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Short abstract:

This talk analyses the expert work producing the policy relevance of epigenetics; namely, its declared value for action on harmful environmental exposures and the embodiment of social inequalities. How do experts attune, or fail to attune, this knowledge to a complex politics of health promotion?

Long abstract:

This talk challenges a key tacit assumption about the policy potential of epigenetics, namely, that it has great value for action on the health consequences of environmental exposures and the embodiment of social inequalities. Epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation get increasing attention as biological correlates of social conditions, lifestyles and/or environmental exposures. Yet, the actionability of this information is not clear. Some have criticized that epigenetics would only bolster the idea that individuals are responsible for their exposure to hazardous environments. Others have questioned the added value of this information to existing policy claims addressing complex entanglements of health and environmental and/or structural inequalities. These scholars argued that interindividual epigenetic variation can hardly be connected to the social or environmental processes that produced it.

Building upon six years of fieldwork, my talk explores the technical and experimental work invested into connecting structural policy-level interventions with epigenetic knowledge of exposure-related disorders. The connections between social justice and epigenetics rest upon a distinct kind of expert work “complexifying” (see Chiapperino 2024) the experimental designs and knowledge claims of this research. Some of the field’s epistemic norms and values are used for this purpose, including those relating to: a) the multiple social-biological transitions shaping the epigenome; b) the epigenetics of culture and ethnicity; c) the effectiveness and viability of social and environmental interventions into the epigenome. Is an epigenetic science supportive of complex politics of health and environmental injustices just a mirage, or a concrete opportunity for future public health promotion?