A Companion to Anthropology and Environmental Health
Abstract
A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health presents a collection of readings that utilize a medical anthropological approach to explore the interface of humans and the environment in the shaping of health and illness around the world. Features the latest ethnographic research from around the world related to the multiple impacts of the environment on health and of societies on their environments Includes contributions from international medical anthropologists, conservationists, environmental experts, public health professionals, health clinicians, and other social scientists Analyzes the conditions of cultural and social transformation that accompany environmental and ecological impacts in all areas of the world Offers critical perspectives on theoretical and methodological advancements in the anthropology of environmental health, along with future directions in the field
... La EPS analiza los elementos políticos, económicos, culturales, socioambientales y las relaciones de poder que coadyuvan en exacerbar las condiciones de salud de las poblaciones, valiéndose de distintas categorías como el racismo, la clase social y el género, entre otros, para dilucidar cómo las experiencias de personas y conjuntos sociales son diferenciales ante condiciones adversas. Desde esta perspectiva se problematizan la producción de distintos contaminantes al suelo, aire y agua; el impacto diferencial del cambio climático; la producción de plaguicidas en zonas de cultivo; y la emergencia y prevalencia de distintas enfermedades crónico-degenerativas (Baer y Singer, 2016;Brisbois et al., 2018;Choudhary, 2014;Jackson y Neely, 2014;King, 2010;Petney, 2015;Singer, 2016). ...
... De la misma forma lo aborda Evia Bertullo (2019) en su análisis desde la AMC sobre los padecimientos reconocidos y aguantados en un contexto de exposición a plaguicidas en Uruguay. En este mismo tenor se encuentran varias investigaciones producidas por el antropólogo médico Merrill Singer que discute desde la AMC la producción de la contaminación ambiental, el cambio climático y las sindemias (Baer y Singer, 2016;Singer, 2011Singer, , 2016Singer y Rylko-Bauer, 2021). ...
Esta investigación aborda cómo se configura un escenario de vulnerabilidad e injusticia socioambiental en dos comunidades del Estado de México a partir de tres conceptos clave: la vulnerabilidad socioambiental, la percepción social del riesgo y el sufrimiento socioambiental. Este escenario es resultado de múltiples problemas socioambientales de los cuales la colocación del Centro de Almacenamientos de Desechos Radiactivos (CADER) ocupa un lugar central, que la comunidad rural de Santa María Maquixco y la localidad semiurbana de San Juan Teacalco en el municipio de Temascalapa, Estado de México han experimentado a lo largo de varias décadas. La metodología tuvo el objetivo de engarzar dos niveles de análisis; el primero, da cuenta sobre los actores políticos que dieron paso a la colocación de aquella instalación; y el segundo, recuperando la manera en cómo es experimentada localmente la vulnerabilidad socioambiental. Se hizo una revisión en profundidad de documentos oficiales y de periódicos y otros documentos hemerográficos a nivel histórico y en la actualidad; se revisaron bases de datos epidemiológicas, sociodemográficas y socioeconómicas; se usó la herramienta de sistemas de información geográfica; además de recuperar percepciones y experiencias de los habitantes a través de la etnografía y entrevistas semiestructuradas, como herramientas primordiales para la producción de datos. Se describió y analizó cómo se configuran las relaciones de poder entre distintos actores de gobierno a nivel federal, estatal y municipal, las cuales dieron paso a la colocación de esa instalación en este municipio, mediante promesas y mentiras. Ante este escenario, la población percibe hoy en día el riesgo a través de elementos como la incertidumbre, la desconfianza, los rumores y los sentidos del cuerpo; como, por ejemplo, la vista, la escucha y el olfato. Esta percepción desata un tipo de sufrimiento que se manifiesta por medio de sentimientos como la preocupación, el miedo, la tristeza, la resignación y hasta la habituación. Además, emergen procesos de deslegitimación social por parte de personas ajenas a las comunidades que se expresan mediante el estigma socioterritorial. El reconocimiento del riesgo y del sufrimiento ha sido motor de diversas acciones políticas para la exigencia de justicia ambiental por parte de las personas de las comunidades de Maquixco y de Teacalco.
