Environmental Politics of Reproduction

Lappé, Martine; Landecker, Hannah

doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011346

Cited by 70 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 121 publications

(63 reference statements)

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“…Moral dilemmas about choosing whether to procreate may be influenced by environmentalist discourses of the carbon footprint of raising children. The politics of reproduction are increasingly overlapping with environmental politics (Lappé, Hein, and Landecker 2019). Procreation has been demonised as a burden on ever-depleting resources, reproducing one's impact well into the future as a carbon legacy (Murtaugh and Schlax 2009;Wynes and Nicholas 2017;Sasser 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re)configuring moral boundaries of intergenerational justice: the UK parent-led climate movement

2021

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The interests of children in a climate-challenged future are underrepresented within UK policy-making and public discourse. Debates on intergenerational equity have centred on economic logic rather than the moral issue of harms to the next generation, or the responsibilities of today's generation. Civil movements play an important role in changing public and political thinking on this issue; however, research on intergenerational climate justice activism has so far been confined to the youth movement. This study uses an in-depth diary and interview dataset of 20 UK-based activist mothers and fathers to explore the emotional spaces of parenting and campaigning for intergenerational climate justice. Attention was paid to the role of parenthood in the framing and motivation for action, and the way that campaigning was sustained or impeded by activist parents' personal relationships. The study found that the emotional spaces of activist parenting were managed and demarcated through moral boundary work that was used to define, distinguish and legitimise a collective representation. These boundaries were relational and drawn selectively to include similar others and to form bridges with politicians; boundaries also functioned to delegitimise the role of adults without children, and to exclude and excuse younger children and older relatives from playing a part in justice activism. The paper concludes by considering how these processes might impede the movement and have implications for wider social justice.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re)configuring moral boundaries of intergenerational justice: the UK parent-led climate movement

2021

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“…A newspaper headline that ran while I was studying obesity in Guatemala reported, “ You are what your grandmother ate ,” encapsulating the message, common among epidemiologists, that obesity develops slowly, with small inputs at one point in fetal development having large repercussions on human and international development years—sometimes even generations—later (Yates‐Doerr 2011; see also Lappé et al. 2019; Valdez 2018).…”

Section: “Determinants”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reworking the Social Determinants of Health: Responding to Material‐Semiotic Indeterminacy in Public Health Interventions

Yates‐Doerr

2020

Med Anthropol Q

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Both public health experts and medical anthropologists are concerned with how health is shaped by environmental forces. This creates an important cross‐disciplinary alliance, yet crucial differences in how the two disciplines tend to evaluate health remain. In this article, I compare public health's “social determinants of health” framework with anthropological interest in the sociality of health and illness. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in Guatemala's highlands, to unpack (1) “the social,” (2) “determinants,” and (3) “of health.” Ultimately, I show how the social determinants framework is deployed in ways that risk undermining its stated health justice goals, and highlight the benefits of an approach that does not know what health is ahead of doing research and which works closely with communities to respond to the effects of its own intervention. The article argues for the need to rework the emphasis on social determinants to make space for health's material‐semiotic indeterminacy

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“…In the cases of DES, discussed above, or thalidomide (Dally 1998;Winerip 2013), it is pregnant women and their children and grandchildren who bear the (body) burdens of uncertain toxicological predictions. (See also Mansfi eld 2012;and Lappé et al 2019.) DES and thalidomide are but two of a plethora of public health disasters that revealed the real dangers of toxicants-chemical violence that toxicology's controlled laboratory conditions cannot predict, never mind prevent.…”

Section: Contested Illnesses: Environmental Injustices and Embodied Health Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chemical Agents

Packer

2021

Environment and Society

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This article reviews interdisciplinary toxicity literature, building from Gerald E. Markowitz and David Rosner’s “deceit and denial” and Phil Brown’s “contested illnesses” to argue for a third, more critical analytic that I term “empire and empirics.” Deceit and denial pit corporate actors against antitoxins advocates, while contested illnesses highlight social movements. Empire and empirics center the role of imperialism in reproducing today’s unevenly distributed toxic exposures. I find this third path the most generative because the products and the production of science—toxicants and toxicology—are situated in their sociohistorical, politico-economic, ecological, and affective contexts. Revealing the imperialist logics embedded into dominant ontoepistemology also illuminates alternative, liberatory pathways toward more environmentally just futures. I close with examples of “undisciplined” action research, highlighting scholar-practitioners who study toxicity with care and in nonhierarchical collaboration. While undisciplining is challenging, its potential for realizing environmental justice far outweighs the difficulties of doing science differently.

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Environmental Politics of Reproduction

Cited by 70 publications

References 121 publications

(Re)configuring moral boundaries of intergenerational justice: the UK parent-led climate movement

(Re)configuring moral boundaries of intergenerational justice: the UK parent-led climate movement

Reworking the Social Determinants of Health: Responding to Material‐Semiotic Indeterminacy in Public Health Interventions

Chemical Agents

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