A Companion to the Anthropology of

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

Merrill Singer is Professor of Anthropology and Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut. He has published more than 275 articles and book chapters, and authored or edited 29 books. Dr. Singer is a recipient of the Rudolph Virchow Professional Prize, the George Foster Memorial Award for Practicing Anthropology, the AIDS and Anthropology Paper Prize, the Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America, the Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association and the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group’s Distinguished Service Award.

Notes on Contributors viii

Introduction 1
Merrill Singer

Part I Theories, Methods, and Anthropological Perspectives on Key Issues in Environment and Health 19

1 Ecosocial and Environmental Justice Perspectives on Breast Cancer: Responding to Capitalism’s Ill Effects 21
Mary K. Anglin

2 Effects of Agriculture on Environmental and Human Health: Opportunities for Anthropology 44
Melissa K. Melby and Megan Mauger

3 Toward “One Health” Promotion 68
Melanie Rock and Chris Degeling

Part II Ecobiosocial Interactions and Health 83

4 Conceptualizing Ecobiosocial Interactions: Lessons from Obesity 85
Stanley Ulijaszek, Amy McLennan, and Hannah Graff

5 Environmental Racism and Community Health 101
Melissa Checker

6 Medicine, Alternative Medicine, and Political Ecologies of the Body 121
Joseph S. Alter

7 Asthma and Air Pollution: Connecting the Dots 142
Helen Kopnina

8 Washing Away Ebola: Environmental Stress, Rumor, and Ethnomedical Response in a Deadly Epidemic 157
Ivo Ngade, Merrill Singer, Olivia Marcus, and José E. Hasemann Lara

9 Paradise Poisoned: Nature, Environmental Risk, and the Practice of Lyme Disease Prevention in the United States 173
Abigail Dumes

10 Ecobiopolitics and the Making of Native American Reservation Health Inequities 193
Merrill Singer and G. Derrick Hodge

Part III The Political Ecology of Health 217

11 Water, Environment, and Health: The Political Ecology of Water 219
Linda M. Whiteford, Maryann Cairns, Rebecca Zarger, and Gina Larsen

12 Remembering the Foundations of Health: Everyday Water Insecurity and Its Hidden Costs in Northwest Alaska 236
Laura Eichelberger

13 Food Security: Health and Environmental Concerns in the North 257
Kirsten Hastrup, Anne Marie Rieffestahl, and Anja Olsen

14 New Toxics Uncertainty and the Complexity Politics of Emerging Vapor Intrusion Risk 281
Peter C. Little

15 The Political Ecology of Cause and Blame: Environmental Health Inequities in the Context of Colonialism, Globalization, and Climate Change 302
Eleanor S. Stephenson and Peter H. Stephenson

16 Political Ecology of a Drug Crop: The Intricate Effects of Khat 325
Lisa L. Gezon

17 Reestablishing the Fundamental Bases for Environmental Health: Infrastructure and the Social Topographies of Surviving Seismic Disaster 348
Stephanie C. Kane

Part IV Adverse Feedback Loops in Environmental Health 373

18 Modifying Our Microbial Environment: From the Advent of Agriculture to the Age of Antibiotic Resistance 375
Kristin N. Harper, Gabriela M. Sheets, and George J. Armelagos

19 China’s Cancer Villages: Contested Evidence and the Politics of Pollution 396
Anna Lora‐Wainwright and Ajiang Chen

20 Mining and Its Health Consequences: From Matewan to Fracking 417
Elizabeth Cartwright

Part V Pluralea Interactions and Ecosyndemics in a Changing World 435

21 Pluralea Interactions and the Remaking of the Environment in Environmental Health 437
Merrill Singer

22 Private Cars as Environmental Health Hazards: The Critical Need for Public Transit in the Era of Climate Change 458
Hans A. Baer

23 Health and the Anthropocene: Mounting Concern about Tick‐borne Disease Interactions 483
Nicola Bulled and Merrill Singer

Index 000

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A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials