Of rats and women: Narratives of motherhood in environmental epigenetics

From genetic to postgenomic determinisms: The role of the environment reconsidered : Introduction to the collection 'Postgenomic determinisms: Environmental narratives after the century of the gene'

In the past twenty years, conceptual and technological shifts in the life sciences have unseated the causal primacy of the gene. The picture emerging from 'postgenomic' science is one that emphasises multifactorial dependencies between the environment, development, and the genome, and blurs boundaries between biological individuals, and between the body and the environment. Despite the rejection of genetic determinism within postgenomics, forms of determinism nevertheless persist. The environment is often conceptualised in postgenomic research in a narrow and constrained way, affording an outsized causal role to certain environmental factors while neglecting the influence of others. This carries ethical and social implications, including for understandings of race and motherhood. This topical collection interrogates the environmental determinisms developing within postgenomic science, through investigation of their conceptual foundations, histories, and social contexts across a range of postgenomic fields.

Strengthening Rigor and Reproducibility in Epigenome-Wide Association Studies of Social Exposures and Brain-Based Health Outcomes

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Studies examining the effects of social factors on the epigenome have proliferated over the last two decades. Social epigenetics research to date has broadly demonstrated that social factors spanning childhood adversity, to neighborhood disadvantage, educational attainment, and economic instability are associated with alterations to DNA methylation that may have a functional impact on health. These relationships are particularly relevant to brain-based health outcomes such as psychiatric disorders, which are strongly influenced by social exposures and are also the leading cause of disability worldwide. However, social epigenetics studies are limited by the many challenges faced by both epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) and the study of social factors.

FINDINGS

In this manuscript, we provide a framework to achieve greater rigor and reproducibility in social epigenetics research. We discuss current limitations of the social epigenetics field, as well as existing and new solutions to improve rigor and reproducibility. Readers will gain a better understanding of the current considerations and processes that could maximize rigor when conducting social epigenetics research, as well as the technologies and approaches that merit attention and investment to propel continued discovery into the future.

Postgenomic understandings of fatness and metabolism

'Obesity' has, for decades, been a subject of intense scientific and public interest, and remains a key target for postgenomic science. I examine the emergence of determinism in research into 'obesity' in the postgenomic field of metabolomics. I argue that determinism appears in metabolomics research in two ways: firstly, fragmentation and narrow construal of the environment is evident in metabolomics studies on weight loss interventions, resulting in particular features of the environment (notably, dietary intake) having outsized influence while the wider social environment is neglected. Secondly, studies aiming to characterize the metabolic signature of 'obesity' are guided by a commitment to a deterministic connection between 'obesity' and dysfunction, leading to a neglect or distortion of metabolic heterogeneity across individuals regardless of body size.

The evolution of ACEs: From coping behaviors to epigenetics as explanatory frameworks for the biology of adverse childhood experiences

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have become a topic of public and scientific attention. ACEs denote a range of negative experiences in early life, from sexual abuse to emotional neglect, that are thought to impact health over the life course. The term was coined in the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study, an epidemiological study that surveyed 17,421 adults about ACEs and correlated the responses with participants' current health records. Shortly after the study was published in 1998, the US CDC deemed ACEs an important public health target; however, it is only recently that ACEs feature prominently in scientific and public discourses. We contend that this rise in popularity is linked to the adoption of epigenetic explanations for how ACEs affect health. Based on a literature analysis, we trace the evolution of explanatory frameworks for ACEs-from coping behaviors to allostatic load to epigenetics-and analyze how each of these explanations not only reconsiders the mechanisms by which ACEs affect health, but also who should be held responsible for addressing ACEs and how. Epigenetics provides distinctly different discursive possibilities than previous frameworks: firstly, it offers one distinct molecular mechanism for how ACEs work, lending "molecular credibility" to epidemiological findings; secondly, it raises the possibility of reversing the negative effects of ACEs on the biological level. This epigenetic articulation makes ACEs attractive for new actors in science and society. Particularly, it facilitates novel interdisciplinary collaborations and attracts actors in health advocacy who are interested in non-deterministic readings of ACEs that counteract stigma and support positive health interventions and healing.

