Vol. 2 (2026)
Practice Theory and Social Change

Interviews

An Interview with Megan Warin: Talking about Practice Theory and Social Change

Published 03-09-2026

  • Elizabeth Shove
    • ,
  • Manuel Baeriswyl
    • ,
  • Megan Warin

Elizabeth Shove
Sociology, Lancaster University

Manuel Baeriswyl
Institute of Marketing and Communication Management, Università della Svizzera italiana

Megan Warin
School of Society and Culture, University of Adelaide

membrane crossing representation of biological processes

Abstract

Long-standing divisions between the biological and the social matter for how bodies, health and processes of change are understood. In this interview, Megan Warin talks about the need to move beyond these traditions. By bringing Bourdieu’s concept of habitus into conversation with research on the developmental origins of health and disease and epigenetics Megan shows how social and biological processes come together in bodies, environments, and practices across generations. In discussing this approach, and its connections with Anthropology, Public Health, Feminist Theory, and Science and Technology Studies, we range across questions of embodiment, inheritance, materiality, temporality, and scale. We consider the value of metaphors of folding and bodies-within-bodies, the significance of ethnography and importance of interdisciplinary collaboration for overcoming the limits of individualised approaches to public health and for understanding processes of biosocial change.

Keywords

bodies, biosocial, epigenetics, generational change, interdisciplinarity

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