Paper short abstract:

I believe in a biosocial/biohumanistic approach to our human becomings and the need of interdisciplinarity between Social Anthropology and Biological Sciences. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Biomedicine and Epigenetics, this paper will discuss the possibilities and caveats of such a collaboration.

Paper long abstract:

Articulating insights and results among differing traditions, scholarship and wisdom in new assemblies of understandings is not easy. Some of the caveats of such an endeavour can be found in our contrasting disciplinary histories, traditions, interests, objects and agendas, our divergent focus, goals, empirical/analytic scales, languages, methodologies, procedures, research settings and techniques.

Our Nature/Culture dualistic epistemo-ontologies - from which disciplines and epistemic communities have configured their divergent paths, shape our intellectual histories, interests and research programmes-. The strong and self-perpetuating cleavage between Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Life Sciences (Biology, Ecology, Ethology, Evolutionary studies, Developmental Psychology, Neurosciences, Genetics, etc.) is anchored in such opposite foundational starting points. The contrastive paradigms, categories, classificatory systems, world views, theories, etc. behind these diverging research practices and results, should be taken into account when trying to elucidating the reasons for such a traditional disciplinary breach. Conceptual openness and flexibility, eradication of prejudices and misgivings, and interdisciplinary literacy are to be developed in moving Anthropology and Biology beyond disciplinary closure and self-sufficient boundedness. Yet, it is still to be discussed the practical and procedural aspects of such an attempt in terms of the logics, temporalities, scales and spaces of specific research activities and knowledge building.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Biomedical and Genetic research institutions, I will explore some of these questions. At the same time, I will consider Epigenetics as a promising field for building a biosocial biohumanistic interdisciplinary collaborative work between Social Anthropology and the Life Science.