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BackgroundThis publication was produced from a roundtable discussion about the cultural politics of representation and metabolic illness commissioned by the organizers of the 2021 “Just Food” conference jointly held by the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS), the Agriculture, Food & Human Values Society (AFHVS), the Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS), and the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN). A film had been submitted titled, El Susto: Mexico’s Love Affair with Sugary Drinks Turns Deadly, produced by Karen Akins (2020) and Just Food organizers wished to screen it at the online conference and foster an academic roundtable discussion to unpack some of the tropes that frequently surround discussions of globalized markets of processed foods and the rise of metabolic illness.With questions posed by the roundtable Chair, Emily Yates-Doerr, the discussion focused broadly on the challenge of problematizing the inequitable burden of metabolic illness among equity-seeking groups without stigmatizing those who consume foods that are often seen as the cause of disease. Specifically, panelists considered how to redress the corporate greed that drives expanding global markets for processed food, without pathologizing racialized and fat bodies. The panelists jointly insisted that academic inquiry and activism should keep the focus on political and economic structures, such as trade agreements and health policies, which undergird health inequities, rather than individual dietary choice or a lack of education.Roundtable panelists were selected by the Just Food conference organizers because of their expertise on metabolic disorder, the cultural practice of capitalism(s), and techniques of representation. Because we believe the conversation has relevance for anyone working on or thinking about health and its representation – in or outside of Mexico -- we are reproducing it here. We have lightly edited the transcript of the conversation to help with readability.

Mexico has been depicted as a country with no rules, as lacking regulation concerning new reproductive technologies, such as mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) and human gene editing. This depiction has circulated in the media and academic circles for many years, and while this framing was accurate in the past, today the situation is different. Although there is no single comprehensive law addressing these issues, this does not mean that there are no rules and that anything goes. This chapter explores what it means to ask about rules and regulations in the Mexican context. The authors do so by focusing on the existing assisted reproductive market, the public perception of science and religion, the characteristics of Mexico’s history in science policy, the regulatory proposals presented in the past 20 years, and the existing regulation pertinent to MRT. The chapter also offers some speculations about the current situation.

The essay briefly looks into the bioethical guide of extreme triage and resource allocation based on known co-morbidities (i e , obesity, hypertension, and diabetes) I invite to reflect upon how a focus on individual responsibility under COVID-19 occludes major structural problems while silencing the social factors behind the heath disaster that we are witnessing today The essay argues that chronic diseases are not merely the result of genetic makeup or individual choices but are instead profoundly linked to poverty, systemic racism, structural violence, and lack of care Debates on extreme triage guidelines and resource allocation illuminate a series of ethical shortcomings that preexisted COVID-19 Even if guidelines clearly state that criteria such as race, gender, or class will not be taken into account when deciding how to allocate limited medical resources, these categories are deeply linked to health disparities, and therefore, on people’s possibilities of surviving the pandemic © Centro de Biotecnologia y Biomedicina, Clinical Biotec Universidad CatA³lica del Oriente (UCO), Univesidad Yachay Tech

Duo-ethnography is a collaborative methodology in which participants juxtapose their experiences around a topic to parse multiple perspectives. It explicitly positions ethnographers as sources of information, not data collectors. This method has been used to explore racial identities, class dynamics, decolonizing pedagogies, and gender in academic life. Building on previous work, we consider our contribution to be articulating duo-ethnography as an explicitly feminist methodology that allows for mutual exploration of difference as well as reciprocal care and support. As part of a larger collaboration, we used duo-ethnography to create explicit dialog spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic to talk about differences in our experiences related to sexuality, race, class, tenure position, and seniority. Duo-ethnography is one method we used to challenge junior/senior relations and transform how we related to one another.

Policy landscapes are instruments that identify national regulations on human genome editing (HGE). After examining their ethical and political assumptions, we highlight their limitations and effects for Latin America. We suggest creating other landscapes, such as focusing on processes and drawing attention to potential 'circuits of use' within and across borders.

Maternal bodies are more than mediators of fetal environments, cautions a historian.

