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The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society pp 703–725Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Emergent Postgenomic Bodies and Their (Non)Scalable Environments

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Abstract

The environment is an oft-cited term in postgenomics, ranging from references to environmental epigenetics in diverse geographical locations and historical times, to microbial habitats, intrauterine environments and maternal and molecular landscapes. Rather than approach the environment as a separate entity that interacts with others, in this chapter we draw upon Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action and Anna Tsing’s discussion of scales to rethink how enactments of environments emerge in different contexts. Through case studies of reproduction (fetal origins and microchimerism), we offer different contexts for rearticulating environments, not only in terms of the limits of binaries (nature/nurture, self/other and time and space) but also in terms of the dangers of scalability and postgenomic capacities to reduce the environment to individual risk in gendered and sexed bodies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We use ‘invention’ here in the manner of historical ontology, to signal ‘the coming into being of the very possibility of some objects’ (Hacking 2002, 2).

  2. 2.

    This interview, of a Canadian pediatrician, was conducted in 2004 by author two in the context of a project about the social and philosophical significance of microchimerism.

  3. 3.

    This phrase thrives in postgenomic life in spite of early and frequent feminist objections to this effect: “As fetuses in their ‘maternal environments’ become ubiquitous, women seem to vanish” (Morgan and Michaels 1999; also Petchesky 1987; Duden 1993).

  4. 4.

    Note that these dominant understandings of the environment do not acknowledge or accommodate indigenous cosmologies of landscapes, social relations and personhood that often incorporate humans, animals and objects (c.f. Zavala et al. 2015).

  5. 5.

    Latour (1993); Callard and Fitzgerald (2015); Griffiths and Stotz (2013)

  6. 6.

    While these representations of the environment are taken for granted in popular accounts of epigenetics, scientists working in the field have a more complex understanding of the environment (c.f. Weatherford et al. 2016).

  7. 7.

    The quotation marks here are meant to denaturalize this nomenclature which is based on genetic identity alone. As we will elaborate later in the chapter, the decades passed embodied by another are relevant to the materiality of these cells, and it is genetically reductive to see them as simply fetal, as though unchanged by their time in the mother’s body.

  8. 8.

    Much evidence from clinical, epidemiological and molecular research suggests that the answer is ‘probably something’. See Boddy et al. (2015) for a recent review from a biomedical viewpoint and Martin (2010b) for a detailed history of the field.

  9. 9.

    By far the most common method of elucidating microchimerism is finding molecular sequences from gene-rich areas on the Y chromosome. Because women are presumed to be XX in all their cells, Y chromosomal genes are an efficient proxy. Hence, sex-mismatched pairings are sought in clinical trials, while female fetal cells are presumed to behave in the same ways as their brothers.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Megan Warin

  2. York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Aryn Martin

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  1. Megan Warin
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  2. Aryn Martin
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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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Warin, M., Martin, A. (2018). Emergent Postgenomic Bodies and Their (Non)Scalable Environments. 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_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52879-7_30

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