Reframing Anthropology for Planetary Health: Engaging new thinking on the matter, processes and dynamics of health-environment relations

Datum
13. Jan­u­ar 2025 

CfP for a pan­el at Health, Envi­ron­ment and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Con­fer­ence at Durham University

CfP for the pan­el “Refram­ing Anthro­pol­o­gy for Plan­e­tary Health: Engag­ing new think­ing on the mat­ter, process­es and dynam­ics of health-envi­ron­ment relations”
Health, Envi­ron­ment and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Con­fer­ence at Durham University
23–24 April 2025
The call for abstracts is open until 13 January

Abstract:
As the world becomes hot­ter and more pol­lut­ed, the rela­tions between human health and envi­ron­men­tal harms reframe anthro­po­log­i­cal ways of think­ing and doing, bring­ing the domains of med­ical and envi­ron­men­tal anthro­pol­o­gy into align­ment. From the mount­ing bur­dens of dif­fi­cult-to-notice chem­i­cal expo­sures to the increased risk of extreme weath­er events, the envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions of health, well­ness, and live­abil­i­ty is shift­ing empir­i­cal, con­cep­tu­al and method­olog­i­cal atten­tions for anthro­pol­o­gy (Brown and Nad­ing 2019; Kirk­sey 2014; See­berg et al. 2020) with increas­ing con­cern for con­t­a­m­i­nant flows (Balles­tero 2019; Bond 2021; Krause 2017; Libo­iron 2021) and their con­se­quences for envi­ron­men­tal care and reme­di­a­tion (Green 2024; Papadopou­los et al. 2023). Despite advances, anthro­pol­o­gists remain divid­ed on whether their entry or end­points are ail­ing human bod­ies or ail­ing ecolo­gies, thus we ask, how can we attend to the kinds of phe­nom­e­na, activ­i­ties and process­es that pull body-ecol­o­gy rela­tions into relief? While the mat­ter of bod­ies (human and oth­er-than-human) still remain at the nexus of chang­ing envi­ron­ments and cli­mates, what gains can we make from turn­ing atten­tion to the actu­al­ly exist­ing process­es which medi­ate bod­ies and envi­ron­ments e.g. metab­o­lism, kinet­ics, ther­mo­dy­nam­ics and more? What kinds of method­olog­i­cal and con­cep­tu­al trac­tion do they pro­vide? Anchored in anthro­po­log­i­cal com­mit­ments to non-reduc­tion­ist notic­ing of human and oth­er-than-human worlds (Bubandt et al. 2024), this pan­el invites new think­ing, exper­i­men­ta­tion and explo­ration of medi­at­ing process­es as dis­tinct from mat­ter, sub­stance and bod­ies. Our aim is to explore the cur­rent method­olog­i­cal and empir­i­cal shifts upon which anthro­pol­o­gists are stag­ing inter­ro­ga­tions of health-envi­ron­ment relations.

Pan­el abstracts must be sub­mit­ted via the con­fer­ence man­age­ment system.