The social life of genetic knowledge: a case-study of choices and dilemmas in cancer genetic counselling in Denmark.

This article explores the social life of genetic knowledge in the context of cancer genetic counselling in Denmark. I focus on a specific case that occurred during my study of the processes through which genetic risk profiles are produced and through which knowledge of genes and kinship comes to appear both meaningful and contestable to counsellees. The analysis illuminates how participants in cancer genetic counselling experience gaps between, on the one hand, genetic information about kinship and predispositions to hereditary disease and, on the other hand, social experiences of kinship and risks. I argue that this gap constitutes a space for agency in which people make their own connections and interpretations. It is in this space that new social relations and understandings of bodies, health and kinship are crafted. Following the social life of genetic knowledge highlights how knowledge is practiced through social relations and how knowing is grounded in particular interactions and situated concerns.