Enacting biosocial complexity: Stress, epigenetic biomarkers and the tools of postgenomics

This article analyses attempts to enact complexity in postgenomic experimentations using the case of epigenetic research on biomarkers of psychosocial stress. Enacting complexity in this research means dissecting multiple so-called biosocial processes of health differentiation in the face of stressful experiences. To characterize enactments of biosocial complexity, the article develops the concepts of complexity work and complexification. The former emphasizes the social, technical, and material work that goes into the production of mixed biological and social representations of stress in epigenetics. The latter underlines how complexity can be assembled differently across distinct configurations of experimental work. Specifically, complexification can be defined as producing, stabilizing, and normalizing novel experimental systems that are supposed to improve techno-scientific enactments of complexity. In the case of epigenetics, complexification entails a reconfiguration of postgenomic experimental systems in ways that some actors deem 'better' at enacting health as a biosocial process. This study of complexity work and complexification shows that biosocial complexity is hardly a univocal enterprise in epigenetics. Consequently, the article calls for abandoning analysis of these research practices using clear-cut dichotomies of reductionism vs. holism, as well as simplicity vs. complexity. More broadly, the article suggests the relevance of a sociology of complexification for STS approaches to complexity in scientific practices. Complementing the existing focus on complexity as instrumental rhetoric in contemporary sciences, complexification directs analytical attention to the pragmatic opportunities that alternative (biosocial) complexities offer to collective, societal, and political thinking about science in society.

"I Felt Like I Was Cut in Two": Postcesarean Bodies and Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Switzerland

In neoliberal cultural contexts, where the ideal prevails that female bodies should be unchanged by reproductive processes, women often feel uncomfortable with their postpartum bodies. Cesareaned women suffer from additional discomfort during the postpartum period, and cesarean births are associated with less satisfying childbirth experiences, fostering feelings of failure among women who had planned a vaginal delivery. In Switzerland, one in three deliveries is a cesarean. Despite the frequency of this surgery, women complain that their biomedical follow-up provides minimal postpartum support. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapists address these issues by providing somatic and emotional postcesarean care. CAM is heavily gendered in that practitioners and users are overwhelmingly women and in that most CAM approaches rely on the essentialization of bodies. Based on interviews with cesareaned women and with CAM therapists specialized in postcesarean recovery, I explore women's postpartum experiences and how they reclaim their postcesarean bodies.

Engram Studies: A Call for Historical, Philosophical, and Sociological Approaches

In this chapter, we identify three distinct avenues of research on the philosophical, historical, and sociopolitical dimensions of engram research. First, we single out the need to refine philosophical understandings of memory within neuroscientific research on the engram. Specifically, we question the place of constructivist and preservationist philosophical claims on memory in the formulation of the engram concept and its operationalization in contemporary neuroscience research. Second, we delve into the received historiography of the engram claiming its disappearance after Richard Semon's (1859-1918) coinage of the concept. Differently from this view, we underline that Semon's legacy is still largely undocumented: Unknown are the ways the engram circulated within studies of organic memory as well as the role Semon's ideas had in specific national contexts of research in neurosciences. Finally, another research gap on the engram concerns a socio-anthropological documentation of the factual and normative resources this research offers to think about memory in healthcare and society. Representations of memory in this research, experimental strategies of intervention into the engram, as well as their translational potential for neurodegenerative (e.g., Alzheimer's disease) and psychiatric (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder) conditions have not yet received scrutiny notwithstanding their obvious social and political relevance.All these knowledge gaps combined call for a strong commitment towards interdisciplinarity to align the ambitions of a foundational neuroscience of the engram with a socially responsible circulation of this knowledge. What role can the facts, metaphors, and interventional strategies of engram research play in the wider society? With what implications for philosophical questions at the foundation of memory, which have accompanied its study from antiquity? And what can neuro- and social scientists do jointly to shape the social and political framings of engram research?

Refusing epigenetics: indigeneity and the colonial politics of trauma

Environmental epigenetics is increasingly employed to understand the health outcomes of communities who have experienced historical trauma and structural violence. Epigenetics provides a way to think about traumatic events and sustained deprivation as biological "exposures" that contribute to ill-health across generations. In Australia, some Indigenous researchers and clinicians are embracing epigenetic science as a framework for theorising the slow violence of colonialism as it plays out in intergenerational legacies of trauma and illness. However, there is dispute, contention, and caution as well as enthusiasm among these research communities.In this article, we trace strategies of "refusal" (Simpson, 2014) in response to epigenetics in Indigenous contexts. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Australia with researchers and clinicians in Indigenous health, we explore how some construct epigenetics as useless knowledge and a distraction from implementing anti-colonial change, rather than a tool with which to enact change. Secondly, we explore how epigenetics narrows definitions of colonial harm through the optic of molecular trauma, reproducing conditions in which Indigenous people are made intelligible through a lens of "damaged" bodies. Faced with these two concerns, many turn away from epigenetics altogether, refusing its novelty and supposed benefit for Indigenous health equity and resisting the pull of postgenomics.

