Gendered imaginaries: situating knowledge of epigenetic programming of health

Abstract

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.

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“…Szyf 2009). On the other hand, EE provides them the opportunity to scaffold a specific socio-political imaginary from their research (Jasanoff and Kim 2015;Richardson 2017;Chiapperino and Panese 2018). By acting on the social and material environments to correct the biological effects of "stress", EE allows these scientists to strategically claim that their experimental practices elevate forms of political and collective intervention -instead of individual and molecular ones -into the long-term epigenetic effects of stressful experiences.…”

“…Richardson 2017;Chiapperino and Panese 2018). As maintained by Marie, articulating the construct of EE finds its justification on mixed epistemic and socio-political grounds:…”

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