Situating Environmental Epigenetics. A Comparative, Actor-Centered Study of Environmental Epigenetics as an Emergent Research Approach in Three Research Fields.

表观遗传学探索基因表达的变化不是由基因突变引起的，而是由DNA的化学修饰引起的。近年来，这种表观遗传修饰被发现对来自环境的许多刺激作出反应，如毒素、营养、创伤或压力，从而产生了“环境表观遗传学”。通过提出这些因素如何改变基因表达的机制，环境表观遗传学为理解生命科学和社会中的健康和疾病提供了重要的新视角。在社会科学领域，人们对环境表观遗传学既有热情，也有怀疑。一些人对它表示欢迎，认为它是一种新的生物学，承认了生物学的社会背景的作用，并允许社会公正的观点为生物学研究提供信息。其他人则怀疑它是否构成了对生物中心观点的突破，并认为它引入了一种新的生物决定位点：表观遗传标记。因此，对环境表观遗传学的认知、社会和政治潜力的评估存在分歧。我们认为，这种不和谐部分是由于这样一个事实，即转向环境表观遗传学经常被讨论，好像它构成了一个统一的认识转变。许多文献要么讨论跨研究领域的环境表观遗传学，而没有详细关注其在不同领域的具体实例，要么从一个领域或实验室的一个特定案例研究的优势出发。我们建议采取一种不同的方法：比较不同领域的研究人员如何采用和适应环境表观遗传学，并探索它所获得的情境认知、社会和政治特征。重点关注与公共卫生密切相关的三个研究领域（营养流行病学、环境毒理学、情绪和焦虑的病理生理学），我们将研究每个领域中从事环境表观遗传学研究的关键研究人员。通过访谈、民族志观察和文献分析等定性社会科学方法，我们将分析环境表观遗传学在他们的研究中所起的作用；如果，为什么以及如何想象它应该成为他们更广泛领域研究的一部分；以及它如何影响他们对健康和疾病的生物学和社会理解。通过采用这种比较方法，我们为环境表观遗传学在具有不同社会和政治含义的不同研究背景下可能构成不同“认知事物”（Rheinberger, 1997）的可能性提供了空间。这种方法建立在科学与技术研究的见解之上，强调知识生产的情境特征（Haraway, 1988; Knorr-Cetina, 1999）以及对情境敏感研究方法的需求（Jasanoff, 2004）。除了促进社会科学辩论之外，该项目还将促进社会科学和生命科学之间建设性的跨学科对话。

Epigenetics explores changes in gene expression that do not result from gene mutation, but from chemical modifications on the DNA. In recent years, such epigenetic modifications have been found to respond to numerous stimuli from the environment – such as toxins, nutrition, trauma or stress – giving rise to ‘environmental epigenetics’. By proposing mechanisms for how such factors can alter gene expression, environmental epigenetics offers important novel perspectives for understanding health and illness in the life sciences and in society.In the social sciences, environmental epigenetics has been received with enthusiasm and skepticism. Some have welcomed it as a new kind of biology that acknowledges the role of social context for biology and allows social justice perspectives to inform biological research. Others have doubted that it constitutes a break with bio-centric perspectives and have argued that it introduces a novel locus of biological determination: the epigenetic mark. Hence, assessments of the epistemic, social and political potentials of environmental epigenetics diverge.We propose that this dissonance is due in part to the fact that the turn to environmental epigenetics is often discussed as if it constituted one uniform epistemic transformation. Much of the literature either discusses environmental epigenetics across research fields without detailed attention to its specific instantiations in different fields, or from the vantage point of one specific case study in one field or lab. We propose to take a different approach: to compare how environmental epigenetics is adopted and adapted by researchers in different fields and to explore the situated epistemic, social and political characteristics it acquires.Focusing on three research fields of great relevance for public health (nutritional epidemiology; environmental toxicology; the pathophysiology of mood & anxiety), we will study key researchers in each field who work with environmental epigenetics. Using qualitative social science methods such as interviews, ethnographic observation and document analysis, we will analyze the role environmental epigenetics plays in their research; if, why and how they imagine it should become part of research in their fields more broadly; and how it informs their biological and social understandings of health and illness. By taking this comparative approach we give room to the possibility that environmental epigenetics might constitute different “epistemic things” (Rheinberger, 1997) in different research contexts with different social and political implications. This approach builds on insights from Science & Technology Studies that emphasize the situated character of knowledge production (Haraway, 1988; Knorr-Cetina, 1999) and the need for context-sensitive research approaches (Jasanoff, 2004). Beyond contributing to social science debates the project will also promote constructive interdisciplinary dialogue between social and life sciences.