TASK 1
The environment in life and social sciences

Task 1 aims at dressing a detailed overview on the concept of environment throughout life and social sciences that study environmentally induced diseases. Whilst this descriptive analysis cannot be exhaustive because of the great amount of literature on both disciplinary sides, it will be focused on recent research attempts, made by life and social scientists, that consider epigenetic mechanisms as mediators between the biological and the social.

Questions: How is the environment conceived, defined, and operationalized in the various research fields, in life and in social sciences, addressing the question of the environmental origin of health and disease? Is there some overlap between all these different pictures of the environment? What are their common features, if any, and what are their most salient differences? How do these various disciplinary approaches to the environment affect its representation as a cause of health and disease, and the differential way life and social sciences model and account for environmentally induced pathologies?