Emerging research within health geography and related fields is attending to the social dimensions of human health. Notwithstanding these contributions, health geography has provided less rigorous attention to the role of political economy in producing disease and shaping health decision-making. Additionally, the reciprocal relationships between health and environment have been underexplored. This paper asserts that political ecology would contribute by examining the political economy of disease, interrogating health discourses, and understanding the interactions between social and environmental systems. The benefits of a political ecology of health are demonstrated through an examination of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa.

Autism is a common developmental condition with a wide, variable range of co-occurring neuropsychiatric symptoms. Contrasting with most extant studies, we explored whole-brain functional organization at multiple levels simultaneously in a large subject group reflecting autism's clinical diversity, and present the first network-based analysis of transient brain states, or dynamic connectivity, in autism. Disruption to inter-network and inter-system connectivity, rather than within individual networks, predominated. We identified coupling disruption in the anterior-posterior default mode axis, and among specific control networks specialized for task start cues and the maintenance of domain-independent task positive status, specifically between the right fronto-parietal and cingulo-opercular networks and default mode network subsystems. These appear to propagate downstream in autism, with significantly dampened subject oscillations between brain states, and dynamic connectivity configuration differences. Our account proposes specific motifs that may provide candidates for neuroimaging biomarkers within heterogeneous clinical populations in this diverse condition.

The livelihood concept remains consistently utilised within a number of research fields, including development studies, political ecology and conservation. Although there are differences in theory and application, these fields draw upon livelihood frameworks to understand how political and economic structures impact decisionmaking and present opportunities for social actors. Several themes have emerged from livelihoods research, including the importance of institutional frameworks and examinations of the conflicts surrounding resource access. While these have been valuable contributions, there has been less attention directed to the reciprocal relationships between space and livelihood. This article draws upon insights from human geography to show how the production and reproduction of livelihoods are interlinked with the processes producing and reproducing space. In order to accomplish this, the article details research completed in South Africa that examines the diversified resources individuals and households combine to generate livelihoods. It is argued that historical and contemporary geographies shape particular livelihood trajectories and social networks for rural residents, thereby making an explicitly spatial analysis necessary for understanding the processes driving social and environmental change. This article asserts that spatialising livelihoods is critical for understanding multiple issues central to livelihood studies, including the significance of diversification, intra‐community differentiation, the structure and agency of livelihoods, and the effects of decisionmaking upon social and environmental systems.

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