In this chapter, we reflect on how different disciplines have conceptualised ‘early life’ with particular insights from evolutionary, social, and medical anthropology to challenge and further expand the narrow framing of a Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) focus and to show the scope of a biosocial perspective. First, we introduce how childhood and early life have been studied in anthropology, followed by a discussion on how early life has been conceptualised in public health, lifecourse, and development research. We then discuss how concepts of early life may impact caregiving practice and childhood environments, which in turn impacts research on early life itself, with longitudinal birth cohort studies as an example. We highlight the need for critical and reflective thinking about the ways in which we do biosocial research, and the impact it has on our understanding of the DOHaD. We suggest that a reflexively engaged biosocial anthropological dialogue around research on early life broadens the scope of cross-disciplinary work, engages with the complex and dynamic process of childhood development, and contributes to a more nuanced framework of early life for DOHaD-informed research and health practice.

In classical electrodynamics (CED), the most important quantities are the electric and magnetic fields, which directly determine the forces. In quantum electrodynamics (QED), the potentials are the most important quantities; they determine the energy and momentum exchange between the EM field and matter. Gauge invariance, which in CED is just a mathematical curiosity, becomes fundamental in QED, ruling the gauge symmetry that determines the interaction itself.

The Lamb experiment that opened the way is discussed in detail.

Feynman diagrams are graphic representations of mathematical expressions of scattering or decay amplitudes. Without going into the mathematics, we use them to visually suggest the underlying physics. We show how the propagator describes virtual particles, and how uncertainty and relativity principles, joined, imply the existence of antimatter.

The fine-structure constant, which is the dimensionless expression of the electromagnetic charge, depends on the momentum transfer between the probe and the target charge in the scattering experiment we are performing. The ‘running’ of the coupling constants is a property of all the interactions.

The highest precision measurements and theoretical predictions of the magnetic moments of the electron and of the muon. The precision frontier to search for new physics.

This chapter investigates possible future directions of the DOHaD framework. Specifically, it discusses options to translate the framework into the Anthropocene. In a first step, I outline how recent research on epigenetics, the human microbiome, and planetary boundaries challenges notions of origin and development embedded in DOHaD research. I then outline three distinct modes of interdisciplinary collaboration: subordination–service, integration–synthesis, and agonistic–antagonistic. I discuss how each of these modes offers the possibility to conduct research across the nature–culture divide and address human bodies and environments as anthropogenic due to their complex natural, social, and political histories. I conclude that the DOHaD framework needs to embrace the idea of anthropogenic biology to address the challenges of the Anthropocene and take responsibility for the knowledge that it produces in an attempt to shape a politics of habitability for our planet.

Public health data available for research are booming with the expansion of Big Data. This reshapes the data sources for DOHaD enquiries while offering ample opportunities to advance epidemiological modelling within the DOHaD framework. However, Big Data also raises a plethora of methodological challenges related to accurately characterising population health trajectories and biological mechanisms, within heterogeneous and dynamic sociodemographic contexts, and a fast-moving technological landscape. In this chapter, we explore the methodological challenges of research into the causal mechanisms of the transgenerational transfer of disease risks that characterise the DOHaD research landscape and consider these challenges in the light of novel technologies within artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data. Such technologies could push further the collating of multidimensional data, including electronic health records and tissue banks, to offer new insights. While such methodological and technological innovations may drive clearer and reproducible evidence within DOHaD research, as we argue, many challenges remain, including data quality, interpretability, generalisability, and ethics.

European social democratic parties have lost massive vote shares over the past twenty years. However, their electoral potential – that is, the number of voters who include the social democratic party in their consideration set – is still very high, at about 40–50% on average.

In this chapter, I use EES data on individual voting propensities from 2004 to 2019 in ten countries of Continental, Nordic, and Southern Europe to compare electoral potentials, overlaps with rival party electorates, as well as the sociodemographic profile of voters who are part of inward or outward overlaps between social democratic parties and their rivals.

I find that overlaps are highest within the left field, especially between green/left-libertarian and the social democratic electorates: About 50% of social democratic and green voters could also imagine voting for the other party, compared to only 10–20% between the social democratic and radical right parties. Moreover, the majorities of inward and outward overlaps – especially within the left field – concentrate among middle-class voters with medium or high levels of education.

The last section of the analyses compares in- and outward overlaps and discusses them in relation to the four programmatic strategies developed in this book. In relative terms, I find the New Left strategy to be the one for which potential electoral gains from green and left-libertarian parties seem both highest, as well as most realistic, compared to on average very low potential losses to the Right, in particular to the Radical Right. Overall, however, outward overlaps are systematically higher than inward overlaps for social democratic parties.

