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

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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.