Impressionable biologies: From the archaeology of plasticity to the sociology of epigenetics

In recent years epigenetics has become somewhat of a buzzword in science and popular science, and not to mention in a growing body of pseudo-scientific self-help literature (some of which may even best be described as quackery). As the rhetorical and somewhat tongue-incheek questions posed by Guardian writer Cath Ennis (2014) in the quote above indicate, the ‘hype’ surrounding epigenetics may seem to concern everything and anything that cannot be neatly categorised as a consequence of either ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’. Social theorist Maurizio Meloni’s book Impressionable biologies: From the archaeology of plasticity to the sociology of epigenetics (2019) takes a closer look at the paradigm shift that has emerged out of what sometimes goes under the name of ‘the postgenomic era’.