... Academic conversation around the Anthropocene and the disputed ways of conceptualising it (Tsing, Mathews, and Bubandt 2019;Haraway et al. 2016) challenges scholars to rethink the political and historical relationships between humans and nonhumans. This discussion has also brought to the fore issues that have concerned scholars of critical medical anthropology (CMA) for many years in relation to environmental health (Singer 2016). Political ecology approaches to health understand health as a 'biosocial process that reflects the interdependence of humanity and environment' (Ibid,2). ...
... Biomedical diagnosis does not typically search for associations between the symptoms presented and pesticide exposure in work environments. Associating pesticides with illness is known to be an epistemic challenge in the field of environmental health because a clear causal link is hard to determine (Singer 2016;Nading 2020;Stein and Luna 2021). Nevertheless, patients and their families interpreted negative health outcomes as consequences of chronic pesticide exposure at work. ...
Fuelled by agribusiness, transgenic soybean crops, genetically modified to withstand pesticide use, have increased in use during the last 20 years in the Southern Cone of Latin America. Plantations are understood as examples of ‘modular simplifications’ in ‘patchy Anthropocene’ landscapes (Tsing et al. 2019), where the attempt to reduce diversity may have social and ecological feral effects as diseases and toxins spread. In Uruguay, as an agro-exporter country, soybean expansionist processes correlate with an increased use of pesticides. Based on an ethnographic study (2016–2018) carried out in the main Uruguayan agricultural region, this Research Article seeks to analyse the experiences of toxicity among agricultural workers and rural inhabitants in the soybeanisation context. I propose that pesticide effects transcend biomedical diagnoses of ‘intoxication’. I also contend that the experience of toxicity can be understood as occurring along a continuum in the daily life of sufferers, which encompasses chemical and biological processes, their affects, intersectional conflicts, lay concepts of illnesses, informal self-care networks, and unequal access to health services. This ethnography demonstrates that the experience of toxic suffering embodies inequalities in environmental health in the time of the Anthropocene and is shaped by structural vulnerabilities and politics of exposure.
... El campo de la salud ambiental, en especial el debate sobre los potenciales efectos dañinos de ciertas sustancias tóxicas, está atravesado por controversias sociotécnicas en relación con el desafío de la atribución, por el problema del "saber" o "no saber", de "quién sabe", de cómo "lo que se sabe" cambia a lo largo del tiempo y de las brechas de conocimiento (Little, 2016;Singer, 2016). Estudios antropológicos, de epidemiología popular y de ciencia, tecnología y sociedad han documentado que los conocimientos locales basados en la propia experiencia, personal o comunitaria, también son formas legítimas de conocimiento sobre los daños ambientales en salud (Brown, 1992;Auyero y Swistun, 2009;Singer, 2011;Arancibia, 2013;Ottinger, 2013;Saxton, 2015a;Shapiro, 2015). ...
... Estos saberes se condensan en padecimientos identificados desde la epidemiología sociocultural, como el "estar intoxicado" o el "ataque de huesos" (Evia, 2019), que son atribuidos desde los saberes populares a "trabajar por mucho tiempo con los venenos", pero no cuentan, necesariamente, con un correlato en los diagnósticos biomédicos. Como ha sido estudiado para otros problemas de exposición ambiental a sustancias químicas tóxicas, este campo se caracteriza por la ambigüedad, las brechas de conocimiento (tanto de la ciencia existente sobre el tema como sobre su regulación) y el desafío de la atribución (Little, 2012(Little, , 2016Ottinger, 2013;Singer, 2016). ...
Since the beginning of the 21st century Uruguay has been going through a sojization process that has been linked to an exponential increase in the volumes of pesticides used. Although there is evidence that exposures to these products pose a risk to human health, they remain part of the dominant technological package of this productive system. Based on the proposals of critical medical anthropology of environmental health and Latin American sociocultural epidemiology, this article discusses results obtained among workers linked to the application of pesticides in soybean production in Uruguay, for having beig characterized as a social group particularly vulnerable to exposures to these substances' effects. The results indicate that popular knowledge regarding the danger of pesticides combines body knowledge as well as expert knowledge which are appropriate and resignified in a popular pesticide hazzard clasification.
