of thinking and acting that have changed the

South.

In addition to the return migrants, some members of the elite and of the

middle class recognize that change and enhancing opportunities for poor resid-

ents are in the long-term interest of the community. The presence of small groups 210

Bonnie Thornton Dill

of people who are willing to work collectively toward change is a second

building block for improving the lives of poor rural children.

Rural communities have been actively engaged in economic development

strategies for some time now, and there is considerable knowledge and expertise

about community capacities, needs, and employment-generating opportunities.

In combination with improving schooling, these communities also need to gen-

erate jobs that will provide a better return on education and experience for the residents. The effort and interest of a number of local people in economic

development is a third building block for improving the incomes of poor families and the lives of poor rural children.

Initiatives designed to improve outcomes for children by addressing the needs

of families and communities are required to facilitate change in persistently poor rural communities with high concentrations of people of color. Yet, in many of

these places, creating change will require overcoming the historical barriers and entrenched control that local elites have over community economic and social

resources. Convincing elites that they should support and promote broad-scale

community investment will be even more difficult than convincing poor people

that change in their communities is possible. Yet the active engagement of

segments of each of these groups is essential to improving the lives of poor

children in the rural USA today.

Part IV

Science, Knowledge, and

Ideas

15

The Sociology of Science and the

Revolution in Molecular Biology

Troy Duster

While there are many avenues, thè`natural trajectory'' of the sociology

of science would seem to follow most closely those developments and discip-

lines in science and technology that alter, or are most likely to alter, social

relations. From mid-twentieth century and into the 1970s, physics and attend-

ant developments with atom-splitting nuclear power, and later the micro-

electronic revolution, commanded the greatest attention. In the past decades

these fields have been rivaled and in some instances eclipsed, at least in

media attention and the popular imagination, by developments in molecular

biology.

Yet the two major scientific revolutions that have taken off in the past three

decades have produced strikingly different responses from social analysts of

science. The first ± the microelectronic revolution, with its ever-increasing presence in everyday life, from the worksites to the educational and leisure activities of more and more people ± has been fairly well chronicled and analyzed. The

second major revolution ± the revolution in molecular biology and molecular

genetics ± has not received even a fraction of the attention from social studies of science that the microelectronic revolution has. This is something of an oddity, given both the current and the potential impact of the genetic revolution on how individuals, members of families, and social groups think about each other.

Indeed, it has already had demonstrable impact upon how we avoid, insure,

stigmatize, and `èxplain'' each other.

There are a number of important markers to highlight both the speed and the

drama. These include the more sensational developments and breakthroughs,

such as the technique of somatic nuclear cell transfer (with the realization of

mammalian cloning and the specter of human cloning), and germ-line gene

therapy (with its specter of altering the genetic make-up of future generations).

But there is the more current and even more likely prospect of growing organs

214

Troy Duster

from animals genetically engineered to produce greater compatibility with the

new human host's immunological system.

In the last half of 1996, the boundary of legitimate gene therapy intervention

was drawn at the genetic engineering affecting somatic cells. The latter is a

potential therapy for a person with a genetic disorder ± but a therapy that affects only the body of the person being treated. But in only 18 months, molecular

biologists began to claim in a widely publicized public forum that work with

stem cells is the easiest and best way to intervene in genetic disorders. In March 1998, at a conference at the Los Angeles campus of the University of California, a group of leading molecular geneticists convened to support this position with

near unanimity. A few months later, in September 1998, the National Institutes

of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee received a proposal to fund

in utero gene therapy for the treatment for a specific genetic condition:

treatment of adenosine deaminase (ADA) deficiency. We propose a direct injection into the 13±15 week fetus of a retroviral vector carrying a normal copy of the

human ADA gene controlled by human genomic ADA regulatory sequences.

Because it is a direct in vivo injection, an occasional vector particle may enter an egg or sperm, thereby resulting in germline gene transfer. The magnitude of this risk will be determined by animal studies over the next 2±3 years. (Anderson, 1999)

The implications of this would, if fully understood, catch the attention of the

laity, because with ``germ-line'' interventions (as noted above) there can be

deliberate and conscious impact upon future generations, with the manipulation

of the genetic make-up. The American Association for the Advancement of

Science immediately convened two national panels to reflect upon these devel-

opments and requested that they produce position papers with recommendations

in the year 2000.

While there will be some general public interest in the content and outcome of

these deliberations and recommendations, for sociologists of science, an even

more remarkable saga has suddenly surfaced for the nation of Iceland. Foresee-

ing an important window to the future, a number of social analysts of science are shifting their focus and their intellectual and research interests to that site. Here is why.

Iceland as a Potential Genetic Goldmine

On December 17, 1998, the Icelandic Parliament passed a Bill that provides legal access for a private company to obtain a comprehensive genetic database for the

entire population of the country. (The entire nation of Iceland has a population of only about 270,000). Only one among the 41 members of the coalition

government voted against the Bill (Berger, 1999). The expressed purpose of the

legislation is to encourage research on the molecular basis of twelve genetic

disorders, where exclusive access to the database has been provided to a USA-

based biotechnology firm. This company is based in Delaware, and has major

The Sociology of Science

215

financial backing from both American investors and the Swiss pharmaceutical

company Hoffman-La Roche.

Just one month before the vote in the Parliament, a Gallup poll reported that

only 13 percent of the nation's adults felt that they were sufficiently knowledgeable about the Bill to have an `ìnformed'' opinion. Nonetheless, 82 percent of

the respondents said they were in favor of the database being generated (Enser-

ink, 1998, p. 891). One of the big issues is personal privacy. Health data and

medical detail will be taken from hospital records, and new data will be added

from time to time. While the identity will be encrypted, this is quite a departure from making the data entries completely anonymous. (This permits one to

conjure up the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. For example, what if an Icelandic

patient is diagnosed with a condition for which there is possible treatment? The Icelandic Medical Association opposed the Bill.) But that is only the surface of some of the intractable ethical and social concerns that reverberate around this development. Scientists not working with the private companies will have no

access to these data. Another transparently controversial aspect of the deal is the fact that the biotechnology company, named deCODE, need not obtain

informed consent from those in the database.

Iceland has kept medical data on its population for more than a century, and

the database would also contain the records of the deceased. When combined

with both stored and newly collected blood and tissue samples, and further

supplanted by detailed genealogical charts and records, the biotechnology com-

pany that will mine these databases believes that it has a head start in searching for genes that are implicated in human disease. But there is another element to