The fluidity of biosocial identity and the effects of place, space, and time.
Soc Sci Med
; 198: 46-52, 2018 02.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29275275
ABSTRACT
Public and scientific conceptions of identity are changing alongside advances in biotechnology, with important relevance to health and medicine. In particular, biological identity, once predominantly conceived as static (e.g., related to DNA, dental records, fingerprints) is now being recognized as dynamic or fluid, mirroring contemporary understandings of psychological and social identity. The dynamism of biological identity comes from the individual body's unique relationship with the world surrounding it, and therefore may best be described as biosocial. This paper reviews advances in scientific understandings of identity and presents a model that contrasts prior static approaches to biological identity from more recent dynamically-relational ones. This emerging viewpoint is of broad significance to health and medicine, particularly as medicine recognizes the significance of biography - i.e. the multiple, dense interactions imparted on a body across spatio-temporal dimensions - to phenotypic prediction, especially disease risk.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Social Identification
/
Models, Theoretical
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Soc Sci Med
Year:
2018
Document type:
Article
Publication country:
ENGLAND
/
ESCOCIA
/
GB
/
GREAT BRITAIN
/
INGLATERRA
/
REINO UNIDO
/
SCOTLAND
/
UK
/
UNITED KINGDOM