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Photo of Shai Mulinari. Private photo.

Shai Mulinari

Associate Professor | Senior Lecturer

Photo of Shai Mulinari. Private photo.

Ambivalence about Race : Expert opinions on using racial and ethnic categories in clinical research in Sweden

Author

  • Anna Bredström
  • Shai Mulinari

Editor

  • Nils Ellebrecht
  • Tino Plümecke
  • Isabelle Bartram
  • Veronika Lipphardt
  • Jenny Reardon
  • Andrea zur Nieden

Summary, in English

This chapter examines the localized ambivalence surrounding the use of race in contemporary biomedicine: how race is constructed as both valid/relevant and invalid/irrelevant in a specific national setting. It is based on interviews with twenty-six expert professionals in Sweden who are directly or indirectly involved in clinical pharmaceutical research, including clinical researchers, research nurses, pharmacists, regulators, statisticians, and professionals from the pharmaceutical industry and clinical trial companies. The analysis explores how the professionals narrate their experiences and understandings of racialized concepts and categories. Most interviewees express strong postracial sentiments by rejecting race as a scientifically valid and useful concept. However, our analysis shows that race is nonetheless present in their professional experiences and discourses, enacted in three ways: through the mundane, everyday use of racial categories in clinical trials; through the conflation of ethnicity and race; and through a population genetics discourse about the scientific usefulness of race. We conclude that, despite moral, political, and scientific arguments against race, many informants express ideas about racial differences, and we discuss whether this may be explained by a high level of trust in medical knowledge production and the institutions regulating this knowledge production, including drug regulatory agencies.

Department/s

  • Sociology

Publishing year

2025-12-08

Language

English

Pages

193-208

Publication/Series

The Order of People. Contesting Bio-Scientific Human Classifications

Document type

Book chapter

Publisher

Transcript-Verlag

Topic

  • Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)

Status

Published

Project

  • Are you Caucasian, Black, or Asian? A study of the current Swedish biopolitical paradigm of race and ethnicity in medicine

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISBN: 978-3-8376-7237-4