In this introduction to the Handbook of DOHaD and Society, we provide an overview of the biosocial research field of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD). We first trace the evolution of this interdisciplinary field over the past two decades, charting the historical conditions that have brought DOHaD to a critical moment when the field is at a threshold of interdisciplinary innovation across both life and social sciences. We then discuss the biosocial perspective that DOHaD offers as its central premise and promise, allowing for questions of socio-environmental justice, discrimination, and equity to be centred in science and biomedicine. We explore the challenges that complicate this biosocial agenda in practice and attend to questions of research translation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the socio-cultural dimensions of DOHaD-based health interventions. We end by highlighting the transformational potential of the DOHaD research paradigm and how this handbook offers a toolkit for robust interdisciplinary research in this field.

Embodiment is a key concept in the social sciences and has been particularly useful in discussions of the body, health, and disease. Embodiment allows us to connect the subjective experiences of the body, as well as its lived materiality, to broader social contexts. The concept also helps researchers make sense of the ways in which the body is inscribed with history, politics, and culture. This chapter explores the concept of embodiment in the social sciences and its potential use in DOHaD. We argue that it is important to integrate concepts/tools from the social sciences, in this case embodiment, as biosocial collaborations compel cross-disciplinary legibility and a shared vocabulary. Moreover, this integration of concepts and tools would allow DOHaD as a field to deepen awareness and understanding of the kind of influence environmental experiences can have on the development of health and disease over the lifecourse. We suggest that this deeper awareness and understanding achieved through employing the embodiment concept can make DOHaD research and interventions more socially just and socially sensitive.

This chapter examines the changing political geography of social democratic support. It argues that structural changes in the knowledge economy mean that Social Democrats increasingly face distinct competitors in different types of regions. In more knowledge intensive urban areas, they face new green-left competitors, while the Moderate and Radical Right are key competitors in rural areas and suburbs. In less knowledge intensive regions, Social Democrats have maintained more of the vote share, but face new radical left competitors. These geographic patterns speak to a larger fragmentation of the political space in Europe and beyond, that can make a singular national competitive strategy increasingly difficult for the left. The paper draws on an original dataset of highly localized electoral results.

This chapter addresses the premodern history of maternal impressions, the enduring belief that the emotions and experiences of a pregnant woman could leave permanent marks on her unborn child. The idea of the reactive womb has been present across multiple cultures, geographies, and centuries; however, it contrasts starkly against the recent view of the womb as boundaried. While we are not suggesting that maternal impression is a direct predecessor of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), with this overview we are reminding of the ubiquitous interest in pregnancy as ’an active project requiring self-discipline and work on the part of expectant mothers’ (1) in multiple medical systems. We focus on Greek, Roman, Latin Mediaeval, Jewish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Ayurvedic sources before and alongside the rise of modern biomedicine and analyse their view of the pregnant female body. We locate our reading in the wider context of a cross-cultural perception of body porosity and the power of environmental factors to shape the physical and moral traits of people. By delving into historical examples and engaging a longue durée perspective, this chapter aims to situate the current postgenomic claims linked with DOHaD findings that ‘soft inheritance has now been reborn’ (2).

In the last few decades, many moderate left parties adopted centrist strategies. These strategies did not only involve a programmatic repositioning but also the implementation of a set of economic policies with substantial distributive effects. What are the consequences of these policies? This chapter assesses the electoral costs associated with centrist policies by focusing on the case of fiscal consolidations. It considers the relationship between different types of fiscal consolidations and the electoral performance of social democratic parties. The results suggest that implementing fiscal consolidations is risky for social democratic parties but that not all fiscal consolidations are equal. Social democratic parties lose particularly badly when they implement spending-based consolidations that cut investment spending or public sector wages. Fiscal consolidations centered around tax increases are not associated with losses. Most forms of fiscal consolidations have a smaller or no effect on the likelihood to win office, but they still decrease the size of the left field. Overall, this suggests that fiscal consolidations, which hurt key constituencies of social democratic parties, are particularly costly for social democratic parties.

Human intervention studies are gaining traction and recognition in the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) field. Since DOHaD intervention studies will most frequently use complex public health interventions, collaborations across science and social science disciplines are critical for obtaining and interpreting DOHaD evidence in ways that matter for policy recommendation. This chapter explores the application of biosocial collaboration in a DOHaD intervention trial, namely Bukhali, the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI) South Africa randomised controlled trial. Bukhali evaluates a complex intervention initiated prior to conception, through pregnancy, and into early childhood, with the primary aim of addressing childhood obesity. As part of the first trials assessing the potential of preconception interventions to shape intergenerational health, the trial is significant to DOHaD science. Bukhali has adopted a pragmatic approach, allowing for ongoing adaptation to new knowledge as it arises and testing not only the primary hypothesis but also undertaking process evaluation analyses. This requires a multidisciplinary process that serves as a case study of how biosocial collaboration can enhance DOHaD-inspired intervention research.