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Race and the new epigenetic biopolitics of environmental health

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Abstract

Xenobiotic chemicals (for example, PCBs, BPA and methylmercury) play a central role in the new field of ‘environmental epigenetics’, which identifies factors that regulate the expression of genes, thereby suggesting the fundamental plasticity of biology. This article examines the role of race in the emerging ‘epigenetic biopolitics’ of environmental chemicals. Analysis of the paradigmatic case of methylmercury contamination in fish reveals a new racial formation in which race is important precisely because biology is plastic. Because methylmercury affects fetal neurodevelopment, US regulatory agencies aim to control fetal exposures by issuing fish consumption advisories to women of childbearing age. Owing to racial disparities in fish consumption, not only do the advisories have greater impact on women of color, but they change the problem from contamination itself to the abnormal diets of these women. Then, to the extent that these women fail to make the right choice, this leads to bodily differences between people of purportedly different races. In this epigenetic biopolitics, in which the aim is to affect cellular processes of the developing fetus, it is the reproductive woman who is racialized and who, through her actions, produces embodied race.

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Notes

  1. PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) and BPA (Bisphenol A).

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Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks go to Mat Coleman, Ishan Ashutosh, Inés Valdez, Julie Guthman, members of the Berkeley Workshop on Environmental Politics, three anonymous referees and the editors for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this article.

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  1. Department of Geography, Ohio State University, 1160 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, 43210, Ohio, USA

    Becky Mansfield

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Mansfield, B. Race and the new epigenetic biopolitics of environmental health. BioSocieties 7, 352–372 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2012.22

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