Developmental Programming in Animal Models: Critical Evidence of Current Environmental Negative Changes

The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) approach answers questions surrounding the early events suffered by the mother during reproductive stages that can either partially or permanently influence the developmental programming of children, predisposing them to be either healthy or exhibit negative health outcomes in adulthood. Globally, vulnerable populations tend to present high obesity rates, including among school-age children and women of reproductive age. In addition, adults suffer from high rates of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular, and other metabolic diseases. The increase in metabolic outcomes has been associated with the combination of maternal womb conditions and adult lifestyle-related factors such as malnutrition and obesity, smoking habits, and alcoholism. However, to date, "new environmental changes" have recently been considered negative factors of development, such as maternal sedentary lifestyle, lack of maternal attachment during lactation, overcrowding, smog, overurbanization, industrialization, noise pollution, and psychosocial stress experienced during the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Therefore, it is important to recognize how all these factors impact offspring development during pregnancy and lactation, a period in which the subject cannot protect itself from these mechanisms. This review aims to introduce the importance of studying DOHaD, discuss classical programming studies, and address the importance of studying new emerging programming mechanisms, known as actual lifestyle factors, during pregnancy and lactation.

Maternal epigenetic responsibility: what can we learn from the pandemic?

This paper examines the construction of maternal responsibility in transgenerational epigenetics and its implications for pregnant women. Transgenerational epigenetics is suggesting a link between maternal behaviour and lifestyle during pregnancy and the subsequent well-being of their children. For example, poor prenatal diet and exposure to maternal distress during pregnancy are linked to epigenetic changes, which may cause health problems in the offspring. In this field, the uterus is seen as a micro-environment in which new generations can take shape. Because epigenetics concerns how gene expression is influenced by the social realm, including a range of environmental conditions such as stress, diet, smoking, exercise, exposure to chemicals, pollution, and environmental hazards, the research findings in this area have direct policy relevance. For policy makers, rather than controlling this complex range of determinants of health, isolating and targeting maternal body and responsibilising mothers for the control of this micro-environment might seem feasible. Yet, examining the maternal body in isolation as a powerful environment to shape the health of next generations not only responsibilises women for the environment that they cannot control but also makes them a target for intrusive and potentially exploitative biomedical interventions. Even though 'social factors' are increasingly considered in epigenetics writing, the phrase is usually taken as self-explanatory without much elaboration. Drawing on the Covid-19 pandemic, this paper moves the current debate forward by providing consolidated examples of how individuals, including pregnant women, have little control over their environment and lifestyle. As evidenced by the pandemic's disproportionate effects on people with low socioeconomic or poor health status, some pregnant women bore considerable physical and psychological stress which combined with other stress factors such as domestic violence.

Caring for biosocial complexity. Articulations of the environment in research on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease

The research field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) provides a framework for understanding how a wide range of environmental factors, such as deprivation, nutrition and stress, shape individual and population health over the course of a lifetime. DOHaD researchers face the challenge of how to conceptualize and measure ontologically diverse environments and their interactions with the developing organism over extended periods of time. Based on ethnographic research, I show how DOHaD researchers are often eager to capture what they regard as more 'complex' understandings of the environment in their work. At the same time, they are confronted with established methodological tools, disciplinary infrastructures and institutional contexts that favor simplistic articulations of the environment as distinct and mainly individual-level variables. I show how researchers struggle with these simplistic articulations of nutrition, maternal bodies and social determinants as relevant environments, which are sometimes at odds with the researchers' own normative commitments and aspirations.

Factors That Predispose Undergraduates to Mental Issues: A Cumulative Literature Review for Future Research Perspectives

Distress and mental health issues among college students is an emerging topic of study. The aim of this research work is to illustrate academic and social risk factors and how they prove to be predictors of anxiety and depressive disorders. The methodology used is a cumulative literature review structured over 10 systematic phases, and is replicable. Showing considerable potential for cumulative research, the relevance of this study reflects the concern of the academic community and international governments. The articles selected range from categorization of disorders in relation to mental health, to reporting the condition of rhinestones and difficulties of students in university contexts. In conclusion, the research focusses upon predisposing, concurrent or protective factors relating to the mental health of university students, so that institutions can act on concrete dynamics or propose targeted research on this topic.

