Connecting political ecology of health and disease with ‘structural stigmatization’: Declining use of forest foods and medicines in Kédougou, Senegal

Recent political ecology (PE) frameworks have evolved to identify power disparities that have consequences for human health and disease development. These power disparities can lead to unequal access to health information, natural resources (e.g. farmland, clean water), micronutrients, healthcare, and other elements necessary to maintain healthy bodies and reduce risk of disease. While many PE and political ecology of health and disease (PEHD) frameworks examine access in terms of limitations, few examples highlight effects from increased access to resources. This article uses a PEHD lens to examine how diets and health in rural Kédougou, Senegal are influenced by increased access to globalized foodstuffs and stigmatization of local foods and medicines. A better understanding of dietary decision-making is critical in understudied regions such as Senegal because West Africa has a rapidly expanding population and is projected to be among regions of the world that are most burdened with non-communicable diseases (NCD). We used qualitative methods to: 1) describe current and historic diets in Kédougou; 2) identify perceived changes about diet, health, and access to resources; and 3) understand what might be influencing these changes. Our article shows that increased access and limited access are interconnected because increased, regular access to globalized foods and medicines could factor into reduced access to local foods and medicines. We found that social context strongly influenced use of local forest foods and medicines, even leading to a gradual stigmatization of using these resources.

Mining, Colonial Legacies, and Neoliberalism: A Political Ecology of Health Knowledge Minerıa, legados coloniales y neoliberalismo: una ecologıa polıtica del conocimiento en salud

Scholarship on the health impacts of resource extraction displays prominent gaps and apparent corporate and neocolonial footprints that raise questions about how science is produced. We analyze production of knowledge, on the health impacts of mining, carried out in relation to the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI), a university-based organization with substantial extractive industry involvement and links to Canada’s mining-dominated foreign policy. We use a “political ecology of knowledge” framework to situate CIRDI in the context of neoliberal capitalism, neocolonial sustainable development discourses, and mining industry corporate social responsibility techniques. We then document the interactions of specific health disciplinary conventions and knowledges within CIRDI-related research and advocacy efforts involving a major Canadian global health organization. This analysis illustrates both accommodation and resistance to large-scale political economic structures and the need to directly confront the global North governments and sectors pushing extractive-led neoliberal development globally. Resumen La investigación sobre los impactos en la salud de la extracción de recursos naturales delata brechas importantes y huellas corporativas y neocoloniales, que plantean dudas acerca de cómo se produce la ciencia. Analizamos la producción de conocimiento sobre los impactos en la salud de la minería en relación con el Instituto Canadiense de Desarrollo y Recursos Internacionales (CIRDI, siglas en inglés), una organización universitaria que cuenta con participación sustancial de la industria extractiva y tiene vínculos con la política exterior de Canadá, la cual es dominada por intereses mineros. Utilizamos un marco de "ecología política del conocimiento" para situar a CIRDI en el contexto del capitalismo neoliberal, los discursos neocoloniales de desarrollo sostenible y las técnicas de responsabilidad social corporativa de la industria minera. Luego, documentamos las interacciones entre los conocimientos y convenciones disciplinarias de salud dentro de los esfuerzos de investigación y promoción relacionados con CIRDI que involucran a una importante organización canadiense de salud global. Este análisis muestra tanto la complacencia como la resistencia a las estructuras políticas económicas a gran escala, y la necesidad de confrontar directamente a los gobiernos y sectores del Norte global que manejan el desarrollo neoliberal impulsado por la extracción a nivel mundial.

Towards an integrated political ecology of health and bodies

Political ecology of health (PEH) has become a robust subfield in geography. PEH scholarship deploys diverse theories and methods across analytical realms of political economy, social discourse, and materiality. Yet, within PEH the materiality of the body has been theoretically divided between an affective, visceral approach and one that views the body as a socio-ecological assemblage. We contend these two approaches are not mutually exclusive and might be held in tension for more nuanced analyses. We then analyze non-communicable diseases in India to exemplify this integrated framework’s analytical potentials.

Spirit hospitals and “concern with herbs”: A political ecology of healing and being-in-common in Ghana

Despite attention to the transformative capacities of “nonhumans” in both political ecology and commons scholarship, analyses remain limited to material realms, ignoring spiritual understandings. This article draws attention to the neglected domain of spirituality and being-in-common in the geographic study of health and disease. In Ghanaian healing contexts, spiritualists move between human and nonhuman domains to gain information and counter witchcraft, enlisting other material and spiritual entities in the process. Herbalists, by contrast, privilege botanical knowledge/practice over disease ontologies. All healers draw from therapeutic plants in assemblage with others (spirits, witches, ancestors, patients) and enact alternative economies. This research contributes to geographic scholarship in several ways. First, I integrate recent commons research into a political ecology of health framework with an eye on affective healing relations in material and spiritual realms. I draw from long-term ethnographic research and indigenous standpoints to understand spirituality in health contexts. Such integration leads to more robust and decolonial political ecologies of health and clearer understandings of how and why healing occurs.

Introduction

The book’s introduction presents the origins, character, scope, and implications of the Uruguayan lead-poisoning epidemic. The chapter situates the epidemic within a political and economic context of neoliberal reform and crisis and in relation to the global and biomedical history of the disease. The chapter outlines the author’s ethnographic research methods and the book’s principal social actors and research sites. The theoretical foundation of the book follows a political ecology of health perspective, with focused analyses of environmental justice, knowledge/power, and governance/resistance.

WHO guidelines challenged in Botswana: traditional medicine between healing, politics and witchcraft

The World Health Organization (WHO) supports integrating traditional health care into national health systems. The reasons why this is not happening in Botswana are manifold, complex and not always rational. Traditional healers demand the right to practice their techniques and organize themselves with an emancipatory political claim, but they are unsuccessful. Based on a political ecology of health perspective combined with assemblage thinking, this article explores discourses and historical lines of development in order to show how Christian morality, the dualism between tradition and modernity and the introduction of a modern public health system are intertwined with belief in witchcraft that clandestinely hampers development.

Public health guide to field developments linking ecosystems, environments and health in the Anthropocene

The impacts of global environmental change have precipitated numerous approaches that connect the health of ecosystems, non-human organisms and humans. However, the proliferation of approaches can lead to confusion due to overlaps in terminology, ideas and foci. Recognising the need for clarity, this paper provides a guide to seven field developments in environmental public health research and practice: occupational and environmental health; political ecology of health; environmental justice; ecohealth; One Health; ecological public health; and planetary health. Field developments are defined in terms of their uniqueness from one another, are historically situated, and core texts or journals are highlighted. The paper ends by discussing some of the intersecting features across field developments, and considers opportunities created through such convergence. This field guide will be useful for those seeking to build a next generation of integrative research, policy, education and action that is equipped to respond to current health and sustainability challenges.