Bananas, pesticides and health in southwestern Ecuador: A scalar narrative approach to targeting public health responses

Producción subjetiva sobre la exposición a agroquímicos. Revisión de la bibliografía científica

“…It is interesting to note that the majority of studies involving the latter group were undertaken in North America and involved immigrant farm workers, principally Latin Americans 27,28,46,48,51,52,54,55 . A number of studies investigate a combination of study populations, either to compare results or describe the particular subjective productions of each group 29,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66] , including farm workers' families, housewives, health professionals, extensionists, agricultural settlers, urban populations, experts, and officials. Overall, the studies cover a wide range of types of production, from extensive farming to small plot and greenhouse-based intensive agriculture.…”

“…With respect to research approach, studies can be classified according to the type of research process used: qualitative, quantitative, or mixed 67 . Studies were primarily qualitative in nature estudios 28,[31][32][33][34][35][36]38,41,[47][48][49][50][51]55,56,60,[63][64][65][66] , followed by quantitative studies 27,30,37,39,40,[42][43][44][45][46]54,57,58 , with mixed methods research accounting for only a small proportion of the total number of studies 29,52,53,59,61,62 . An analysis of the selected articles by country and research approach shows that studies from core countries used predominantly quantitative approaches, while those from periphery countries tended to adopt qualitative research designs.…”

Political Ecologies of Global Health: Pesticide Exposure in Southwestern Ecuador's Banana Industry

“…In addition to such "multi-scalar" relationships, however, a political ecology focus also motivates attention to the ways in which scale itself is socially produced through discursive efforts with political ramifications. As we have documented elsewhere, and in contrast to the structural Orense narratives discussed above, many locally situated explanations of pesticide exposure and other health hazards highlighted individual behaviours and characteristics (Brisbois 2016). Such factors included unhealthy eating, drug and alcohol abuse, and neglecting to protect oneself from pesticides.…”

“…A political ecology take on pesticides and health in El Oro also reaffirms the importance of discursive analyses in understanding and responding to global health issues. Our particular focus on scalar narratives of Orenses with varying degrees of marginalization in the banana industry and Ecuadorian society illustrates how they make sense of, and respond to, health inequities (Brisbois ). While more structural explanations for health issues typically lead to “collectivist” intervention strategies (Masuda et al ), persistent individual‐scale explanations for the health of—usually poor, landless, young—others are consistent with individualizing neoliberal ideologies (Harris ).…”

“…These same relatively privileged individuals might also invoke more structural, multi-scale explanations of their own problems, suggesting a complex interaction between social locationespecially class-and scale-linked explanations for health and other problems. Individualizing explanations of health problems voiced by Orenses resonate with persistent, but problematic, currents in pesticide-health research, and public and global health more generally (Brisbois 2016;Galt 2013;Guthman and Mansfield 2015;Sparke 2016). Thus attention to competing environmentally linked narratives-a hallmark of political ecology-deepens understanding of how such narratives select for different responses to ecologically entangled global health issues.…”