Toward Intergenerational Ethnography: Kinship, Cohorts, and Environments in and Beyond the Biosocial Sciences

Situated alongside and drawing from emerging inquiry, debate, and reflection about making and unmaking kin at a moment of critical reflection on racial, social, and reproductive inequities and changing environments, this special edition considers how anthropology can ethnographically examine and engage with intergenerational dynamics as they influence different scales and spheres of life. It brings together medical anthropologists and science and technology scholars conducting research in Bangladesh, China, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States as they reflect on the un/making of kin in settings of expert knowledge production and dissemination, including practices of seed collecting, epigenetic science, birth cohort studies, social policy generation, and clinical trials. Contributors to this special issue consider how intergenerational relations and modes of transmission take form in and through biosocial research-both as an object of study and a method of analysis. [intergenerational, environmental change, kinship, biosocial].

You Are What Your Mother Endured: Intergenerational Epigenetics, Early Caregiving, and the Temporal Embedding of Adversity

Environmental epigenetics has become a site of growing attention related to the intergenerational effects of stress, trauma, and adversity. This article draws on a multi-sited ethnography of epigenetic knowledge production in the United States and Canada to document how scientists conceptualize, model, and measure these experiences and their effects on children's neurodevelopmental and behavioral health. We find that scientists' efforts to identify the molecular effects of stress, trauma, and adversity results in a temporal focus on the mother-child dyad during early life. This has the effect of biologizing early childhood adversity, positioning it as a consequence of caregiving, and producing epigenetic findings that often align with individually oriented interventions rather than social and structural change. Our analysis suggests that epigenetic models of stress, trauma, and adversity therefore situate histories of oppression, inequality, and subjugation in discrete and gendered family relations, resulting in the temporal embedding of adversity during early life.

Epidemiologists’ ambivalence towards the epigenetics of social adversity

This article studies how social epidemiologists get involved in research carried out on rodent models to explore the biological pathways underpinning exposure to social adversity in early life. We analyze their interdisciplinary exchanges with biologists in a social epigenetics project—i.e., in the experimental study of molecular alterations following social exposures. We argue that social epidemiologists are ambivalent regarding the use of non-human animal models on two levels: first, in terms of whether such models provide scientific evidence useful to social epidemiology, and second, regarding whether such models help promote their conception of public health. While they maintain expectations towards rodent experiments by elevating their functional value over their representational potential, they fear that their research will contribute to a public health approach that focuses on individual responsibility rather than the social causes of health inequalities. This interdisciplinary project demonstrates the difficulties encountered when research in social epigenetics engages with the complexities of laboratory experiments and social environments, as well as the conflicting sociopolitical projects stemming from such research.

Gender Beneath the Skull: Agency, Trauma and Persisting Stereotypes in Neuroepigenetics

Epigenetics stands in a complex relationship to issues of sex and gender. As a scientific field, it has been heavily criticized for disproportionately targeting the maternal body and reproducing deterministic views of biological sex (Kenney and Müller, 2017; Lappé, 2018; Richardson et al., 2014). And yet, it also represents the culmination of a long tradition of engaging with developmental biology as a feminist cause, because of the dispersal of the supposed 'master code' of DNA among wider cellular, organismic and ecological contexts (Keller, 1988). In this paper, we explore a number of tensions at the intersection of sex, gender and trauma that are playing out in the emerging area of neuroepigenetics - a relatively new subfield of epigenetics specifically interested in environment-brain relations through epigenetic modifications in neurons. Using qualitative interviews with leading scientists, we explore how trauma is conceptualized in neuroepigenetics, paying attention to its gendered dimensions. We address a number of concerns raised by feminist STS researchers in regard to epigenetics, and illustrate why we believe close engagement with neuroepigenetic claims, and neuroepigenetic researchers themselves, is a crucial step for social scientists interested in questions of embodiment and trauma. We argue this for three reasons: (1) Neuroepigenetic studies are recognizing the agential capacities of biological materials such as genes, neurotransmitters and methyl groups, and how they influence memory formation; (2) Neuroepigenetic conceptions of trauma are yet to be robustly coupled with social and anthropological theories of violence (Eliot, 2021; Nelson, 2021; Walby, 2013); (3) In spite of the gendered assumptions we find in neuroepigenetics, there are fruitful spaces - through collaboration - to be conceptualizing gender beyond culture-biology and nature-nurture binaries (Lock and Nguyen, 2010). To borrow Gravlee's (2009: 51) phrase, we find reason for social scientists to consider how gender is not only constructed, but how it may "become biology" via epigenetic and other biological pathways. Ultimately, we argue that a robust epigenetic methodology is one which values the integrity of expertise outside its own field, and can have an open, not empty mind to cross-disciplinary dialogue.

