Main description:

Research on the relationship between health and the environment in a post-genomic context is increasingly aimed at understanding the various exposures as a whole, simultaneously taking into account data pertaining to biology and the physical and social environment. Exposome research is a paradigmatic case of this new trend in environmental health studies.

This book takes a multi-disciplinary approach focusing on the conceptual, epistemological and sociological reflections in the latest research on environmental and social determinants of health and disease. It offers a balanced combination of theoretical and practical approaches and is edited by scholars from a multi-disciplinary backgrounds- (epidemiology, geography, philosophy of medicine and biology, sociology). Crucially, the book balances the benefit and cost of the integration of biological and social factors when modelling aetiology of disease.

Contents:

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.