This paper explores mothers' experiences of masculinity in the context of child obesity in Mexico. The paper draws on face to face interviews with 10 medical staff working at the child obesity clinic at Federico Gomez Children's Hospital in Mexico City and on interviews with 16 mothers and 1 grandmother of children diagnosed with obesity and morbid obesity. Through an analysis of medical discourses and practices the paper identifies a tendency to underestimate the extent to which fathers are involved in shaping the family diet and other health related practices. The paper argues that mothers' experiences of masculinity reflect ways of resisting the increased blame placed on them. Through their voices, mothers expose silenced family dynamics of food and other health-related habits and patterns. The invisibility of fathers in medical and academic discourse works to feed mother blaming and misleads medical practices and policies designed to address child obesity in Mexico.

This paper explores scientific and medical discourses on genetics and epigenetics in the context of the increasing rates of obesity and diabetes among Mexican mestizos. It draws on semi-structured interviews with 9 Mexican geneticists that are currently involved in genomic population or genomic medical research linked to diabetes and/or obesity and with 10 medical staff working directly or indirectly with the child obesity clinic at Federico Gomez Children’s Hospital in Mexico City. It looks briefly at scientific discourses that link the very high rates of obesity among Mexican mestizos to an alleged genetic predisposition seen as part of their indigenous heritage. The paper argues that this reinforces the gendered and racialized meanings of mestizaje (mixture) and the hierarchies that this biocultural construct has historically entailed. The paper then looks in depth at the tensions in epigenetic research on obesity, analysing the narratives of the geneticists and doctors interviewed. It shows how mothers are defined as the main channel for the epigenetic modification of bodies and generations, thus intensifying women’s maternal responsibilities for the health of the nation.

We write this in mid-April 2020, in the middle of a global coronavirus pandemic It is all a reminder of many things we take for granted and how it can all change in a very brief period

We compare the discourses on obesity found in early- and mid-twentieth century Mexican public discourse with those of Mexican geneticists and doctors today. We argue that postgenomic shifts towards non-determinism, apparently contained in current openness to epigenetics, need to be considered alongside the persistence of racialized genetic determinisms, and alongside the potential for epigenetic environmental determinisms. By exploring the environmentalist explanations of earlier eugenic thinking about obesity, we trace continuities in the gendered and racialized framings of obesity, which risk stigmatizing indigenous ancestry and attributing blame to individual mothers.

We explore the discourses of Mexican scientists and doctors on genetics and obesity and how these relate to ideas about race, class and national identity. Drawing on interviews with geneticists and doctors treating obese children , the paper makes two contributions to the literature on race and medical science. First, although our data reveal familiar racializing tendencies among geneticists, a more nuanced view is needed, as medical doctors who are sceptical about genetic explanations nevertheless tend to racialize, using more environmental and cultural explanations, which adduce epigenetic mechanisms. Second, rather than focusing on minority groups, as in much literature on racialization and genetics, in Mexico ideas about racialized genetic (and cultural) ancestry also impinge on the majority “mestizo” (mixed-race) population, opening broader panoramas of racialized pathologization. These two factors represent an overall strengthening of discourses of race in Mexico and probably in much of Latin America.

Recent genetic technologies have uncovered the urgent need for global governance of health that can guarantee an ethical consensus on human genome editing and stem cell research. Although the majority of gene-transfer trials have been located in the Americas and Europe, the regulation of human somatic cell genome editing is generally limited in Latin America and largely informed by ethical concerns about genetically modified plants and animals, biopiracy, biosecurity, and use of stem cells for clinical care. Few jurisdictions in the region (i.e., Chile, Panama, Ecuador, and Colombia) have explicitly addressed somatic genome editing. Jurisdictions often address concerns regarding the use of new biotechnologies (i.e., CRISPR-Cas9) for human “enhancement” purposes rather than the prevention or cure of serious medical conditions 1.

In Mexico, as in many other countries, ‘early’ motherhood is defined as a social problem and in some cases as a social epidemic. Looking at the experiences of young mothers and using health promotion materials and policy documents from youth pregnancy prevention programmes, this article explores discourses around youth and sexuality in Mexico. It argues that discourses that define young mothers and fathers as a social problem are closely linked to those that understand youth as a transition, where certain social rituals are expected to mark the entrance into adulthood. The article suggests that pregnancy prevention programmes reproduce chronological expectations regarding women’s reproductive experiences and gendered stereotypes of youth sexuality and parenting experiences. The article looks into the bio-power mechanisms that are displayed to normalize youth sexual behavior at the expense of pathologizing young mothers and fathers. Discourses that define youth sexuality as an individual and as a social risk tend to compromise the provision of effective contraceptive information that would ultimately aid in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies.

