In Print: Weighing the Future
Publication Title
Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era
Author
Publisher
University of California Press
Publication Date
2022
Awards
Eileen Basker Memorial Book Prize
About the Book (from the publisher)
Epigenetics, the study of heritable changes in gene expression, has been heralded as one of the most promising new fields of scientific inquiry. Current large-scale studies selectively draw on epigenetics to connect behavioral choices made by pregnant people, such as diet and exercise, to health risks for future generations. As the first ethnography of its kind, Weighing the Future examines the sociopolitical implications of ongoing pregnancy trials in the United States and the United Kingdom, illuminating how processes of scientific knowledge production are linked to capitalism, surveillance, and environmental reproduction. Natali Valdez argues that a focus on individual behavior rather than social environments ignores the vital impacts of systemic racism. The environments we imagine to shape our genes, bodies, and future health are intimately tied to race, gender, and structures of inequality. This groundbreaking book makes the case that science, and how we translate it, is a reproductive project that requires feminist vigilance. Instead of fixating on a future at risk, this book brings attention to the present at stake.
About the Author
Natali Valdez is an anthropologist who employs feminist ethnographic methods to examine medicine, science, and technology. Valdez focuses on examining issues of race, gender, and power in reproduction, epigenetics/postgenomics, and metabolic illnesses. She completed a B.A. at the University of Florida, an M.A and Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Rice University. Prior to joining the faculty at Purdue, Valdez was an assistant professor at Wellesley College, and in the spring of 2022, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Vienna.