The Space Between: A Biocultural Investigation of Intestinal Permeability, Inflammation, and Infant Growth in Nuñoa, Peru by Morgan Hoke

Join the Department of Anthropology (2/3) at 12:00pm in the Penn Museum Room 345

Dr. Morgan Hokefor our 2019-2020 Colloquium series: Food!

 

Morgan Hoke (University of Pennsylvania):“The Space Between: A Biocultural Investigation of Intestinal Permeability, Inflammation, and Infant Growth in Nuñoa, Peru”

 

Despite decades of research, scholars of growth and development working in fields including anthropology, medicine, and global health, have struggled to identify the causes of growth stunting. The two major determinants of infant growth, diet and illness, account for only 70% of observed stunting, leaving the causes of the remaining 30% unclear. In this talk, I propose gut function as the missing piece of this puzzle. From a biological perspective, gut function may interact with both diet and disease but its effects cannot be accounted for by either. Using data collected from my research in Nuñoa, Peru, I examine the influences of infant growth. I pay particular attention to the role of environmental enteropathy, a subclinical condition that alters gut morphology leading to intestinal permeability and reduced nutrient absorption, in early growth. Finding a significant effect of the effect of environmental enteropathy, I then consider the nature of “the subclinical” and the role of the gut in the embodiment of contemporary economic and social precarity.

 

 

A full schedule of our fall colloquium can be found at Anthropology website. Lunch will be served.

 

Food

​Anthropology Colloquium 2019-2020

 

“Next to breathing, eating is perhaps the most essential of all human activities, and one with which much of social life is entwined,” (Mintz & Du Bois, 2002). Food surrounds us, simultaneously representing a universal, human necessity and a key medium through which individual and cultural variation is expressed. From an evolutionary standpoint, food sharing and the practice of group provisioning may represent a large part of how humans came to be. Likewise, modifications of food production systems represent some of the most critical moments across our history. Consumption has been, is, and likely always will be a foundational component of society and culture. Anthropologists have examined global political economy through the study of sugar, milk, sushi, and countless other examples. What is more, with the looming threat of climate change and our deeply interdependent global food system, the study of food and food production is more pressing than ever.

 

The 2019-2020 speaker series is intended to encourage inter-subfield conversation that examines the production, distribution, and consumption of food across time and space, asking how food creates meaning and is deployed as a symbol within and between communities. We take a generous view of food and seek to explore those substances that sustain human culture, health, and life through nourishment, medicine, memory, ritual, identity, and more. We invite speakers to join the Penn Anthropology community in exploring, thinking, and practicing four-field anthropology through the study of food writ large.

 

LALS Co-sponsorship