Theories of reflexive modernization are still at the centre of a heated debate regarding the possibilities of social transformation through agency and the reflexive capacity of individuals to work on themselves through the construction of their own biographies and certainties. However, when it comes to identifying reflexivity in the lived experiences of individuals, the issue becomes more complex since this enterprise greatly depends on the way people engage with narratives of the self. This article explores reflexivity and processes of individualization in the lived experiences of paid domestic workers and women employers in Mexico. The article also analyses the way academic work has identified reflexivity among workers. Even though the term ‘reflexivity’ has not specifically being used, studies have often demonstrated the way domestic workers reflexively engage with processes of individualization. The article argues that there are important methodological challenges when it comes to identifying reflexivity through narratives of the self. The context of an interview, the subjectivities of the researcher and participants’ own subject position might all be factors that enable or obstruct the production of those narratives and therefore have an effect on the visibility of processes of individualization in the lived experiences of individuals.

This article presents a case study of the sexualization of paid domestic workers in the city of Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. The author argues that the sexualization of workers is linked to historical concerns around purity and contamination. The article looks at the figure of Tlazolteotl, a pre-Hispanic goddess patroness of dust, filth and promiscuous women. It identifies the way colonial acts of translation might have informed concerns, meanings and practices that link ideas of dirt, sexuality and morality. The article explores experiences of sexual harassment among domestic workers that were interviewed and the role of female employers on the reproduction of ideas that define workers’ sexualities as ‘deviant’ and potentially contaminating.

This paper presents a case study of food relations between female employers and non-indigenous domestic workers in the city of Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. The paper argues that food and eating are still powerful racial and class markers among people in Mexico regardless of their ethnic adscription. The paper describes the history of food relations in Mexico and illustrates the parallels between ideas of culinary and human mestizaje as imagined founders of Mexico's national identity. In doing so, it identifies the complexities of addressing racism among a group of women workers that, in theory, are imagined as mixed while, in practice, are part of an occupation that has been and is still heavily racialised.

Este artículo explora la vulnerabilidad de las trabajadoras del hogar a la discriminación en México. Se argumenta que las trabajadoras del hogar son discriminadas tengan o no una adscripción indígena debido a que el sector del servicio doméstico ha sido históricamente racializado. El mito del mestizaje ha servido para invisibilizar la reproducción de un imaginario colonial en donde las labores de limpieza y de cuidados fueron históricamente asignados a mujeres indígenas y a mujeres negras traídas de África para trabajar como esclavas. Se argumenta que la discriminación de estas trabajadoras es la manifestación de una preocupación social por mantener fronteras de género, clase y también de raza. A través del análisis del trabajo de Michel Foucault, Ann L. Stoler y Anne McClintock sostengo que la racialización de la trabajadora está estrechamente vinculada no tanto a la certeza de la diferencia entre trabajadoras y patrones, sino a la proximidad entre los mismos y la ambigüedad generada por el carácter íntimo de la ocupación del servicio doméstico. Concluyo que existe la necesidad de problematizar la forma en que el mestizaje en México sigue negando las prácticas racistas en el país y cómo esto moldea y mantiene la discriminación de algunos grupos, entre ellos el de las mujeres en el servicio doméstico.

This article introduces the feminist praxis of duoethnography as a way to examine the COVID era. As a group of diverse, junior, midcareer, and senior feminist scholars, we developed a methodology to critically reflect on our positions in our institutions and social worlds. As a method, duoethnography emphasizes the dialogical intimacy that can form through anthropological work. While autoethnography draws on individual daily lives to make sense of sociopolitical dynamics, duoethnography emphasizes the relational character of research across people and practices. Taking the relational aspects of knowledge production seriously, we conceptualized this praxis as a transformative method for facilitating radical empathy, mobilizing our collective voice, and merging together our partial truths. As collective authors, interviewers, and interlocutors of this article, the anonymity of duoethnography allows us to vocalize details of the experience of living through COVID-19 that we could not have safely spoken about publicly or on our own.