... In questa situazione, all'Umbria e Toscana -e l'Alta Valle del Tevere si trova proprio fra queste due regioni -spetta il primato negativo per tutto il territorio nazionale: "In alcune Regioni la contaminazione è molto più diffusa del dato nazionale, arrivando a interessare oltre il 70% dei punti delle acque superficiali in Veneto, Lombardia, Emilia Romagna, con punte del 90% in Toscana e del 95% in Umbria" 9 . Nella coltivazione del tabacco, l'uso di prodotti fitosanitari (agrofarmaci) fa parte della cosiddetta fase verde, quella cioè che precede la lavorazione negli stabilimenti, essicazione esclusa 10 . È la parte più propriamente agricola e quella che precede la fase industriale. ...
... Nel 1960, comparve per la prima volta in Italia la Peronospera tabacina, un malattia 9 "Sono state rinvenute 18 sostanze: le più frequenti sono metolaclor, terbutilazina, terbutilazina-desetil e metalaxil. [...] Sono state rinvenute 7 sostanze, di cui le maggiormente frequenti sono:, terbutilazina-desetil, metolaclor, terbutilazina e miclobutanil".10 Fra gli studi specifici sul rapporto fra prodotti fitosanitari per il tabacco e cancro rimando a: 35, 36, 37. Per quanto riguarda una più generale correlazione fra prodotti fitosanitari e cancro, rimando a:38, 39, 40. ...
Obiettivi: l’Alta Valle del Tevere è una delle zone d’Europa a più alta concentrazione di coltivazioni di tabacco e un territorio in cui l’incidenza e la mortalità per tumore gastrico, soprattutto per gli uomini, sono costantemente e nettamente superiori alla media regionale e nazionale. Molti cittadini attribuiscono questa duplice caratteristica alla presunta nocività dei prodotti chimici utilizzati. Questo articolo si concentra sulla genealogia, la gestione politica e gli effetti sociali di tale “rumore di fondo”, concentrandosi sugli elementi alla base del posizionamento, da parte della comunità locale, della soglia di tolleranza rispetto al supposto nesso fra coltivazione del tabacco e incidenza tumorale.
Metodi: la ricerca etnografica alla base di questo contributo si è svolta attraverso una serie di interviste semistrutturate con imprenditori, rappresentanti istituzionali, famiglie di ex malati oncologici, altri cittadini, esperti di storia locale, ricercatori in campo agronomico e naturalistico, dipendenti delle imprese tabacchicole e membri di associazioni locali di volontariato, oltre a una rassegna bibliografica internazionale e degli archivi storici locali.
Risultati: la ricerca ha individuato in particolare cinque elementi centrali nella genealogia delle logiche le istanze morali alla base della gestione locale del rischio oncologico: l’uso della complessità epidemiologica come strumento di governo; la memoria storica come inibitore di cambiamento sociale; l’ambiguità del concetto di social responsibility da parte delle imprese locali e dei loro rappresentanti politici; la necessità di un’analisi delle forme di comunicazione e del linguaggio rispetto al legame potenziale fra coltivazione del tabacco e incidenza del cancro gastrico; e, infine, le concezioni conflittuali di principio di precauzione. Conclusioni: l’articolo evidenzia la necessità di rispondere ai processi di normalizzazione e invisibilizzazione del rischio attribuendo ai vissuti locali del nesso potenziale fra coltivazione del tabacco e incidenza oncologica una forma dialettica che lo renda visibile, analizzabile e politicamente affrontabile. La necessità è dunque quella di rendere ascoltabili tanto le storie e le preoccupazioni dei cittadini che di quel nesso fanno esperienza – in quelle che possiamo definire “biografie tossiche” – quanto le istanze scientifiche che quelle preoccupazioni possono inquadrarle con precisione.
... Denisse Ugalde Alegría del PRI (2015)(2016)(2017)(2018) planeaba quitar un área del panteón de Tequesquinahuac, retirar a todos los difuntos, hacer un crematorio, y pasar los difuntos de sus tumbas a criptas y nichos. La noticia desencadenó una total conmoción y reacción de muchas personas que rápidamente se organizaron contra la iniciativa. ...
