Roundtable: The Politics of "Developmental Origins": Biological Mattering and Social Justice

Abstract

Developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) is a well-established field in the life sciences and social epidemiology, with considerable influence on public health and social policy around the globe (eg. World Health Organisation, First Thousand Days, the World Bank’s Human Capital Initiative). Social scientists are paying attention to the genealogy of this discourse, and the implicit gendered and racist assumptions that are enfolded into medical attention to maternal bodies, pregnancy, and reproduction. The aim of this roundtable is to bring together scholars who examine the broad field of epigenetic and environmental sciences from a range of standpoints. We are interested in interrogating the political implications of the language of DOHaD through a series of generative questions: what is ‘developing’ in developmental science, whose story of ‘origin’ comes to matter, and how are these matterings imbricated, reproduced and reinforced in global development? This panel discusses how we might use methods and theories from within the social sciences and humanities to critically examine DOHaD. We unpack when frameworks of embodiment, intersectionality, or ecological entanglements may be strategically effective. We also examine how these same concepts risk smuggling the racist/gendered/classed logics of inheritance and intergenerational transmission into our understandings of biological mattering. How might it shift approaches to social justice, when policies that claim to be ‘doing good’ come to have harmful social lives?

Discussants

• Megan Warin, University of Adelaide

• Emily Yates-Doerr

• Martine Lappe, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

• Anne Le Goff, UCLA

• Julie Guthman, University of California, Santa Cruz

Session Organizer

• Natali Valdez, Wellesley College