Negotiating Novelty: Constructing the Novel within Scientific Accounts of Epigenetics

Epigenetics is regarded by many as a compelling domain of biomedicine. The purported novelty of epigenetics has begun to have various societal ramifications, particularly in relation to processes of responsibilisation. Within sociology, it has stimulated hopeful debate about conceptual rapprochements between the biomedical and social sciences. This article is concerned with how novelty is socially produced and negotiated. The article engages directly with scientists' talk and writings about epigenetics (as process and field of study). I aim to advance an explicitly sociological analysis about the novelty of epigenetics that underscores its social production rather than an account which participates in its reification. I attend to definitional skirmishes, comparisons with genetics, excitement and intrigue, and considerations of the ethical dimensions of epigenetics. Any assertions that epigenetics is exciting or important should not inadvertently elide reflexive consideration of how such characterisations might be part of the machinery by which they become real.

« Healthy children, healthy nations. » Discipliner les corps reproducteurs pour la santé de qui ?

Cadre de la recherche: À partir d’un cadre théorique et conceptuel issu de la sociologie et des études sur le genre, cet article analyse la promotion d’un récent programme international de santé à l’intention des femmes et des enfants dont l’argumentaire scientifique s’enracine dans le domaine de l’épigénétique. Il serait désormais possible, en intervenant de façon précoce sur l’environnement (nutritionnel) des individus durant les périodes préconceptionelle et périconceptionnelle (la grossesse et les deux premières années de vie des enfants), de prévenir l’apparition de pathologies chroniques à l’âge adulte.

Objectifs: Il s’agit ici de retracer l’historique de cette biopolitique (Foucault, 2004), d’en décrire son processus de légitimation, et ce afin d’interroger d’importants enjeux sociaux qui en découlent notamment sur le plan de nouvelles normes et injonctions autour de la production d’enfants (sains).

Méthodologie: Pour ce faire, nous déployons une méthodologie associant revue de littérature scientifique et grise, ethnographie de l’ONG états-unienne 1,000 Days et entretiens semi-directifs auprès d’experts internationaux (OMS, USAID, Unicef, Sun).

Résultats: Nous montrons que ce programme contribue à l’assise d’une morale profondément inégalitaire qui s’appuie d’abord sur une promesse médicale, mais s’adosse en parallèle à une promesse économique : un corps en meilleure santé serait garant tant de la productivité des enfants, alors pensés comme des adultes en devenir, que des saines finances des nations, notamment les pays des Nords.

Conclusions: En creux d’un programme focalisé sur la santé des jeunes enfants et des nations émerge un « dressage » des corps en gestation, et tout particulièrement des corps des femmes subalternes : obèses, racisées, malades ou pauvres.

Contribution: Cet article démontre les apports de la contribution scientifique des sciences sociales et des études sur le genre, aux recherches médicales sur la santé des enfants ainsi qu’à leur mise en politique.

Epigenetics, ethics, law and society: A multidisciplinary review of descriptive, instrumental, dialectical and reflexive analyses

Epigenetics, defined as 'the study of mitotically and/or meiotically heritable changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence', has emerged as a promissory yet controversial field of scientific inquiry over the past decade. Scholars from many disciplines have formulated both optimistic and cautionary claims regarding its potential normative implications. This article provides a comprehensive review of the nascent literature at the crossroads of epigenetics, ethics, law and society. It describes nine emerging areas of discussion, relating to (1) the impact of epigenetics on the nature versus nurture dualism, (2) the potential resulting biologization of the social, (3) the meaning of epigenetics for public health, its potential influence on (4) reproduction and parenting, (5) political theory and (6) legal proceedings, and concerns regarding (7) stigmatization and discrimination, (8) privacy protection and (9) knowledge translation. While there is some degree of similarity between the nature and content of these areas and the abundant literature on ethical, legal and social issues in genetics, the potential implications of epigenetics ought not be conflated with the latter. Critical studies on epigenetics are emerging within a separate space of bioethical and biopolitical investigations and claims, with scholars from various epistemological standpoints utilizing distinct yet complementary analytical approaches.

