'Nonetheless biosocial': experiences and embodied knowledge of birth cohort participants in the UK and Brazil.

Abstract

The relative expansion of biosocial research within the life sciences has generated substantial interest from social sciences, with epigenetic science and scientists the primary target of critical commentary. This has led to a narrow perspective on what the biosocial is and how it is being (re)constituted within scientific research, highlighting a need to engage diverse publics in this unfolding terrain of knowledge making. Whilst birth cohorts are often a central resource and primary context for emerging fields of biosocial and epigenetic research, how cohort participants perceive and understand 'biosocial' interactions in the context of their lifelong and intergenerational participation is less well known. Drawing on pilot study research with birth cohort participants in the UK and Brazil, we comparatively examine how, in the absence of explicit references to a biosocial exemplar of epigenetics, biosocial dynamics are nonetheless understood by participants in relation to (i) embodied experiences, (ii) intergenerational participation, and (iii) understandings of the knowledge the studies aim to produce. Attending to different understandings of biological and social dynamics in diverse publics helps diversify and broaden the conceptual and methodological tools used to engage in and understand what the biosocial is and how it is coming into being.