Three stories about intergenerational trauma Öffentlichkeit
Rivera, Luisa (Fall 2022)
Abstract
This dissertation explores intergenerational trauma, embodiment, and epigenetics from a critical biocultural or biosocial anthropological lens. It is a three-paper dissertation that lays out a progressive vision for re-centering the social in the social epigenetics of intergenerational trauma. Chapter 1 begins with a biosocial conceptual model and systematic review of the relationship between preconception trauma and offspring epigenetic marks. It reveals the limited integration of ecological and social inheritance in this emerging field and suggests that epigenetic approaches have yet to fulfil the promise of precision screening and therapy. In Chapter 2, I present qualitative results of a planned but partially completed biosocial study of intergenerational trauma and embodiment in Nueva Esperanza Chaculá, a community of former refugees of the Guatemalan Civil War and their descendants living in the borderlands of highland Guatemala. I consider how participant subjectivity reveals different pathways by which trauma is transmitted and resisted between mothers and grandmothers. I use those insights to draw attention away from individualized indices of trauma and towards the inheritance of structural violence that links war-time experiences to contemporary inequality and violence in everyday life in ‘postwar’ Guatemala. In Chapter 3 I implement a study of structural racism, life-course stress, and accelerated epigenetic aging of the placenta in a cohort of mothers and children in Shelby County, TN. I use an intersectional theoretical framework to re-locate intergenerational trauma in social structures rather than individuals. I find no relationships between either structural racism or life course stress and placental epigenetic aging. However, the relationship between structural racism and risk of trauma exposure differed between Black and white women. Whereas increased residential segregation, income, and racialized income inequality buffer white women from life course trauma, none of these predictors are associated with trauma exposure in Black women. I conclude with interrogating the narrative choreography—the stories we tell ourselves and about ourselves—biosocial scientists and social epigeneticists like myself use to rationalize our work and suggest pathways for a more equitable anthropological epigenetics of the future.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1
A dissertation disrupted: changes to the research following the COVID-19 pandemic.................. 3
Embodiment as social forensics.................................................................................................... 6
Social epigenetics meets social science.......................................................................................... 9
Anthropology of embodied intergenerational trauma.................................................................. 13
Social forensics as a failed theory of social change...................................................................... 16
Cultural models and intergenerational subjectivity....................................................................... 20
Taking the third option............................................................................................................... 22
Chapter overview and structure of the dissertation..................................................................... 23
References.................................................................................................................................. 26
Interlude 1...................................................................................................................................... 31
True Story................................................................................................................................... 31
The Father.................................................................................................................................. 33
Chapter 1: Preconception trauma and offspring epigenetics: a systematic review............................ 37
Social epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of trauma............................................ 37
Inheritance of the stress response system.................................................................................... 40
Pathways of preconception intergenerational transmission......................................................... 42
Intergenerational effects and DOHaD........................................................................................ 51
Methodological challenges in social epigenetics........................................................................... 52
Rationale..................................................................................................................................... 53
Methods...................................................................................................................................... 54
Results........................................................................................................................................ 56
Discussion.................................................................................................................................. 73
Limitations.................................................................................................................................. 80
Chapter 1 Appendix.................................................................................................................... 92
References.................................................................................................................................. 93
Interlude 2.................................................................................................................................... 104
Error......................................................................................................................................... 104
Chapter 2: Intergenerational trauma and resilience in postwar Guatemala..................................... 105
Note on data sources/collection............................................................................................... 105
Preface...................................................................................................................................... 106
Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 109
Subjectivities, violence, and hope.............................................................................................. 113
Background: Nueva Esperanza Chaculá.................................................................................... 115
Methods.................................................................................................................................... 126
Results....................................................................................................................................... 134
Discussion................................................................................................................................. 155
Chapter 2 Appendix.................................................................................................................. 163
References................................................................................................................................. 168
Interlude 3.................................................................................................................................... 178
Exclusion Criteria I................................................................................................................... 178
Exclusion Criteria II.................................................................................................................. 180
Chapter 3: No evidence for placental epigenetic aging as a biomarker of structural racism and life-course stressors 182
Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 182
A Developmental Perspective on Placental Aging..................................................................... 183
Structural racism....................................................................................................................... 186
Intersectional methods for social epigenetics: stratification vs. interaction................................. 186
Structural Racism and Maternal-infant health............................................................................ 188
Methods.................................................................................................................................... 190
Results....................................................................................................................................... 200
Discussion................................................................................................................................. 207
References................................................................................................................................. 214
Chapter 3 Appendix...................................................................................................................... 221
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................... 237
The story of the story................................................................................................................ 239
Through a mirror...................................................................................................................... 244
Critical Biosocial Futures........................................................................................................... 248
References................................................................................................................................. 254
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