Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In the past twenty years, conceptual and technological shifts in the life sciences have unseated the causal primacy of the gene. The picture emerging from 'postgenomic' science is one that emphasises multifactorial dependencies between the environment, development, and the genome, and blurs boundaries between biological individuals, and between the body and the environment. Despite the rejection of genetic determinism within postgenomics, forms of determinism nevertheless persist. The environment is often conceptualised in postgenomic research in a narrow and constrained way, affording an outsized causal role to certain environmental factors while neglecting the influence of others. This carries ethical and social implications, including for understandings of race and motherhood. This topical collection interrogates the environmental determinisms developing within postgenomic science, through investigation of their conceptual foundations, histories, and social contexts across a range of postgenomic fields.
Authors: Azita Chellappoo, Jan Baedke, Maurizio Meloni
Institutions: The Open University, Ruhr University Bochum, Deakin University
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,190
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Award: G4574100544
OpenAlex ID: W4409731785