Becoming Intergenerational in Birth Cohorts: kinship and the remaking of participation

In recent years birth cohorts have become an invaluable context, resource, tool and ‘technology’ of an emerging terrain of biosocial science, given the unique opportunity they provide to study how the life course is intergenerationally shaped. As many contributors for this series have highlighted, the what and how of biological and social transmission between kin are of central concern in cohort studies (Roberts 2019), even if this is sometimes often intensely focused on ‘mother-child’ dyads and early developmental stages of the life course (Lappe and Hein 2020), or singular kinds of social exposure, such as early adversity (Lloyd 2020, Kim 2020). Drawing on pilot study research with a small group of cohort participants from a UK based regional birth cohort, we reflect further on what Janelle Lamoreaux has called ‘cohort kinship’ (2019) by examining what it means to become intergenerational in birth cohorts. In doing so, we illuminate how both the ‘doing and being’ (McKinnon 2016) of kinship is temporally entangled with the (re)making of cohort participation. Here we extend recent social science work examining the relevance of relatedness and kinship to the meaning and experience of cohort participation and kinds of biosocial research carried out in birth cohort studies (Cruz et al forthcoming Kalender and Holmberg 2019). We see this as part of a wider effort to resituate kinship in studies of scientific practice (Carsten 2019) and re-invigorate what Gibbon and Lamoreaux (forthcoming) have termed ‘Intergenerational Ethnography’ in examining the making and unmaking of kin within and beyond the biosocial sciences

Toward Intergenerational Ethnography: Kinship, Cohorts, and Environments in and Beyond the Biosocial Sciences

Situated alongside and drawing from emerging inquiry, debate, and reflection about making and unmaking kin at a moment of critical reflection on racial, social, and reproductive inequities and changing environments, this special edition considers how anthropology can ethnographically examine and engage with intergenerational dynamics as they influence different scales and spheres of life. It brings together medical anthropologists and science and technology scholars conducting research in Bangladesh, China, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States as they reflect on the un/making of kin in settings of expert knowledge production and dissemination, including practices of seed collecting, epigenetic science, birth cohort studies, social policy generation, and clinical trials. Contributors to this special issue consider how intergenerational relations and modes of transmission take form in and through biosocial research-both as an object of study and a method of analysis. [intergenerational, environmental change, kinship, biosocial]

Genomics and genetic medicine: pathways to global health?

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Situating Latin American Critical Epidemiology in the Anthropocene: The Case of COVID-19 Vaccines and Indigenous Collectives in Brazil and Mexico

Diverse histories and traditions of critical epidemiology in Latin America provide an important, although underutilised, alternative framework for engaging with the embodied health inequalities of the Anthropocene. Taking COVID-19 as ‘a paradigmatic example of an Anthropocene disease’ (O’Callaghan-Gordo and Antó 2020) and drawing on ethnographic research in Brazil and Mexico on vaccination campaigns among Indigenous Peoples, we review and analyse the scope and limits of Latin American critical epidemiology in addressing Anthropocene health. While there are intersecting and parallel dynamics between diverse national and regional histories of epidemiology, we argue that the relatively differential focus on political economy, political ecology, and colonialism/coloniality in Latin American critical epidemiology, alongside the attention to non-western disease experiences and understandings, constitute a counterpoint to biomedical and specific ‘Euro-American’ epidemiological approaches. At the same time, Indigenous understandings of health/disease processes are intimately connected with territory protection, diplomacy with non-human entities, and embodied memories of violence. We examine how this presents new and challenging questions for critical epidemiology, particularly in how the ‘social’ is defined and how to address both social justice and social difference whilst also navigating the biopolitical challenges of state intervention in the era of Anthropocene health

Identidades emergentes, genética e saúde : perspectivas antropológicas

As novas tecnologias biomédicas têm impactos não só na saúde, mas também sociais, políticos, éticos e econômicos, o que coloca desafios para historiadores, filósofos, antropólogos e sociólogos. Reflexões e análises sobre o assunto são apresentadas nesta coletânea, cujos artigos abordam os mais variados fenômenos: os testes de ancestralidade genética, a polêmica sobre uso de embriões para produção de células-tronco, a gênese da loucura e da violência, diagnósticos moleculares, doação de sêmen e longevidade humana, assim como o papel da biomedicina na luta sindicalista e no reconhecimento de direitos de povos indígenas. “Através de diferentes enfoques, os textos abordam as múltiplas formas pelas quais a ciência (em especial a tecnociência contemporânea) contribui para moldar o mundo social em domínios como identificação pessoal, identidades nacionais e ações coletivas, inclusive na área da saúde”, resumem os organizadores. “Os textos aqui reunidos estão, em sua totalidade, voltados para as vinculações entre produção de conhecimento científico sobre a biologia humana e seus desdobramentos socioculturais e políticos.

Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene

Introduction to the special issue 'Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene', guest edited by Jennie Gamlin, Laura Montesi, Sahra Gibbon, Paola Sesia, Jean Segata, and Ceres Victora

Susto, the anthropology of fear, and critical medical anthropology in Mexico and Peru

Critical Medical Anthropology presents inspiring work from scholars doing and engaging with ethnographic research in or from Latin America, addressing themes that are central to contemporary Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA). This includes issues of inequality, embodiment of history, indigeneity, non-communicable diseases, gendered violence, migration, substance abuse, reproductive politics and judicialisation, as these relate to healt