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Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 87, Number 4, Fall 2014, pp. 1279-1309

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DOI: 10.1353/anq.2014.0060
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SOCIAL THOUGHT & COMMENTARY
Zoonotic Ecosyndemics and

Multispecies Ethnography
Merrill Singer, University of Connecticut
I believe that there is no dichotomy between the natural world and

the human environment.
Juliet Clutton-Brock (1994:23)
Shifting the Medical Anthropology Lens

As Herzog and Burghard accurately observe, It would be difficult to
overestimate the significance of animals in the social and psychological
life [as well as the biology] of our species (1988:214). It would be equally
difficult to overestimate the impact of our species on other animals, but
also on plants and even quasi-living/quasi-species like viruses (e.g., the
role of changes in human ecology, such as penetration of forested areas,
in the zoonotic transformation of SIVcpz into HIV-1 or SIVsm into HIV-2).
Impactful interactions between humans and other organismsa relationship Shipman (2010, 2011) refers to as the animal connectioncommonly are not time-limited but ongoing and substantially influenced the
evolution of humans (Shipman 2010:519). Dogs, for example, have had a
persistent presence in human communities for probably well over 15,000
years (Germonpr et al. 2009), with significant consequences for both
species. This began with genetic and behavioral changes in wolves that
produced dogs, followed by the subsequent appearance of diverse dog
breeds and mixes, and extending to the multiple biological, cognitive,
emotional, cultural, economic, etiological, prophylactic, therapeutic, and
other impacts on humans of close association with dogs. One outcome
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 4, p. 1279-1310, ISSN 0003-5491. 2014 by the Institute for
Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.
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Zoonotic Ecosyndemics and Multispecies Ethnography
of enduring interaction is the emergence of a mutual causation process,

in which species A (e.g., a new human behavior such as the adoption
of backyard flower pots as household decorations in urban areas) facilitates responsive changes in species B (e.g., adoption by malaria-bearing
mosquitoes of new breeding habitats that include use of backyard flower
pots), which, in turn, evokes subsequent changes in species A (e.g., significant increases in the incidence of human malaria infection in urban
settings and the adoption of new antibiotics to fight malaria), which impact and lead to new changes in species B (e.g,. genetic alterations that
enable resistance to the new antibiotics), and so on (Kwa 2008). A classic
case of this kind of co-evolution was presented by Livingston (1958), who
proposed that human development of iron tools in Africa several thousand years ago allowed the clearing of tropical forests for horticulture,
which, in turn, contributed to the appearance of sun-warmed pools of
stagnant water that were adopted as breeding sites by anopheline mosquito vectors of the Plasmodium family of protozoa, infectious agents of
malaria. The result was a significant jump in human malaria infection, human suffering, and the selection for and increase of the sickling trait in human plasma, which offered a degree of protection from malaria. Cormier
(2010:257) posits a somewhat similar account of New World malaria involving the transfer of the disease from Old World human populations to
neotropical New World monkey species during the colonial era, which,
because of certain cultural practices, like the hunting of monkeys for food
and the raising of captured baby monkeys as pets, set up close interactionswhere diseases can be shared between monkeys and people.
Humans responded with the development of new (or adapted) cultural
practiceslike the bathing of infected individuals in aromic plantsto
treat malarial fevers.
As these examples suggest, mutually causal processes involve relationships that evolve and change together in such a way (with feedback
and feed-forward) as to make the distinction between cause and effect
meaningless (Guba 1985:88). What are the implications of this kind of
process for medical anthropology, and have we fully engaged a relational
model that views people and other organisms as mutually constitutive
(de Vries 2011) in our approaches to ethnographic health research?
In the introduction to a themed issue of the journal Cultural Anthropology
entitled Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography, Kirksey and Helmreich
observe:
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Creatures previously appearing on the margins of anthropology

as part of the landscape, as food for humans, as symbolshave
been pressed into the foreground in recent ethnographies. Animals,
plants, fungi, and microbes once confined in anthropological accounts to the realm of zoe or bare lifethat which is killablehave
started to appear alongside humans in the realm of bios, with legibly
biographical and political lives. (2010:545)
Indeed, even the smallest organisms and those seemingly least like us
are being rethought. As Smolinski, Hamburg, and Lederberg comment,
The more we learn about microbial genetics, structure, and function,
the more we marvel at the sophistication of the survival strategies of microbes (2003:57). In this way, efforts are afoot to subvert human exceptionalism (Haraway 2007).
As yet, however, multispecies recalibration is only begun (Candea
2010, Fuentes 2000, Kohn 2007, Raffles 2010, Willerslev 2004). This social thought piece is concerned with the implications (including challenges
and advantages) of this change for our study of particular kinds of human
health issues.
In fact, of course, anthropologists have a long history of studying human communities in environmental contexts that include nonhuman beings; naturalistic contextualization is one of the distinctive features of
the discipline. For example, in his influential account of the Nuer, EvansPritchard makes clear the centrality of cattle in Nuer lives and emotions
by noting that Cattle are their dearest possession and they gladly risk
their lives to defend their herds or to pillage those of their neighbours
(1969:16). Generally, however, as even this case affirms, the focus historically has been on understanding and explaining the human side of multispecies interactions, that is, by addressing questions concerning the role
of other organisms in: how and why we have changed as a species over
time, how we survive in the world, and how we symbolically construct and
experience our diverse as well as globalizing cultural realities (Viveiros de
Castro 1998). The novel approach advocated by Kirksey and Helmreich
and their colleagues centers [instead] on how a multitude of organisms
livelihoods shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces (2010:545). Crucial to this emergent current in anthropological thinking
about and studying the nonhuman world of living things is an emphasis
on co-creation. In short, there is a concern with the social life of living
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things engaged in complex interactions. Multispecies ethnographers