En 1943 se instala en San Pedro Barrientos (SPB), Tlalnepantla de Baz una de las primeras fábricas de asbesto en México junto con otras fábricas de industria básica que apuntalarían el denominado “milagro mexicano”. La Región vivió un brutal proceso de industrialización y envenenamiento que continúa hasta el día de hoy y que le ha valido el reconocimiento por parte del Pronaces de CONACYT como una Región de Emergencia Sanitaria y Ambiental (RESA). En 2012 la Dra. Aguilar-Madrid identifica que SPB vive una epidemia de mesotelioma maligno pleural (MMP) y cáncer pulmonar por asbesto y comienza intervenciones epidemiológicas y de sensibilización en la comunidad.
En esta tesis se analiza desde su historicidad la transformación radical de un territorio (SPB) en su producción como una RESA así como los impactos a la salud y a los espacios de sociabilidad que esta transformación ha implicado a partir de dos dimensiones y un enfoque transversales a la investigación: las prácticas, las representaciones de actores sociales y la ecología política. Se analiza un proceso paralelo que nombro como la normalización y desnormalización del envenenamiento y para el cual identificamos elementos ecológico políticos y culturales como son la salvaje industrialización, la historia obrera y la profunda imbricación fábrica-comunidad, la fragmentación del sistema de salud y la omisión de sindicatos y autoridades en salud que han actuado como cómplices en el envenenamiento y la normalización del mismo. Se llegó a la conclusión de que la población realizó y realiza cotidianamente acciones que normalizan las problemáticas mencionadas; así como también ha realizado y realiza prácticas de prevención, mitigación, atención y reparación frente al envenenamiento y enfermedades generadas por el asbesto, prácticas que en algunos casos tienden a la desnormalización. Dicha normalización/desnormalización se describe y analiza en términos históricos, así como a través de dos actores sociales que denominamos cuidadores familiares y cuidadores comunitarios.
... Un certo numero di lavori socio-antropologici ha però dimostrato da tempo come la salute sia dipendente dall'ambiente in cui si vive, volendo intendere quest'ultimo come un complesso assemblaggio biosociale (Ingold and Palsson 2013). Dalla 'crisi della presenza' di de martiniana memoria, ai lavori di Gramsci (Pizza 2012), Foucault e Bourdieu sul corpo, all'idea di un 'mindful body' (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987) e al concetto di incorporazione (Csordas 1990), alla proposta di 'local biologies' (Lock 1993), di 'violenza strutturale' (Farmer 1992(Farmer , 2003Pellecchia and Zanotelli 2010), fino agli studi che integrano l'ecologia politica e la salute (Baer and Singer 2009, Singer 2016) e alle critiche all'approccio neoliberale di responsabilizzazione del paziente in quanto persona 'autonoma' (Minelli 2012, Mol 2008, Raffaetà and Nichter 2015, sembra oramai assodato il fatto che i confini del corpo non siano necessariamente i confini della salute. Si parla così di 'social bodies' (Lambert and McDonald 2009), sottolineando la continuità, tra ciò che è all'interno e ciò che si trova all'esterno del corpo (Hsu 2007), definendo i corpi come il prodotto delle relazioni che intercorrono tra questi e l'ambiente (Ingold 2000(Ingold , 2008(Ingold , 2011. ...
... Un certo numero di lavori socio-antropologici ha però dimostrato da tempo come la salute sia dipendente dall'ambiente in cui si vive, volendo intendere quest'ultimo come un complesso assemblaggio biosociale (Ingold and Palsson 2013). Dalla 'crisi della presenza' di de martiniana memoria, ai lavori di Gramsci (Pizza 2012), Foucault e Bourdieu sul corpo, all'idea di un 'mindful body' (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987) e al concetto di incorporazione (Csordas 1990), alla proposta di 'local biologies' (Lock 1993), di 'violenza strutturale' (Farmer 1992(Farmer , 2003Pellecchia and Zanotelli 2010), fino agli studi che integrano l'ecologia politica e la salute (Baer and Singer 2009, Singer 2016) e alle critiche all'approccio neoliberale di responsabilizzazione del paziente in quanto persona 'autonoma' (Minelli 2012, Mol 2008, Raffaetà and Nichter 2015, sembra oramai assodato il fatto che i confini del corpo non siano necessariamente i confini della salute. Si parla così di 'social bodies' (Lambert and McDonald 2009), sottolineando la continuità, tra ciò che è all'interno e ciò che si trova all'esterno del corpo (Hsu 2007), definendo i corpi come il prodotto delle relazioni che intercorrono tra questi e l'ambiente (Ingold 2000(Ingold , 2008(Ingold , 2011. ...
