Sociology, environment and health: a materialist approach

Abstract

Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can't change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Sociology, environment and health: a materialist approach Abstract ObjectivesThis paper reviews the sociology of environment and health, and makes the case for a postanthropocentric approach based on new materialist theory. This perspective fully incorporates humans and their health into 'the environment', and in place of human-centred concerns considers the forces that constrain or enhance environmental capacities. Study designThis is not an empirical study. The paper uses a hypothetical vignette concerning child health and air pollution to explore the new materialist model advocated in the paper. MethodsNot applicable: not an empirical paper ResultsNot applicable: not an empirical paper ConclusionA new materialist and post-anthropocentric sociology of environment and health radically reconfigures both sociological theory and its application to research and associated policies on health and the environment. Theoretically, human health is re-thought as one among a number of capacities emerging from humans interactions with the social and natural world.Practically, the focus of intervention and policy shifts towards fostering social and natural interactions that enhance environmental (and in the process, human) potentiality. This approach to research and policy development has relevance for public health practice and policy.

Sustainability, feminist posthumanism and the unusual capacities of (post)humans

“…Such an agenda has profound implications for environmental policy, and we will conclude with a few brief reflections on sustainability policy. Elsewhere (Fox and Alldred, 2016,) we have argued that a posthuman policy to address climate change must address the multiple and complex flows that link (post)human and non-human matter. Evidence from both natural and social science research can reveal the constellations of relations and affects that produce global and local environmental events, including climate change and environmental degradations.…”

“…Culture/nature dualism has supplied post-Enlightenment philosophers, scientists and social scientists with a neat way to set limits on the respective concerns of the social and natural sciences (Fox and Alldred, 2016;Barad 1996, 181;Braidotti 2013, 3;Meloni 2016). However, when exploring issues of embodiment, anthropogenic climate change, or the effects of the built environment on well-being, such a distinction becomes problematic (Lidskog and Waterton 2016, 399).…”

Re‐assembling climate change policy: Materialism, posthumanism, and the policy assemblage

“…215-216), while Lidskog and Waterton (2016, p. 399) suggest that in the "Anthropocene" both physical processes and human culture produce the "conditions of possibility for life on earth." Our own efforts (Fox & Alldred, 2016, 2019 to move beyond environmental anthropocentrism have drawn upon the elision of human/environment dualism (Bazzul & Tolbert, 2017;van der Tuin & Dolphijn, 2010) in posthuman and "new" materialist approaches (Coole & Frost, 2010;Thrift, 2008). The feminist eco-philosopher Rosi Braidotti has promoted a "posthuman" synthesis of the opposing perspectives of humanism (a feature of Enlightenment thinking that elevated human reason over other authorities), and anti-humanism (which re-privileges the non-human) (Braidotti, 2013, pp.…”

“…The aims of this paper are to establish an innovative approach to policy analysis; to critically assess the principal contemporary policy positions that seek to address anthropogenic threats to climate change: and to develop a "posthuman policy" to address effectively this pressing issue. To achieve these outputs, we apply a "new materialist" (Braidotti, 2013;Coole & Frost, 2010;Fox & Alldred, 2017) framing, both to our understanding of "environment" and in the methodological approach to analyzing policy as assemblage. While our narrow concern in this paper is with climate change, this assemblage approach may be applied to other policy issues.…”

Guest Editorial: Sociology, environment and public health

“…10 Using a vignette concerning child health and air pollution, we explore a 'new materialist' approach that dissolves this human/environment distinction and treat humans as integral to (and inextricably tied to) the rest of the physical and natural world. This 'postanthropocentric' perspective forces us to re-think health interventions, starting not from a position of automatically privileging human well-being, but instead designing public health interventions and policy that foster environmental potential and sustainability, and by so doing, also enhance human capacities and well-being.…”