Paper short abstract:

Understanding global health issues as well as health as a global phenomenon cannot be achieved focussing only in Genetics and Genomics. Biology and biological disorders have to do with developmental processes through which the genome comes into being within complex networks of activation/suppression/modulation organised by the cell. This is the field of Epigenetics and Epigenomics, which may offer a better theoretical and empirical frame when trying to understand the prevalence of some health conditions and ailments that are becoming a repetitive feature of our contemporary globalised world.

Paper long abstract:

As part of a gene-centred hegemonic paradigm as an explanatory of any kind of human affairs and matters, we observe a strong genomic turn also in the global health agenda, both in research and policies. This gene-centred view links health disparities to minor genomic differences of populations frequently classified as races. The so-called racialisation of health is only but one of its consequences. This perspective entails a linear oversimplified view of biology and health, not without political and ideological resonances (Ramírez-Goicoechea, 2014). But global/specific population health issues and policies cannot be simplified by genetic reductionism.

The goal of my contribution for this panel is to unpack this taken for granted hegemonic role of the genome when trying to explain common/specific contemporary diseases and ailments that are placing public national health systems under strain (i.e. globesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, oxidative stress, inflammatory syndrome, depression, post-traumatic syndrome, …). I think that health issues can be better understood when considering the relevance of epigenetic processes triggered by bodily experiences and responsiveness to specific somatic and extra-somatic economic, political, and cultural environments. Epigenomics is the study of how, when, why, where, genomic materials and their products become active or not within a complex regulatory systemic network of biochemical, cell, histological, organic, neural and bodily non-linear interactions. Epigenetic processes are environmentally sensitive. They may be stochastically triggered/switched off/modulated/reprogrammed, under specific bodily states derived from our somatic responsiveness to particular materialsymbolic practices and experiences through our biosocial life courses (Ramírez-Goicoechea, 2013). Based on relevant and contrasted empirical and ethnographic literature, I will claim the non-linear complex impact of inequity, disenfranchisement, psychoemotional social suffering, life styles and cultural practices, on many of the epigenetic processes that underlie many contemporary health disorders and conditions. References