Questo dossier speciale di Antropologia nasce dal desiderio di approfondire etnograficamente le forme specifiche assunte dall’intersezione tra la sfera della salute e quella dell’ambiente in tempi di Antropocene. L’Antropocene è una nuova epoca geologica proposta per indicare i cambiamenti planetari con cause antropogeniche (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). L’Antropocene marca, a livello socio-culturale, il riconoscimento della profonda commistione tra gli esseri umani e la natura e la loro interdipendenza nel determinare le sorti dell’intero pianeta (Haraway 2014, Lewis and Maslin 2015, Moore 2016). In questo contesto, l’attuale concetto di ‘salute’ (normalmente riferito ad un corpo, ed umano) stride. Sia il campo della salute che quello dell’ambiente, presi singolarmente, hanno veicolato negli ultimi 50 anni un’infinità di dibattiti, retoriche, semantiche, gerarchie, politiche e profitti. Il loro accostamento nella formula ‘salute ambientale’ apre invece ad un dominio socio-politico dai contorni meno netti e stabili, riflettendo l’instabilità dei discorsi ‘in tempi di Antropocene’. L’etnografia fornisce, all’interno di questa complessità, gli elementi di base da cui partire per dare sostanza e problematizzare questi assemblaggi di naturacultura, aprendo a soluzioni dal basso.
... But this is just the sort of thing that's at stake in the futures imagined by Terasem and other transhumanist groups, especially as they develop projects that aim to defeat death and achieve the indefinite extension of personhood by technoscientific means (Farman, forthcoming). Beating death is regarded as a medical issue, yet it is pursued through mind- 3 The intertwined nature of human health and nonhuman factors have been well theorized in relation to the environment and in ecobiosocial conceptions of well-being that take into consideration nonhuman entities such as plants, pollutant clouds, and toxic particles (Mitman, Murphy, and Sellers 2004;Singer 2016). ...
Silicon Valley donors have been investing heavily in a range of transhumanist longevity and immortality ventures. Theirs is a particular, culturally embedded endeavor, shaped by specific histories, ideologies, and futures that present new posthuman views of life, death, and survival. These projects aim for a future world in which the fundamental ontological categories of mind, life, and nonlife will have finally collapsed into one another thanks to the intercession of silicon-based digital or informatic technologies. The key term that denotes such a project is ‘convergence’ – used as much by transhumanists as by mainstream scientists and policymakers. Here I critically explore the ‘project of convergence’, tracing its history in the United States, and examining some of the projects and activities that have coalesced around it. These specifically include artificial intelligence, in which human persons are to be transferred from carbon-based to silicon-based substrates, and nanotechnology, in which work at the nano resolution aims at the reconstitution of the carbon-based or biochemical body. Although the concept of convergence emerges out of a transhumanist imaginary, the ideas and plans behind it have gained increasing traction in mainstream technoscientific projects. In contrast to some other health concepts that have been recently expanded to incorporate the organic nonhuman environment, these projects expand notions of health via robotic and computational formations in ways that, I argue, are moving health beyond the carbon barrier, pushing us toward an era in which intelligent existence deserving of care will not be understood as exclusive to carbon-based life forms.
... Negli ultimi anni l'antropologia ha rivolto una forte attenzione al rapporto fra agricoltura, ambiente e salute umana basandosi su un approccio multidisciplinare e articolando micro e macro livelli di analisi: dalla ricerca etnografica di lungo corso con i coltivatori all'analisi delle politiche neoliberali rispetto alle grandi questioni di salute globale (Melby e Mauger 2016). Nel presentare le sfide analitiche con cui si confronta l'antropologia contemporanea rispetto ai temi della salute ambientale, Merril Singer (2016), ne identifica tre in particolare: quella di "attribuzione" (l'analisi dei nessi causali complessi fra fattori inquinanti e patologie), quella delle "élite contrarians" (l'osservazione delle strategie politiche e morali di chi nega quei nessi 3 I dati sono disponibili nel sito www.rtup.unipg.it (consultato il 30/07/2016), con divisioni per forme tumorali, zone geografiche, anni, genere, età e così via. 4 Nel rapporto La geografia del cancro 1978La geografia del cancro -2003 dal "Registro tumori umbro di popolazione", leggiamo: "Negli anni Ottanta, nell'Alto Tevere Umbro furono rilevati alti tassi di incidenza pari a quelli del Giappone, che allora risultavano i più alti nel mondo. ...