A task that remains before us: Reconsidering inheritance as a biosocial phenomenon

What doesit mean to inherit? Debates about the meaning of inheritance are numerous in the history and the present of the biological and the social sciences. While the majority of contributions in this special issue discuss hitherto unthought of molecular mechanisms of biological inheritance, this review explores the contested territory of inheritance from a social science perspective. Specifically, it examines contemporary biological research on epigenetic forms of inheritance in its historical and social contexts. To that end, the review explores what biology itself has been inheriting when it comes to how it considers inheritance conceptually and experimentally. I delineate three particularly important strands of inheritance: inheriting a history of eugenics; inheriting determinist reasoning; and inheriting experimental reductionism. I approach the social and scientific meaning of these inheritances by following scholars such as Donna Haraway and Jacques Derrida, who frame inheritance not as a passive occurrence but as an active process, as a task that must be undertaken by those who inherit. Such a framing raises the question of what it might mean to inherit something responsibly - particularly when what needs to be inherited is not an object but a difficult history. I argue that in order to become 'response-able' to this question, researchers who investigate biological inheritance today must engage these histories critically and review their legacies in present-day research. This is a task biologists might not want to undertake alone, but in interdisciplinary collaboration with social scientists and humanities scholars, in order to mobilize multiple forms of expertise for understanding the complex biosocial processes of human inheritance.

Environmental Politics of Reproduction

What constitutes "human reproduction" is under negotiation as its biology, social nature, and cultural valences are increasingly perceived as bound up in environmental issues. This review maps the growing overlap between formerly rather separate domains of reproductive politics and environmental politics, examining three interrelated areas. The first is the emergence of an intersectional environmental reproductive justice framework in activism and environmental health science. The second is the biomedical delineation of the environment of reproduction and development as an object of growing research and intervention, as well as the marking off of early-life environments as an "exposed biology" consequential to the entire life span. Third is researchers' critical engagement with the reproductive subject of environmental politics and the lived experience of reproduction in environmentally dystopic times. Efforts to rethink the intersections of reproductive and environmental politics are found throughout these three areas.

Markers as mediators: A review and synthesis of epigenetics literature

Epigenetics, the study of the processes that control gene expression without a change in DNA sequence, highlights the importance of environmental factors in gene regulation. This paper maps the terrain of epigenetics and identifies four main research subfields: gene expression; molecular epigenetics; clinical epigenetics and epigenetic epidemiology. Within and across these fields, we analyse of what is conceptualised as environment and demonstrate the variable ways authors understand epigenetics environments. Then, following an analysis of the discursive strategies employed by epigenetics researchers, we demonstrate how authors portray the interactions between genes, epigenetics, and environment as relationships linking the outside (where the environment is located) with the inside (where the genes are located). We argue that authors assign specific roles to each actor: the environment as the active player initiating the relationship, the genes as recipients, and epigenetics as mediators between environment and genes. Framed as mediators, epigenetic markers can be understood as enablers of communication between environment and genome, capable of processing and organising signals so as to regulate the interactions between the actors of epigenetic relationships. This finding complicates the observation by social science scholars that the interactions between environment and genes can be understood through the concept of signal.

The paradox of care in behavioral epigenetics: Constructing early-life adversity in the lab

Many epigenetic studies focus on how stress, trauma, and care become molecularly embodied, affect gene expression without changing DNA sequence, and produce changes that influence the health and behavior of individuals, their offspring, and future generations. This article describes how care has become central in research on the epigenetic effects of early-life adversity. My analysis draws on two years of ethnographic research in a behavioral epigenetics laboratory in the United States. Building on traditions in feminist theory and the sociology of science, I document how care is enacted with research samples, experimental protocols, and behavioral endpoints in experiments with model organisms. My findings point to tensions between researchers' care for the data and their measurement of adversity as a discrete variable in the form of maternal interaction, neglect, and abuse. I argue that these tensions suggest a "paradox of care" that is actively shaping how epigenetic knowledge is produced and its impacts in society. My analysis shows how decisions in the lab are shaping new understandings of how early-life experiences influence health, with significant impacts on our expectations of mothers and pregnant women. This study suggests that the more complex explanations of health and development promised by epigenetics are simultaneously constructed and constrained by caring practices in the laboratory.

