Biosocial health geography: New ‘exposomic’ geographies of health and place

Abstract

Investigating biologically plausible mechanisms for the embodiment of context is a key thoroughfare for progressing health geographies of place. Expanding knowledge of bio-processes such as epigenetics is providing a platform for appreciating the dynamic embedding of social relations in bodies over the lifecourse, and so to tracing the development of health inequalities. By providing a geographic lens on the biosocial, health geographers have key contributions to make regarding the theorisation of place. We put forward the exposome as a holistic framework in which to situate a biosocial health geography, placing ideas of dynamic exposure, plasticity and temporality as central.

Towards a Situated Spatial Epidemiology of Violence: A Placially-Informed Geospatial Analysis of Homicide in Alagoas, Brazil

“…This line of argumentation has crystallised perhaps most prominently around theoretical interrogations of a quantitative–qualitative dichotomy defining medical and health geographies; in brief, the former draws upon predominantly statistical methodologies rooted in a positivist or deterministic epistemology, whilst the latter tends to leverage pluralist or constructivist approaches lending themselves to a greater focus on individuals’ lived experiences of health and illness and their embeddedness in sociopolitical structures and relations [ 3 ]. Efforts to intertwine or hybridise both conceptualisations of the space/place–health relation have largely stemmed from researchers positioned in sectors of GIScience predominantly concerned with social theory and its neighbouring foci, resulting in a substantial theoretical literature and a number of notable studies using GIS or spatial analysis to complement a primarily qualitative analysis [ 4 ]. However, for over two decades it has been consistently argued both outside and within the parameters of peer review that medical geography/spatial epidemiology has yet to sufficiently engage with non-positivist epistemologies and interdisciplinary methodology [ 5 ].…”

The optics of noncommunicable diseases: from lifestyle to environmental toxicity

“…Exposomic concern with an individual's lifetime toxic exposures (through their internal biomarkers and external stressors) and their relationship to health (Prior et al . , Wild ) or biosocial ideas of health (how social, cultural, economic and biological factors interact throughout the life course to produce differential health outcomes) (Singer and Clair , Singer et al . ) demonstrate that there is a chronicity and spatiality to the complex causal web that produces morbidity and that despite rapid advances in the models and technologies of exposure measurement, significant unknowns remain (Kwan , Mah ).…”

Food play: A novel research methodology for visceral geographers and health researchers

“…This concept draws attention to the relational experience of place; how inequalities may be 'imprinted' through disadvantage. For example, Prior et al (2018a) highlight work that notes how early life exposure, even during gestation, can impact on later outcomes for health; how for example, a biological 'memory' of undernutrition can continue to have effects through the life-course. Combined with research on epigenetics, the plasticity of how gene expression may be altered by environmental exposure, and the notion of allostatic load, the accumulation of exposures to stresses, their work offers insight into the porous nature of body to environment (Mansfield, 2017;Prior et al, 2018b).…”