Journal ArticleDOI
The implications of environmental epigenetics: A new direction for geographic inquiry on health, space, and nature-society relations
Julie Guthman,Becky Mansfield +1 more
TLDR
Findings in epigenetics suggest that the environment is a biochemically active inducer of phenotypical development and understandings of the delayed temporality and intergenerational effects of epigenetic mechanisms challenge methodologies that privilege space.Abstract:
The emergent field of environmental epigenetics, which studies health effects of ‘xenobiotic’ chemicals, fundamentally challenges standard models of the biochemical pathways that shape bodies and human health. This article explores the implications of these discoveries for geographic knowledge in the nature-society and spatial traditions of human health, both of which have tended to black-box the material, biochemical body and treat the environment as an inert setting. Discoveries in epigenetics suggest that the environment is a biochemically active inducer of phenotypical development. In addition, understandings of the delayed temporality and intergenerational effects of epigenetic mechanisms challenge methodologies that privilege space.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Weighing in: Obesity, food justice, and the limits of capitalism
TL;DR: Guthman argues that obesity is an ecological condition and that the political, sociocultural and economic dimensions of ecologies have been largely absent from both popular and scholarly discussions about obesity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Entangled lives : implications of the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis for bioarchaeology and the life course.
TL;DR: A greater consideration of: the temporal power of human skeletons and a life course approach to past health; infant health and the implications for maternal well-being; and the impact of non-proximate stressors on the presence of health indicators are considered.
Journal ArticleDOI
Our stolen future: Are we threatening our fertility, intelligence and survival? A scientific detective story
TL;DR: The author discusses how she and her husband are concerned about the future of their fertility and the challenges they are facing in trying to find a solution to this problem.
Journal ArticleDOI
Scrutinizing the epigenetics revolution.
Maurizio Meloni,Giuseppe Testa +1 more
TL;DR: It is suggested that these complementary strands provide both an epistemically and socially self-reflective framework to advance the study of epigenetics as a molecular juncture between nature and nurture and thus as the new critical frontier in the social studies of the life sciences.
Journal ArticleDOI
How biology became social, and what it means for social theory
TL;DR: It is argued that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo-Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as the authors have known them.
References
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Book
Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things
TL;DR: The Force of Things and the Agency of Assemblages as discussed by the authors are the main sources of inspiration for our work. But neither Vitalism nor Mechanism is a suitable vehicle for self-interest.
Journal ArticleDOI
Perceptions of epigenetics
TL;DR: During the past year, more than 2,500 articles, numerous scientific meetings and a new journal were devoted to the subject of epigenetics, portrayed by the popular press as a revolutionary new science — an antidote to the idea that the authors are hard-wired by their genes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Environmental epigenomics and disease susceptibility.
TL;DR: An increasing body of evidence from animal studies supports the role of environmental epigenetics in disease susceptibility and recent studies have demonstrated for the first time that heritable environmentally induced epigenetic modifications underlie reversible transgenerational alterations in phenotype.
Journal ArticleDOI
Understanding and representing place in health research a relational approach
TL;DR: It is argued that research in place and health should avoid the false dualism of context and composition by recognising that there is a mutually reinforcing and reciprocal relationship between people and place.
Journal ArticleDOI
Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California
TL;DR: The authors argue that although racism is rarely explicitly discussed, a normative conceptualization of racism informs the research and that this prevailing conception overly narrow and restrictive, it also denies the spatiality of racism.
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From Social Structure to Gene Regulation, and Back: A Critical Introduction to Environmental Epigenetics for Sociology
Hannah Landecker,Aaron Panofsky +1 more