L'Alta Valle del Tevere, oltre ad essere una delle zone d'Europa a più alta concentrazione di coltivazioni di tabacco, è anche una delle zone in cui l'in-cidenza e la mortalità per tumore allo stomaco sono costantemente e ab-bondantemente superiori alla media regionale e nazionale. Molti cittadini attribuiscono questa doppia caratteristica dell'area alla presunta nocività dei prodotti chimici utilizzati per la coltivazione del tabacco. Questo articolo si concentra su genealogia, gestione politica e conseguenze sociali di tale " ru-more di fondo ". Nel considerare le scelte imprenditoriali, insieme alle poli-tiche sanitarie delle istituzioni territoriali, particolare attenzione è rivolta a quegli elementi che hanno determinato, e determinano ancora, l'economia morale della soglia di tolleranza rispetto al supposto nesso fra coltivazione del tabacco e incidenza oncologica. Parole chiave: Tabacco, Alta Valle del Tevere, tumore, stomaco, pesticidi Introduzione L'Alta Valle del Tevere – bacino che si estende fra Toscana e Umbria del nord (e, in piccola parte, Emilia Romagna) e in cui attualmente vivono circa 109.000 persone 1 – è una delle zone d'Italia e d'Europa in cui la coltivazione del tabacco è più consistente. Ma è anche una delle zone con la maggiore incidenza di tumori allo stomaco, rispetto a standard sia italiani che inter-nazionali. Questi due dati vengono spesso, e da molto tempo, messi in re-lazione attraverso l'argomentazione di un rapporto di causalità fra l'effetto ambientale dei prodotti fitosanitari utilizzati per la pianta di tabacco e una simile incidenza patologica: tale nesso è, per gli abitanti dell'Alta Valle del 1 La denominazione geografica formale della zona è Alta Valle del Tevere, composta da Altotevere umbro e Valtiberina toscana. Questo articolo si concentrerà in particolare sul territo-rio del Comune di Città di Castello, di circa 387 km² di estensione e circa 40.000 abitanti. *
... Doing so becomes an ever more pressing issue as populations face growing health risk due to profound and diverse environmental changes, many of which are of human origin. 59 These changes are intensifying existing social and health disparitieschallenges that have proven to be of great consequence and notoriously resistant to overcome. As a result, new ways of thinking and working are needed to resolve the health tests of the present and the future. ...
The syndemics model of health focuses on the biosocial complex, which consists of interacting, co-present, or sequential diseases and the social and environmental factors that promote and enhance the negative effects of disease interaction. This emergent approach to health conception and clinical practice reconfigures conventional historical understanding of diseases as distinct entities in nature, separate from other diseases and independent of the social contexts in which they are found. Rather, all of these factors tend to interact synergistically in various and consequential ways, having a substantial impact on the health of individuals and whole populations. Specifically, a syndemics approach examines why certain diseases cluster (ie, multiple diseases affecting individuals and groups); the pathways through which they interact biologically in individuals and within populations, and thereby multiply their overall disease burden, and the ways in which social environments, especially conditions of social inequality and injustice, contribute to disease clustering and interaction as well as to vulnerability. In this Series, the contributions of the syndemics approach for understanding both interacting chronic diseases in social context, and the implications of a syndemics orientation to the issue of health rights, are examined.
Ecoviolence, defined broadly as the intersection between human-human exploitation and the destruction of nature, is one of the defining features of our time. This book collects ten case studies examining the intersection between the exploitation of human beings and environmental harm. Topics discussed include the wildlife trade, ecoviolence at sea, natural resource exploitation in Latin America and Africa, human trafficking induced by extreme weather events, climate change-related language death, and the confluence of drug cartels and environmental destruction. The book argues that Ecoviolence Studies has emerged as an expanded, multidisciplinary field in its own right, and that policy responses and the search for environmental and social justice should reflect accumulated knowledge in this area. It is an insightful volume for researchers and graduate students working in green criminology, Earth system governance, environmental politics, human rights, environmental and international law, and related areas.
