Paper short abstract:

In Aotearoa New Zealand, there have been robust conversations around the environmental crisis and its impact on our bodies – including on our hormones. This paper draws on the STS concept of ‘lay pharmacology’ to focus on lay collective knowledge of/about hormonal management.

Paper long abstract:

In Aotearoa New Zealand, there have been robust conversations around the environmental crisis and its impact on our bodies – and in some spaces around the impact of ‘environments’ variously understood on our hormones. Drawing on survey data and interviews collected in 2024, I propose the concept of ‘lay collective endocrinology’ as a way to think about hormonal management that deepens our understanding of how women (cis, trans, and Intersex) navigate hormonal shifts in light of the environmental crisis (and other non-climatic environments).

In this paper, I build on the STS concept of ‘lay pharmacology’ to focus on lay collective knowledge of/about hormonal management and suggest ‘lay collective endocrinology’ as sites of potentially exciting spaces for progressive political and medical futures. Looking at the various narratives of/around hormonal management – I wish to make space beyond the individualised hormonal management regimens (curated in logics of neoliberal ‘self-care’).

While scholarship aplenty shows us that hormones, sex hormones in particular, have been mobilised to suit particular biological, medical, environmental, commercial, and political projects – I wonder what a new ‘lay collective endocrinology’ makes possible for science, medicine, and our bodies as they live through the environmental crisis!