Introduction: Human Animal Health in Medical Anthropology

Abstract

This introductory article maps out the parameters of an emerging field of medical anthropology, human animal health, and its potential for reorienting the discipline. Ethnographic explorations of how animals are implicated in health, well‐being, and pathogenicity allow us to revisit theorizations of central topics in medical anthropology, notably ecology, biopolitics, and care. Meanwhile, the conditions of the Anthropocene force us to develop new tools to think about human animal entanglement. Anthropogenic change reorients debates around health and disease, but it also requires us to move beyond what some consider the traditional boundaries of the discipline. Zoonotic diseases, veterinary medicine, animal therapeutics, and food and farming are examples of topics that force such movement.

Animals, veterinarians and the sociology of diagnosis

“…Beyond diagnosis per se , we also hope that our analysis encourages more sociological work on animals and on veterinary practice. To return to where we started, Brown and Nading (: 6) argue that for medical anthropology ‘a view of health as more than human productively disturbs existing disciplinary settlements’. We hope this is also true for medical sociology, and that we can start to move beyond the speciesism that still dominates our field (Ashall and Hobson‐West , Hobson‐West and Timmons ).…”

“…Of course, the best methods and approaches to use are up for debate: Some scholars will wish to keep the human as their unit of analysis but, as we have done, explore how our interactions with animals and animal health care cannot and should not be artificially excluded from how we research health and illness practices. For others, it is more important to focus on the co‐evolution of species (Haraway ), or even the multispecies relations inside human bodies (see Brown and Nading ). Whatever approach is taken, the result will be a greater appreciation of the interdependencies of human and animal medicine.…”

“…By comparison with human health, the social science of animal health and medicine is in its infancy (Brown and Nading , Hobson‐West , Hobson‐West and Timmons , Rock et al . ).…”

“…However, this situation is likely to change, given the ‘animal turn’ in social science, and attempts to de‐centre the human via explorations of the way in which species are entangled (Brown and Nading ), bonded in significant otherness (Haraway ) or can be studied via multispecies ethnography (Kirksey and Helmreich ). Indeed, medical anthropologists have recently argued that ‘living well with other animals is … likely among the most pressing and urgent issues of our time’ (Brown and Nading : 5). These authors also identify the One Health agenda, with its focus on the interplay between human and animal health, as a key governmental response to our entangled, multispecies environments.…”

“…Our aim is to suggest how theoretical arguments from existing sociology of diagnosis work can be productively extended to the veterinary world. As Brown and Nading have argued in relation to medical anthropology and animals, moving beyond the traditional boundaries of a discipline has the potential for ‘reorienting’ it (Brown and Nading : 5). Similarly, we hope that our analysis provokes an extension of sociological arguments that are fundamental to the understanding of health, illness and medicine in animals as well as in humans.…”