ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates some of the ways through which soma and economy are articulated. It focuses on UK programs of governmental intervention into the early development of children. The chapter explains how the modulation of the soma through parental practices and state welfare is increasingly framed as linked to societal costs and value. Conceptions of psyche and society are often included within assemblages of capital and bodies, and in discourses upon both. Within a range of nations, the plastic biology commanding some of most intense cultural attention is perhaps the brain. In particular, in the case of early intervention, ideas associated with epigenetics are becoming gradually more visible. Some of the greatest excitement around epigenetics within British policy communities pertains to how heritable epigenetic changes might be, and especially modifications that have significant phenotypic effects. The chapter sketches out some of the ways that the imagined biological interacts with various kinds of economizing processes and economic calculations.