DOHaD in science and society: emergent opportunities and novel responsibilities

The field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) has grown considerably in recent decades and is receiving increasing recognition from health policymakers. Today, DOHaD research aims to offer a comprehensive perspective on health and disease that traces how different life experiences shape health and disease risks over the entire life course. This integrative perspective opens up distinct possibilities for improving health. At the same time, it raises questions regarding the specific social responsibilities of DOHaD as a field and about possible pathways to a socially just and scientifically robust implementation of DOHaD knowledge in society. In this article, we review the history and key characteristics of DOHaD as a field of scientific knowledge production. We argue that based on its key assumptions - that life circumstances, health and disease are closely linked on a molecular scale - DOHaD is an inherently political research field. When tracing how life environments affect health and disease, it is of utmost social and political importance to specify how DOHaD understands and frames these life environments, which aspects of life worlds are included and which excluded, and how research results are interpreted and translated into health recommendations at individual, societal and policy levels. We suggest a number of ways by which the DOHaD community can constructively and responsibly meet the demands that these inherent characteristics place on knowledge production and dissemination in the field.

Solidarity after nature: From biopolitics to cosmopolitics

What is sustaining the divide between nature and nurture, even though sciences like epigenetics have been challenging it for at least two decades? Evelyn Fox Keller asked this question and considered it a logical problem rooted in terminological confusion within the sciences. In this article, we propose a complementary diagnosis of the problem: the nature-nurture divide is (re-)mobilized when society faces questions of inclusion and solidarity. With examples stemming from the fields of insurance and health care, immigration policy and epigenetics, we demonstrate how the nature-nurture divide is performed through techniques of classification for a politics of solidarity. We identify a common operation to these different examples that we coin 'biopolitical imputation'. We use this term to draw attention to how (Western) societal institutions, including science, create solvable problems out of complex situations, defining human actors and their agency along the lines of the nature-nurture divide as a moral guide. We argue that the tenacity of the nature-nurture divide is therefore not only a logical problem needing better scientific concepts, but also a cosmopolitical problem asking for a more profound reflection on the ontology and ethics of solidarity in order to move beyond the biopolitics of nature versus nurture.

Gendered imaginaries: situating knowledge of epigenetic programming of health

Our paper explores the value-laden and epistemic resources that scientists working in epigenetics and developmental programming of health and disease (DOHaD) mobilise to produce scientific representations of pregnancy and parenthood, which in turn imagine norms, values, and responsibilities for the protection of future generations. In order to do so, we first describe the place of questions regarding the relative weight of paternal and maternal influences on the health of the offspring in the discursive formalisation of this research in scientific publications. This enables us to identify the mutual constitution of 'prototypes' (i.e. experimental designs, settings, techniques) and 'stereotypes' (i.e. social meanings, beliefs, norms and values) of parental roles in DOHaD and epigenetic biomedical sciences, by means of a specific gendered figuration of paternal influences: the 'father-as-sperm'. Second, and drawing from a set of interviews (N = 15), we describe a tension between this dominant, objectifying molecular discourse and the perspective of individual scientists. The situated perspective of individual researchers provides in fact evidence for a conflictual (moral and epistemic) economy of gendered engagements with parental figurations in DOHaD and epigenetic research, and consequently suggests a more fine-grained, as well as conflictual web of socio-political positioning of this 'knowledge' in its societal circulation.

Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance and social responsibility: perspectives from the social sciences

Research in environmental epigenetics explores how environmental exposures and life experiences such as food, toxins, stress or trauma can shape trajectories of human health and well-being in complex ways. This perspective resonates with social science expertise on the significant health impacts of unequal living conditions and the profound influence of social life on bodies in general. Environmental epigenetics could thus provide an important opportunity for moving beyond long-standing debates about nature versus nurture between the disciplines and think instead in 'biosocial' terms across the disciplines. Yet, beyond enthusiasm for such novel interdisciplinary opportunities, it is crucial to also reflect on the scientific, social and political challenges that a biosocial model of body, health and illness might entail. In this paper, we contribute historical and social science perspectives on the political opportunities and challenges afforded by a biosocial conception of the body. We will specifically focus on what it means if biosocial plasticity is not only perceived to characterize the life of individuals but also as possibly giving rise to semi-stable traits that can be passed on to future generations. That is, we will consider the historical, social and political valences of the scientific proposition of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. The key question that animates this article is if and how the notion of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance creates new forms of responsibilities both in science and in society. We propose that, ultimately, interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration is essential for responsible approaches to transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in science and society.

