This paper reports on ethnographic research conducted in a behavioural epigenetics laboratory working on the transgenerational inheritance of “early-life stress” in rodents. The article describes the experimental steps that lead to the production of an understanding of “stress” as a nexus of molecules and experiences, biological and biographical events. In particular, the paper focuses on the experimental protocol of Environmental Enrichment (EE). EE is a housing regime for experimental animals that the lab employs to correct the ‘aberrant’ epigenetic effects of ‘stress’. The use of EE gets narrated as a therapeutic intervention restoring, within the experimental system of the lab, the centrality of the body as entity endlessly modified by the interactions with its (material and social) environments. Drawing from these observations, I detail the lab’s mixed factual and value-laden work going into the production of a biosocial understanding of “stress”. This process, I argue, oscillates between an emphasis on the material, organic and molecular traces of experiences, and circumscribed attempts to deal with the biosocial complexities of this phenomenon in experimentation. As such, the practices reported here may be of interest to current STS engagements with post-genomic science and the way it forays into complex thinking of body–environment entanglements.

中文翻译：

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环境丰富：生物社会干预实验

本文报告了在行为表观遗传学实验室进行的人种学研究，该实验室致力于啮齿类动物“早期压力”的跨代遗传。这篇文章描述了导致将“压力”理解为分子和经验、生物和传记事件的纽带的实验步骤。特别是，该论文侧重于环境富集 (EE) 的实验方案。EE 是实验室用来纠正“压力”的“异常”表观遗传效应的实验动物的住房制度。EE 的使用被描述为一种治疗干预，在实验室的实验系统内，身体作为实体的中心地位被与其（物质和社会）环境的相互作用无休止地修改。根据这些观察，我详细介绍了实验室在产生对“压力”的生物社会理解方面的混合事实和价值负载工作。我认为，这个过程在强调体验的物质、有机和分子痕迹之间摇摆不定，并限制了在实验中处理这种现象的生物社会复杂性的尝试。因此，这里报告的实践可能对当前 STS 与后基因组科学的参与以及它涉足身体 - 环境纠缠的复杂思考的方式感兴趣。