Breathless in Houston: A Political Ecology of Health Approach to Understanding Environmental Health Concerns

Abstract

A political ecology approach to the study of environmental health problems can provide a comprehensive analytical framework with which to understand geographical and social disparities in health status. To date, however, political ecology has remained limited in its application to health problems, and where health has been addressed, biomedical models have prevailed, with little attention to differing explanatory models of health and disease. By integrating political ecology with an interpretive critical medical anthropology, one can better understand the ways in which health and environment intersect, and the differing social responses to environmental practices that affect human health. In this paper I summarize these theoretical issues and then discuss how this theory can be applied toward an analysis of air quality and health in Houston, Texas. This research suggests that local understandings of respiratory health often contradict public health concepts of environmental health and, in turn, differentially shape people's interactions with the environment.

Sensing the Airs: The Cultural Context for Breathing and Breathlessness in Uruguay

“…There were media releases and warnings that parents should keep their children indoors, especially children prone to asthma. More ubiquitous forms of air pollution, including industrial and occupational dusts and chemicals, were less likely to make a headline than a volcano erupting -a point echoing Harper (2004) -but the causal narratives of some participants showed that these threats are highly significant when it comes to making sense of why one 'got' COPD.…”

“…The village only had electricity for 15 years and so like many villages in the interior, it had experienced dramatic transformation and modernization in the very recent past. As Harper (2004) reminds us, perceptions of risk when it comes to air are context specific. In Uruguay, it seemed the country and the city were increasingly connected by shared concerns about pollution, linked both to industrial development and agriculture.…”

“…Senses and sensations are a growing topic of anthropological inquiry (Howes 1991;Pink 2015;Porcello et al 2010;Throop 2010), yet explicit works on breathing and shortness of breath are few. Ingold's (2007Ingold's ( , 2010 work on breathing, walking, and air, Harper's (2004) political-ecology of breathlessness, and Lande's (2007) ethnographic exploration of learning to breathe like a soldier, highlight the rich potential of the topic. Outside of anthropology, breath has been studied phenomenologically as a therapeutic practice (Edwards 2006;Ekerholt and Bergland 2008), in relation to smoking (Dennis 2006) and in the context of lung disease (Carel 2008;Clarke 2002).…”

Can Social Media Clear the Air? A Case Study of the Air Pollution Problem in Chinese Cities

“…Although much of the political ecology literature has focused on natural resources such as water, minerals, and land, scholars have recently turned their attention to how power relations manifest in the air (Harper 2004;V eron 2006;Buzzelli 2008;Whitehead 2009). Much air pollution research focuses on the outdoors, but Biehler and Simon (2011) have called on geographers to examine the indoors as politicalecological spaces that are both socially produced and inextricably linked with the outdoors.…”

Expanding the mine, killing a lake: A case study of First Nations' environmental values, perceptions of risk and health.

“…She uses political ecology to understand how structural inequalities cause uneven health outcomes, and anthropology to examine how cultural adaptations to environmental change affects health. Harper (2004) critiques medical anthropology for tending to treat the environment "in much the same way as political ecologists have treated health -that is, as a singular process affecting populations relatively evenly" (299). The key argument in this article is that "citizen perceptions of how various health problems are connected to the environment not only shape how they respond to illness but also influence how they interact with their environment" (Harper, 2004, 300).…”