A Feminist Menagerie

This paper appraises the role of critical-feminist figurations within the environmental humanities, focusing on the capacity of figures to produce situated environmental knowledges and pose site-specific ethical obligations. We turn to four environments—the home, the skies, the seas and the microscopic—to examine the work that various figures do in these contexts. We elucidate how diverse figures—ranging from companion animals to birds, undersea creatures and bugs—reflect productive traffic between longstanding concerns in feminist theory and the environmental humanities, and generate new insights related to situated knowledges, feminist care-ethics and the politics of everyday sensory encounters. We also argue, however, that certain figures have tested the limits of theoretical approaches which have emerged as the product of dialogue between feminist theory and environmental studies. In particular, we explore how particular figures have complicated ethical questions of how to intervene in broad environmental threats borne of anthropogenic activities, and of who or what to include in relational ethical frameworks.

[Oxytocin: From a Hormone for Birth to a Social Hormone : The Hormonal Governance of Sociability aka Society]

In the mass media, the hormone Oxytocin is currently being debated as the biochemical basis of sociability and a powerful neuropharmacological solution for (re-)establishing societal cohesion. Given its beginning as a 'bodyhormone' early in the 20th century, this article will trace the extraordinary career of Oxytocin from a regulator of birth to a regulator of society. What makes so strong a claim intelligible and acceptable? Our analysis of the scientific discourse on Oxytocin (1906-1990), the mass media discourse since the 1990s, and its repercussions for the scientific discourse during the same period, suggest a series of re-configurations of scientific theories and practices, as well as of the conception of the substance itself. Oxytocin became established in the first half of the 20th century, and as a neurohormone as early as the 1950s, yet during the following decades attracted little scientific attention. Only following the mass media's focus on the suggested effects of Oxytocin on love and bonding did the substance increasingly become the focus of empirical research. This work argues that the reception of Oxytocin as a potential neurohormonal basis for individual sociability strongly relies on the mass media discourses, biopolitical linkages that had already been made in the first half of the 20th century aiming at the regulation of life, and a technoscientific mode of research on Oxytocin. At their intersection Oxytocin emerged as a social hormone.

New perspectives in the history of twentieth-century life sciences: historical, historiographical and epistemological themes

The history of twentieth-century life sciences is not exactly a new topic. However, in view of the increasingly rapid development of the life sciences themselves over the past decades, some of the well-established narratives are worth revisiting. Taking stock of where we stand on these issues was the aim of a conference in 2015, entitled "Perspectives for the History of Life Sciences" (Munich, Oct 30-Nov 1, 2015). The papers in this topical collection are based on work presented and discussed at and around this meeting. Just as the conference, the collection aims at exploring fields in the history of life sciences that appear understudied, sources that have been overlooked, and novel ways of engaging with this material. The papers convened in this collection may not be representative of the field as a whole; but we feel that they do indicate some elements that have received emphasis in recent years, and may become more central in the years to come, such as the history of previously neglected contexts and domains of the life sciences, the question of continuity and change on the level of practices, the history of complexity and diversity in twentieth-century life sciences and the reconsideration of the relationship between history and philosophy of life sciences.

Health, wealth and behavioural change: an exploration of role responsibilities in the wake of epigenetics

The field of epigenetics is leading to new conceptualizations of the role of environmental factors in health and genetic disease. Although more evidence is required, epigenetic mechanisms are being implicated in the link between low socioeconomic status and poor health status. Epigenetic phenomena work in a number of ways: they can be established early in development, transmitted from previous generations and/or responsive to environmental factors. Knowledge about these types of epigenetic traits might therefore allow us to move away from a genetic deterministic perspective, and provide individuals with the opportunity to change their health status. Although this could be equated with patient empowerment, it could also lead to stigmatization and discrimination where individuals are deemed responsible for their health, even if they are not in social situations where they are able to enact change that would alter their health status. In this paper, we will explore the responsibilities of different actors in the healthcare sphere in relation to epigenetics across four different contexts: (1) genetic research, (2) clinical practice, (3) prenatal care and (4) the workplace. Within this exploration of role responsibilities, we will also discuss the potential constraints that might prevent the patient, mother-to-be, research participant or employee, from enacting any necessary steps in order to increase their health status in response to epigenetic information.