Entangled agencies: Rethinking causality and health in political-ecology

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862094388
Author(s):  
Abigail H Neely
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Opening Up

The question of non-human agency has been particularly important and generative in political-ecology. Drawing from science studies, scholars have used actor-network theory and assemblage theory to decenter humans from analyses. Building on this scholarship, this article offers a decolonial approach for rethinking of agency in health for political-ecologies of health drawing from work in feminist science studies that stresses non-proscriptive relationships over individuals. By unpacking the example of isibhobho, a witchcraft illness, through the work of Karen Barad, I argue for an understanding of agency as the reconfiguration of entanglements. This approach offers new possibilities for understanding what causes illness, which moved beyond humans and non-humans to focus on entanglements. This approach challenges models of causality, taken up in both biomedicine and in political-ecology, offering a vision of causality that is relational and opening up new possibilities for healing and for politics more broadly.

scholarly journals Clinical encounter and the logic of relationality: Reconfiguring bodies and subjectivities in clinical relations

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina A Kazimierczak
Keyword(s):  
Science Studies ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Clinical Encounter ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Clinical Encounters ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Relational Theories ◽  
Clinical Interactions ◽  
Alternative Understanding

This article critically examines the significance of relational approaches for sociological understandings of clinical interactions, relations and practices, by exploring the ways in which relational theories and concepts have been employed in the recent sociological accounts of clinical encounters to trouble the classical dyadic models of clinical interaction and the related atomistic conceptions of agency and accountability. Reading this work through the theoretical contributions from feminist science studies scholarship, and particularly the work of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, the article proposes an alternative understanding of clinical interactions, relations and practices, where relations are conceived as constitutive of individuals (objects/bodies and their attributes/identities), rather than being constituted by encounters between individuals. Key for this understanding is the reconceptualisation of clinical encounter as an apparatus of bodily production through which different agents (patients, clinicians, diseases and healthcare services) are materialised and enacted.

scholarly journals Reinvigorating a political ecology of the global agri-food system

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sören Köpke
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Food System ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Food Regime ◽  
Food And Agriculture ◽  
Agrarian Studies ◽  
Political Ecologies

This contribution is a critical review of research on the global agri-food system directly or indirectly identified as political ecology (PE). It shows how food, famine and agricultural production were important topics to early proponents of PE, especially with regards to a critique of neo-Malthusian thought. It then traces further developments in the field and highlights the productive tension between materialist and poststructuralist streams, as well as the influence of actor-network theory. Further on, the paper discusses three neighbouring theories and frameworks with a potential to stimulate current political ecologies of food and agriculture, namely critical agrarian studies, food regime theory and world-ecology. Finally, seven clusters of potential research topics for a political ecology of the global agri-food system are identified. In conclusion, the relevance of PE as a theoretical lens is reiterated and the need for fruitful application of political ecology and related approaches is expressed.

Troubling Figures

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Logan Natalie O'Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Environmental Toxicants ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Do So

This essay examines the figure of the pesticide-exposed intersex frog, a canary in the coal mine for public endocrinological health. Through feminist science studies and critical discourse analysis, I explore the fields that bring this figure into being (endocrinology, toxicology, and pest science) and the colonial and racial logics that shape these fields. In so doing, I attend to the multiple nonhuman actors shaping this figure, including the pesky weeds and insects who prompt pesticides’ very existence, “male” frogs who function as test subjects, and systemic environmental racism that disproportionately exposes people of color to environmental toxicants. I encourage careful examination of galvanizing environmental figures like this toxic intersex frog and I offer a method to do so.

Biology is a feminist issue: Interview with Lynda Birke

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Åsberg ◽  
Lynda Birke
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Feminist Technoscience ◽  
The One ◽  
Materialist Feminist

This is an interview with Professor Lynda Birke (University of Chester, UK), one of the key figures of feminist science studies. She is a pioneer of feminist biology and of materialist feminist thought, as well as of the new and emerging field of hum-animal studies (HAS). This interview was conducted over email in two time periods, in the spring of 2008 and 2010. The format allowed for comments on previous writings and an engagement in an open-ended dialogue. Professor Birke talks about her key arguments and outlooks on a changing field of research. The work of this English biologist is typical of a long and continuous feminist engagement with biology and ontological matters that reaches well beyond the more recently articulated ‘material turn’ of feminist theory. It touches upon feminist issues beyond the usual comfort zones of gender constructionism and human-centred research. Perhaps less recognized than for instance the names of Donna Haraway or Karen Barad, Lynda Birke’s oeuvre is part of the same long-standing and twofold critique from feminist scholars qua trained natural scientists. On the one hand, theirs is a powerful critique of biological determinism; on the other, an acutely observed contemporary critique of how merely cultural or socially reductionist approaches to the effervescently lively and biological might leave the corporeal, environmental or non-human animal critically undertheorized within feminist scholarship. In highlighting the work and arguments of Lynda Birke, it is hoped here to provide an accessible introduction to the critical questions and challenges that circumvent contemporary discussions within feminist technoscience as theory and political practice.

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