Diversity Talk: Narrating the Meaning of Diversity in American Biomedicine

• In Event: 3421 - Health Equity, Social Justice, and Social Movements

Abstract

Celebrations of the concept of “diversity” abound in 21st United States, from universities to Fortune 500 companies. While there have been a number of important sociological investigations of what this means in institutions such as higher education, there has been little attention paid to the ways the institution of U.S. biomedicine is addressing the meaning of diversity and the attendant changes related to shifting racial and ethnic demographic patterns. This is an unfortunate oversight for the field of biomedicine plays a unique role in shaping cultural and political notions of inclusion and representation in addition to social, as well as biological, meanings of difference—all of which have consequences for how we deal with issues such as racial or ethnic health inequalities.
This article investigates the ways in which individuals within healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations discuss the meaning of diversity for the work they do; its role in the goals of the organization; and consequences for how rights and responsibilities tied to biological traits and citizenship claims may be constructed. Based on interviews with two dozen individuals working in these organizations, I draw on theoretical and empirical insights from science and technology studies (STS) scholarship on race and biological citizenship, political and cultural sociology of meaning construction, and narrative analysis. Despite the seeming fuzziness and wide-ranging, sometimes contradictory, meaning of diversity used by these individuals, they ultimately offer a narrative of diversity in American biomedicine that structures diversity’s role in one of three ways: as economic enterprise, as social justice, or as background noise. I argue these narratives help to construct notions of biological citizenship, which emphasize individuals as consumers, elide celebratory framing of diversity with race and ethnicity, and thus potentially limit efforts to address racial or ethnic health inequalities that exist.

Author

• Catherine Lee, Rutgers University