Paper short abstract:

The idea of "toxic stress" pushes anthropologists to reimagine materiality. Activists, scientists, and childbearing people in California understand experiences, thoughts, and feelings to be intertwined with the body's physical makeup via genes and hormones, which are passed on in reproduction.

Paper long abstract:

California is one of the most toxic places in the United States, its reputation for "sustainability" notwithstanding. From silicon waste to agricultural runoff to poor air quality, problematic chemicals are disrupting communities' health and ability to reproduce themselves. But stress can also be experienced as toxic, and is increasingly considered so in discourse about reproduction. This definition of "toxicity" pushes against the boundaries of the material world, as the body's physicality at the smallest scales is understood to be contingent upon (or at least deeply intertwined with) experiences, thoughts, and feelings. From racism's epigenetic "weathering" effects, to the "cortisol-overload" of fast-paced urban lives, stress is conceived of as being manifest in genes and hormones that linger in the body and get passed on through reproduction. Drawing on recent ethnographic fieldwork with activists, scientists, and childbearing people located in Northern California and the Central Valley, this paper argues that anthropological concerns with toxicity and environment must include "immaterial" experiences and affects broadly conceived as stress. In turn, anthropological conceptions of the material world must loosen and become more porous, effectively adapting the "anthropological imagination" to better comprehend and explore such timely issues.