At the molecular level, social epigenetics elucidates the impacts of exposure to environmental pollutants, childhood adversity, and discrimination on the human body. In turn, it also offers insight into the biological mechanisms that determine how structural forces, such as environmental policy or exposure to violence, impact individual health across generations. However, social epigenetics also has the potential to reinforce logics of genetic determinism and biological racism.
“We used to think our fate was in the stars,” quipped James Watson in a Time magazine piece announcing the Human Genome Project (HGP). “Now we know, in large measure, our fate is in our genes.” Scientific insights and technological developments have been propelled by humans’ insatiable curiosity about ourselves and our world, and the HGP—with the goal of mapping the human genome—grew out of that curiosity.