Paper short abstract:

Anthropologists have begun to engage with the One Health concept, but without considering the implications of extending posthumanism to social suffering or mental health. Drawing on longitudinal fieldwork, this paper reconsiders anthropological theory regarding non-humans in Western societies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper approaches the question of posthumanism in medical anthropology through the concept of One Health. The One Health concept emphasizes that human health depends on healthy animals and ecosystems. As illustrated by the 2015 special issue of Social Science & Medicine, "One world, one health? Social science engagements with the one medicine agenda," anthropologists and other social scientists who have become interested in One Health have focused mainly on infectious diseases in people, most of which originate in non-human species. Responses often implicate non-human animals as "reservoirs" in epidemiological terms. Often these responses are violent in nature, structurally and directly, as regards both human and non-human lives. The present paper expands on the concern with human and non-human suffering. More specifically, I approach One Health through Descola's synthesis of ethnology. The main argument is that within contemporary Westernized societies, institutionalized distinctions between human and non-human life with regards to selfhood, identities, cognition and emotions no longer hold in many contexts. To support this argument, I draw on more than 10 years of fieldwork in a Canadian city that has received national and international recognition for progressive policies and programs to support animal companionship. Findings from this work suggest that medical anthropologists must give serious consideration to non-human animals. First, people worldwide care deeply about non-human animals, but never uniformly. Second, controversy and conflict can arise from differences in views and practices regarding non-human animals.