Syndemics, the adverse interaction of two or more coterminous diseases or other negative health conditions, have probably existed since human settlement, plant and animal domestication, urbanization, and the growth of social inequality beginning about 10–12,000 years ago. These dramatic changes in human social evolution significantly increased opportunities for the spread of zoonotic infectious diseases in denser human communities with increased sanitation challenges. In light of a growing body of research that indicates that anthropogenic air pollution causes numerous threats to health and is taking a far greater toll on human life and wellbeing than had been reported, this paper proposes the possibility that air pollution is now the primary driver of infectious disease syndemics. In support of this assertion, this paper reviews the growth and health impacts of air pollution, the relationship of air pollution to the development and spread of infectious diseases, and reported cases of air pollution-driven infectious disease syndemics, and presents public health recommendations for leveraging the biosocial insight of syndemic theory in responding to infectious disease.
Nous abordons la notion de racisme environnemental en partant de la diversité des usages et sens du terme. Dans un effort de délimitation conceptuelle, nous mentionnons ses antécédents historiques, puis nous indiquons quelques spécificités qui ont distingué les conceptions en vigueur, ainsi que certains prolongements sur le plan sociopolitique et juridique. Enfin, nous situons les usages du concept dans le champ de l’anthropologie, ainsi que leurs implications.
This Companion offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the environmental humanities, an interdisciplinary movement that responds to a world reconfigured by climate change and its effects, from environmental racism and global migration to resource impoverishment and the importance of the nonhuman world. It addresses the twenty-first century recognition of an environmental crisis – its antecedents, current forms, and future trajectories – as well as possible responses to it. This books foregrounds scholarship from different periods, fields, and global locations, but it is organized to give readers a working context for the foundational debates. Each chapter examines a key topic or theme in Environmental Humanities, shows why that topic emerged as a category of study, explores the different approaches to the topics, suggests future avenues of inquiry, and considers the topic's global implications, especially those that involve environmental justice issues.
The characteristics of the main directions of the fundamental innovative sociological research, which are orientated to identification the new determinants of social tensions caused by the contradictory practical human attitudes to nature and environment, have been presented in the article – argued that the latest global and regional transformations change the traditional forms of the human cultural influence to nature as the physical reality. Therefore, the sociological research of the cultural integration and differentiation in contemporary European societies, as the social systems of industrial and post-industrial types, open the new cognitive stimulus for the fundamental and applied scientific studies of the new forms of social tensions in the “nature-society” system. Proved that in the contemporary multicultural European societies, the different subcultures arise and coexist in their competitive and contradictory interactions. These subcultures, reflecting the essential humanitarian values, at the same time, produce the critical human attitude to existing social orders. So, the scholars, who study the reasons for the contradictory human attitudes to nature, try to develop conceptual views on the subculture phenomena as the specific sources of the social tensions. Paid attention to the need for the correct identification of the “social tension” concept’s cognitive status, taking into account that this concept is vital for innovative studies in the scientific spheres of sociology, social ecology, and social management.
Public health measures necessary to counteract the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have resulted in dramatic changes in the physical and social environments within which children grow and develop. As our understanding of the pathways for viral exposure and associated health outcomes in children evolves, it is critical to consider how changes in the social, cultural, economic, and physical environments resulting from the pandemic could affect the development of children. This review article considers the environments and settings that create the backdrop for children's health in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, including current threats to child development that stem from: A) change in exposures to environmental contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, disinfectants, air pollution and the built environment; B) changes in food environments resulting from adverse economic repercussion of the pandemic and limited reach of existing safety nets; C) limited access to children's educational and developmental resources; D) changes in the social environments at the individual and household levels, and their interplay with family stressors and mental health; E) social injustice and racism. The environmental changes due to COVID-19 are overlaid onto existing environmental and social disparities. This results in disproportionate effects among children in low-income settings and among populations experiencing the effects of structural racism. This article draws attention to many environments that should be considered in current and future policy responses to protect children's health amid pandemics.
