Introduction: Human Animal Health in Medical Anthropology

TLDR

The Anthropocene’s conditions compel new tools for understanding human‑animal entanglement, shifting debates on health and disease beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, and highlighting zoonotic diseases, veterinary medicine, animal therapeutics, and food and farming as drivers of this shift. The article aims to delineate the emerging field of human animal health within medical anthropology and its capacity to reorient the discipline. This introductory article maps out the parameters of an emerging field of medical anthropology, human animal health, and its potential for reorienting the discipline, while ethnographic explorations of animals in health, well‑being, and pathogenicity enable revisiting central topics such as ecology, biopolitics, and care. Ethnographic studies of animals in health, well‑being, and disease reveal that such work revisits and reshapes core medical anthropology concepts like ecology, biopolitics, and care.

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.