Suchergebnisse

PART 1: Articulating the social and the biological -- Chapter 1: The turn towards 'the biosocial' in epigenetics. Ontological, epistemic and socio-political considerations -- Chapter 2: Socio-markers and the trace of information transmission -- Chapter 3: What's Wrong with the Biologization of Social Inequalities in Health? A history of social epidemiology and its moral economy of objectivity -- Part 2: Integration in environmental health and exposome research: epistemological issues -- Chapter 4: Which Integration for Health? Comparing Integrative Approaches for Epidemiology -- Chapter 5: A Critical Assessment of Exposures Integration in Exposome Research -- Chapter 6: From exposome to pathogenic niche. Looking for an operational account of the environment in health studies -- PART 3: The case of exposome research: practical and disciplinary issues -- Chapter 7: Place of integrative approaches in the study of spatial dimension of health outcomes -- Chapter 8: Exposome and the social sciences: the case of systemic diseases -- Chapter 9: The exposome research program and nutrition: the example of celiac disease.

AbstractThis article provides a critical and genealogical analysis of the allostatic load research framework. AL research is used as a case study to analyse how the current biosocial context is articulated in the field of health inequalities research. Providing a contemporary analysis of AL studies with a genealogy of the AL concept, we show that the ambition to use biological tools to improve measurements, predictions, and ultimately public health action, is rooted in a history that predates current biosocial entanglements. We analyse the conceptual and methodological grounding of AL studies in relation to the ambitious propositions to address health inequalities they often convey. The difficulties in translating AL research findings into public health policies and the risks of biomedicalisation that could emerge through the use of AL are also addressed. While acknowledging these risks, however, we nuance the risk of depoliticisation associated with the biomedicalisation of social inequalities in health. In light of the historical analysis, we qualify the risks associated to a biologisation of social life that could emerge from AL research: it appears that these risks are more specifically rooted in methodological and epistemological problems that researchers would need to consider in the pursuit of AL research.