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Epigenetics and the Suicidal Brain: Reconsidering Context in an Emergent Style of Reasoning

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The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider the models of suicide risk emerging from environmental epigenetics research at the McGill Group for Suicide Studies. We argue that this research represents an emergent style of reasoning in which a range of contextual and environmental factors are both molecularized and located in the brain. We also argue that implicit in this research is a notion of a “suicidal brain”: a brain that responds to adverse life experiences with an increase in risk of suicidal behaviour. In examining both this concept and its attendant styles of reasoning, we highlight some of the issues which research in environmental epigenetics raises for the study of suicide, as well as for the social sciences more broadly.

An earlier version of this chapter (Stephanie Lloyd and Eugene Raikhel. Epigenetics and the suicidal brain: reconsidering context in an emergent style of reasoning) was originally published in the journal Anthropologie & Santé. The full reference to this text is as follows:

Stephanie Lloyd and Eugene Raikhel. “L’épigénétique environnementale et le risque suicidaire: Reconsidérer la notion de contexte dans un style de raisonnement émergent’. Anthropologie & Santé [En Ligne], 9, 2014. URL: http://anthropologiesante.revues.org/1568; doi:10.4000/anthropologiesante.1568

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this paper, we focus on environmental epigenetics, which focuses on drawing links between environmental changes and gene expression, as opposed to some other domains where epigenetics is also employed.

  2. 2.

    This embedded or porous body of epigenetics is arguably part of a broader environmental turn in the biosciences. An increasingly large number of researchers engaged in cutting edge work are actively re-imagining the relationship between biology and society. Such changes in the way scientists study body-world and biology-environment relationships cut across the fields of genetics, neuroscience, immunology, endocrinology, and microbiology and have altered our understanding of the means by which factors such as trauma, stress or social exclusion lead to ill health (Chiao et al. 2008, 2010; Fish et al. 2004; Hertzman and Boyce 2010; Kuzawa and Sweet 2009; Slaby and Choudhury 2012; Thayer and Kuzawa 2011). Moreover, such work is increasingly taking place at the intersections of these domains of biological research. For social scientists, many of whom are also intent on destabilizing traditional conceptions of the skin-bounded body and the autonomous individual, the embedded body of epigenetics and other emergent biosciences offer both possibilities and challenges, which we discuss at greater length below.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Laval University, Québec, Canada

    Stephanie Lloyd

  2. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Eugene Raikhel

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  1. Stephanie Lloyd
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  2. Eugene Raikhel
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Maurizio Meloni

  2. School of Management, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    John Cromby

  3. Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Des Fitzgerald

  4. Department of Anthropology, Laval University, Québec, Canada

    Stephanie Lloyd

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Lloyd, S., Raikhel, E. (2018). Epigenetics and the Suicidal Brain: Reconsidering Context in an Emergent Style of Reasoning. In: Meloni, M., Cromby, J., Fitzgerald, D., Lloyd, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52879-7_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52879-7_21

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52879-7

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