In a reiteration of a long history of pathologization of Haiti and Haitians, the cholera epidemic was framed as endemic, an inevitable outcome of the 2010 earthquake, and a quasi-confirmation of Haiti’s premodern, exceptional predicament. Baseball in the Time of Cholera and Haiti in a Time of Cholera, widely viewed but not extensively analysed documentaries, challenge this linking of disaster and disease. They reveal forms of epistemic injustice and counter the politics behind such misappropriations of cause and effect in the UN-introduced cholera outbreak. Centring on the notion of hurt, this essay explores the ways in which the two films give value to personal testimony, stories of individual life and loss, offer a relational take on life with cholera, and, in so doing, contribute to the ‘narrative defeat’ of the UN (Payton 2017). In effect, the two films, as the article argues, formulate a political ecology of the epidemic: they compel a rethinking of the relationship between forms of experiential knowledge, such as personal testimony, and forms of slow violence that occur when an environment is rendered dangerous, or when an introduced disease becomes an endemic threat.
The stability of food supply chains is crucial to the food security of people around the world. Since the beginning of 2020, this stability has been undergoing one of the most vigorous pressure tests ever due to the COVID-19 outbreak. From a mere health issue, the pandemic has turned into an economic threat to food security globally in the forms of lockdowns, economic decline, food trade restrictions, and rising food inflation. It is safe to assume that the novel health crisis has badly struck the least developed and developing economies, where people are particularly vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition. However, due to the recency of the COVID-19 problem, the impacts of macroeconomic fluctuations on food insecurity have remained scantily explored. In this study, the authors attempted to bridge this gap by revealing interactions between the food security status of people and the dynamics of COVID-19 cases, food trade, food inflation, and currency volatilities. The study was performed in the cases of 45 developing economies distributed to three groups by the level of income. The consecutive application of the autoregressive distributed lag method, Yamamoto's causality test, and variance decomposition analysis allowed the authors to find the food insecurity effects of COVID-19 to be more perceptible in upper-middle-income economies than in the least developed countries. In the latter, food security risks attributed to the emergence of the health crisis were mainly related to economic access to adequate food supply (food inflation), whereas in higher-income developing economies, availability-sided food security risks (food trade restrictions and currency depreciation) were more prevalent. The approach presented in this paper contributes to the establishment of a methodology framework that may equip decision-makers with up-to-date estimations of health crisis effects on economic parameters of food availability and access to staples in food-insecure communities.
Anthropological research can provide the time depth needed for a rich understanding of the health effects of atmospheric and ocean warming, shifting weather patterns, and the breakdown of biological and social systems large and small. Medical anthropologists are poised to document the human costs of floods, fires, droughts and other catastrophic events, as well as the slowly shifting supplies of fresh water, clean air, and adequate food. Our anthropological eyes on the ground are needed for contextual, local, and critical understandings of how human lifestyles of the twenty-first century are creating climate change.
How do we understand and respond to the pressing health problems of modern society? Conventional practice focuses on the assessment and clinical treatment of immediate health issues presented by individual patients. In contrast, social medicine advocates an equal focus on the assessment and social treatment of underlying social conditions, such as environmental factors, structural violence, and social injustice. Social Justice and Medical Practice examines the practice of social medicine through extensive life history interviews with a physician practicing the approach in marginalized communities. It presents a case example of social medicine in action, demonstrating how such a practice can be successfully pursued within the context of the existing structure of twenty-first-century medicine. In examining the experience of a physician on the frontlines of reforming health care, the book critiques the restrictive nature of the dominant clinical model of medicine and argues for a radically expanded focus for modern-day medical practice. Social Justice and Medical Practice is a timely intervention at a time when even advanced health care systems are facing multiple crises. Lucidly written, it presents a striking alternative and is important reading for students and practitioners of medicine and anthropology, as well as policy makers.
As the first large-scale mineral mine of Ecuador, the Mirador project in the Ecuadorian Amazon has become an emblematic spearhead of both the country’s new resource politics and the movements resisting extraction. This book bundles the work of various political ecology-inspired scholars who followed and studied this project over the last decade, and engages with the territorial conflicts, water battles, identity politics, gender dynamics, participation processes and the politics of knowledge characterizing the case. Based on a wealth of empirical data, the authors critically reflect on the implications of the expanding large-scale mining sector in Ecuador, the country’s new mining politics and the complex power-laden processes that shape the relationships between government, companies, local populations and the environment. As such, this edited volume provides thought-provoking and unique insights into the conflicts and dynamics on the expanding mining frontier in Ecuador, Latin America and beyond.
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