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- Convenors:
-
Kristin McBain-Rigg
(James Cook University)
Maxine Whittaker (James Cook University)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Location:
- Slatyer room (N2011), R.N Robertson Building
- Sessions:
- Monday 2 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses the interdisciplinary practices of anthropology and public health, and the creation of new ways of thinking about health and wellbeing in the form of a One Health approach (transdisciplinary exploration of the human, animal, ecosystem interface).
Long Abstract:
The challenges of cross-disciplinary work has been a focus through the years in establishing the relative value of fields like anthropology and what it can do to enhance other fields, including biomedical studies and western notions of public health. However, there is a concomitant challenge being offered up - that of the integration of such disciplines to the creation of new value spaces - into disciplines such as One Health, where the boundaries between the old and the new are constantly blurred, to create a vision that appears holistic, seamless and eternally valuable. In new and emerging health spaces, where immanence, urgency and omnipotence rule, we require a seamless set of values to create spaces of innovation and solution - in the face of some of the world's biggest health crises, where the interface of ecosystem, human and animal health are paramount to guiding our ways of knowing, anthropology becomes public health's greatest ally - again. This panel is a space to explore the ways in which anthropology has asserted its value in the public health space, merging with public health moralities and veterinary, ecological and biological sciences to create a new, meaningful space for the exploration of health and wellbeing. And, in the creation of this space, where are the important points of challenge? Where must we continue to question our values for the improvement of health - human, animal and biome? How do we demonstrate the value of anthropology in meeting these grand challenges in planetary health?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 2 December, 2019, -Samuel Brookfield (University of Queensland)
Paper short abstract:
An ethnographic study was conducted following twelve methamphetamine users trying to reduce or control their drug use. This paper identifies the participant's diverse conceptions of drug use, addiction, and recovery, and calls for the integration of 'counterpublic health' in drug use discourse.
Paper long abstract:
In Queensland over the last ten years harmful methamphetamine use has escalated dramatically, and long-term relapse rates for methamphetamine users entering treatment remain high. Methamphetamine use occurs in a complex social environment and is frequently demonised as antithetical to the values and norms of society. Drug users attempting to reduce or control their use must navigate a complex transition between the dynamic assemblages of 'addiction' and 'recovery.' An ethnographic approach is essential for providing detailed and accurate descriptions of these highly social processes. This paper presents the results of an eight-month ethnographic research project with methamphetamine users. Using a combination of in-depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic observation, the researcher has accompanied participants as they visit doctors, counsellors, friends and relatives, enter residential rehabilitation, undergo court proceedings, move house, become homeless, look after their children, argue with their partners, and experience relapse, withdrawals, and multiple recovery attempts. By attending to the narratives drug users use to order and interpret their experiences, in dialogue with relatives, clinicians, and representatives of the state, this paper will discuss the ways in which drug use is constructed as a deviant moral failing, a narrative that users then internalise and reproduce in their accounts. These findings will be placed within the theoretical perspective of 'counterpublic health', calling for a disruption of the hegemonic behavioural norms implicit in fields of mental health and public health, and for a more pluralistic vision of value when considering health and citizenship.
Cynthia Hunter (University of Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
Interdisciplinary intersections are created when anthropology describes the meaningful engagement of local communities' relations with their animals. These provide platforms to discuss the implications for human, veterinary and public health informing subsequent interventionist measures and values.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation explores the outcomes of sociocultural studies of local communities' relations with their animals in Eastern Indonesia and Timor Leste. The animals are chickens and pigs. Both types of animals are kept domestically for consumption, trading and pigs in Timor Leste, for ceremonial purposes. Human health issues revolve around nutrition or lack of, and the zoonotic diseases and ramifications that may exist if animal health and nutrition is compromised. Development and intervention projects often view these issues from narrow perspectives of economy or efficacy that aim to provide 'fill the gap' knowledge of animal husbandry or human nutrition education programs as well as veterinary vaccination programs. There is a failure to accommodate, address or understand the communities' meanings and explanations of why these animals are deeply culturally embedded in everyday life. Anthropological studies value these local communities explanations and if conducted prior to the introduction of intervention or development provide valuable information that can be utilized in the design and implementation of subsequent interventions. In order for One Health to fully respond to its public health, human and animal health dimensions it is required to value anthropological research and methods in interdisciplinary health endeavours.
Debbi Long (University of Newcastle)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores an inherent contradiction in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the global health implications of this contradiction for indigenous communities.
Paper long abstract:
In a review of Jeffery Sachs' influential volume 'The Age of Sustainable Development', James H. Brown argues (as many have before him) that the concept of 'Sustainable Development', central to the UN SDG agenda (Sustainable Development Goals 2015-2030), is a contradiction in terms. Although the seventeen goals in the SDGs were framed to interact with each other, the inherent tension between economic growth and sustainable development results in a number of awkward compromises. As is so often the case in 'global health' discussions, the needs of global indigenous communities are siloed, overlooked, ignored, compromised and/or threatened. This paper explores the implications for indigenous health of this foundational flaw in the logic of the SDGs, including issues of environmental damage, displacement, food supply and nutritional health, exploring insights offered by a One Health approach.