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Gendered imaginaries: situating knowledge of epigenetic programming of health
Author(s) -
Chiapperino Luca,
Panese Francesco
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.12779
Subject(s) - sociology , perspective (graphical) , constitution , value (mathematics) , situated , politics , epistemology , set (abstract data type) , social science , gender studies , political science , philosophy , machine learning , artificial intelligence , computer science , law , programming language
Our paper explores the value‐laden and epistemic resources that scientists working in epigenetics and developmental programming of health and disease ( DOH aD) mobilise to produce scientific representations of pregnancy and parenthood, which in turn imagine norms, values, and responsibilities for the protection of future generations. In order to do so, we first describe the place of questions regarding the relative weight of paternal and maternal influences on the health of the offspring in the discursive formalisation of this research in scientific publications. This enables us to identify the mutual constitution of ‘prototypes’ (i.e. experimental designs, settings, techniques) and ‘stereotypes’ (i.e. social meanings, beliefs, norms and values) of parental roles in DOH aD and epigenetic biomedical sciences, by means of a specific gendered figuration of paternal influences: the ‘father‐as‐sperm’. Second, and drawing from a set of interviews (N = 15), we describe a tension between this dominant, objectifying molecular discourse and the perspective of individual scientists. The situated perspective of individual researchers provides in fact evidence for a conflictual (moral and epistemic) economy of gendered engagements with parental figurations in DOH aD and epigenetic research, and consequently suggests a more fine‐grained, as well as conflictual web of socio‐political positioning of this ‘knowledge’ in its societal circulation.