Epigenetics and Obesity

Abstract

Bourdieu suggested that the habitus contains the 'genetic information' which both allows and disposes successive generations to reproduce the world they inherit from their parents' generation. While his writings on habitus are concerned with embodied dispositions, biological processes are not a feature of the practical reason of habitus. Recent critiques of the separate worlds of biology and culture, and the rise in epigenetics, provide new opportunities for expanding theoretical concepts like habitus. Using obesity science as a case study we attempt to conceptualise the enfolding of biological and social processes (via a Deleuzian metaphor) to develop a concept of biohabitus -reconfiguring how social and biological environments interact across the life course, and may be transmitted and transformed intergenerationally. In conclusion we suggest that the enfolding and reproduction of social life that Bourdieu articulated as habitus is a useful theoretical frame that can be enhanced to critically develop epigenetic understandings of obesity, and vice versa.

Drugs, Brains and Other Subalterns: Public Debate and the New Materialist Politics of Addiction

“…Such issues may appear remote from the matters under consideration in this article, yet the nature of the common world from which ‘addicts’ are excluded is a relevant concern. It is a concern not specifically addressed by studies which are otherwise attuned to the benefits of political analyses that incorporate actors traditionally assumed to exist on different planes, such as Wilson’s (2015) account of the randomized control trial as an assemblage, Martin’s (2006, 2010) ethnographies of the brain, and Warin and colleagues’ (2016) analysis of obesity and epigenetics. Each of these studies exemplifies the productiveness of dismantling traditional hierarchies such as ‘social’ and ‘biological’, but it is necessary to also consider hierarchies within these domains, including social exclusion.…”

Influence of post-partum BMI change on childhood obesity and energy intake

“…All the mothers observed ethnographically, provided their children with daily home cooked meals, but also purchased snack foods and sugar sweetened beverages throughout the day. This observations is supported by the sociological literature demonstrating that cheap calorie dense foods are an affordable means to demonstrate care within families with limited financial resources [55,56].…”

“It's Never Too Early”: Preconception Care and Postgenomic Models of Life

“…Our concern is that, as scientific knowledge is a coproduction subject to social forces (Jasanoff, 2004), new research that seeks to understand preconception as an important window for intervention will continue to frame this in a way that is overly focused on female bodies, without the "epistemic modesty" (Pickersgill, 2016) that is perhaps necessary in what is a rapidly shifting area of research. Furthermore, the "temporal ambiguity" of the preconception period (Waggoner, 2013, p. 356) is amplified in the DOHaD framework, which postulates epigenetic mechanisms and a view of life stages as a series of "folds" rather than linear sequences (Warin et al, 2015;Mansfield, 2017;Pentecost and Cousins, 2017;Meloni, 2018). Despite the positive possibilities of the kinds of relationality that the "postgenomic body" might afford, the pragmatic translation of the science most often reverts to a foregrounding of the maternal body and the female reproductive body as sites of intervention (Meloni, 2018;Pentecost and Ross, 2019).…”

“…While life course models of intervention are linear and rooted in individual bodies, epigenetic models disrupt this linearity, offering repeated metaphors of "scaffolding" or "Russian dolls", i.e., of life enveloped within itself (Warin et al, 2015;Meloni, 2018). Social scientists return frequently to describe this in terms of strata or folds (Warin et al, 2015;Mansfield, 2017;Pentecost and Cousins, 2017).…”

“…While life course models of intervention are linear and rooted in individual bodies, epigenetic models disrupt this linearity, offering repeated metaphors of "scaffolding" or "Russian dolls", i.e., of life enveloped within itself (Warin et al, 2015;Meloni, 2018). Social scientists return frequently to describe this in terms of strata or folds (Warin et al, 2015;Mansfield, 2017;Pentecost and Cousins, 2017). As Lamoreaux (2016) argues, epigenetic research practices appear to contest individualization, while at the same time these discourses are translated into an intensified call for individual behavioral change across an expanded window of opportunity to affect future health outcomes.…”