those who are shifting from a species-specific to an interspecies frame of
referenceare reconceptualizing the focus of anthropological research to
fully include the host of organisms whose lives and deaths are linked to
human social worlds (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:545).
In this light, the specific purpose of this piece is to examine the relevance of multispecies ethnography for medical anthropology, a subfield
that developed on the borderlands between nature and culture (Latour
1993). Variously called a biocultural or biosocial field that is guided by
medical ecology, political ecology, and ecosocial (among other) theories,
medical anthropologyand especially (but not only), the anthropology of
infectious disease (Inhorn and Brown 1997)must be concerned with interactions among multiple life forms. Traditionally, medical anthropologys
interest in other speciesincluding vectors and pathogens, but also the
extraction of medicines from various plants and animals or the use of animals as therapeutic agents in clinical settings or as exercise promoters in
peoples homeshas been driven by a concern with the consequences of
interspecies interactions for humans. While this is understandable given
the historic mission of the discipline, the question now becomes: how incomplete are our accounts and what are we failing to understand because
of our anthropocentric orientation toward interspecies relationships? How
different would our work be with an ecocentric perspective?
One effort to broaden the lens within medical anthropology is the biosociocultural conception of the syndemic. While the syndemics perspective
draws attention to the interface between two or more diseases, as Rock
et al. (2009) point out, a syndemics approach must also take into consideration intersections and blurred species boundaries. Further, they argue,
The case for syndemic animal-human connections is especially evident
for zoonotic infections...Zoonotic infections pose syndemic threats not
solely because of a microbes inherent properties, but because of the opportunities afforded to microbes and their evolutionary trajectories by social and environmental conditions (Rock et al. 2009:992).
In this piece, the focus is on a particular type of syndemic, called an
ecosyndemic (Singer 2010a), in which disease interaction is facilitated by
changing environmental conditions. Because of their emergent status,
growing numbers, blurred multispecies features, and anthropogenic drivers, zoonotic diseases present a particularly challenging and potentially
rewarding domain in ecosyndemic research (Weiss 2008). I seek to both
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draw attention to the importance of expanding zoonotic ecosyndemic research in anthropology and to locating this project within a multispecies
ethnographic framework.
The Nature of Nature

To borrow a phrase from Harvey Moloch, nothing stands alone (2003:1).
Rather than only seeking to comprehend the processes of human becoming, culturally and biologically, multispecies ethnographers are concerned
with seeing interaction as a two-way (or multiple way) process that impacts the bodies, minds, behaviors, social lives, and natures of all involved
organisms. Thus, we cannot understand ourselves unless we fully appreciate and extensively explore our multiple and complex interrelationships
with other organisms through time and space. The same is true of other
organisms that participate in the political economies of human societies,
and past and contemporary globalizing processes, such as microbial traffic along the global superhighway created by international trade and travel
(Armelagos 1998, Morse 1993). In this work, even the traditional boundaries we have erected to separate us from them, which are rationalized by a
belief in human exceptionalism, can become blurry, suggesting the value
of a broader multispecies lens.
Though not without deep roots in human thinking broadly, and, within
anthropology specifically, there is an emergent quality to this understanding of humans and what is often treated separately as the rest of nature
(Braun 2003, 2007; Cronon 1995). Indeed, the English word nature derives
from the Latin natura, meaning essential qualities and innate dispositions,
and thus it refers to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and
other features of the world developed independent of a human presence.
In everyday talk in the West, nature is where we are not, a place to which
we must travel (Vining, Merrick, and Price 2008). This notion is even codified in American law. For example, Section 2(c) of the 1964 US Wilderness
Act succinctly states: A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where
man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as
an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man,
where man himself is a visitor who does not remain (US Congress 1964:1).
Based on three questionnaires administered in 1997, 2003, and 2005 to
198 randomly selected adult participants in Minnesota and Illinois, Vining,
Merrick, and Price concluded that:
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even though the large majority of our participants considered themselves as part of nature, their general perception of natural environments excluded any humans or human involvement while their
general perceptions of unnatural environments included mostly human-made entities. It seems that most of our participants had the
idea that nature involved pristine preserved land that is uninhabited
and unaltered by human beings. (2008:8)
But, this place out there called nature (or the wild), as we encounter it today (and for a long time before today), is not natural in the sense
of being independent of humans, their narratives of unlimited resources,
acts of domination, focused conquests, and impactful exploitation for human gain and advancement, and the intended and unintended consequences (or what Robert Merton [1936] called the negative, unexpected
detriment) of their actions. As a result, it is difficult to find untouched
nature as the human hand reaches everywhere and human impacts on
the environment have been underway for centuries, continually reshaping
nature in dramatic ways (Goudie and Viles 1997). Hill and Helmers, in
a poetic summation of the contemporary era, state that, We are facing
culture as we sit on the benches and gaze at the oiled sea (2004:83). As
Hurricane Katrina made clear, even natural disasters increasingly are
recognized as unnatural events because of anthropogenic actions and
impacts (Hartman and Squires 2006, Smith 2006, Singer 1996).
Without question, there is nothing new (except by degree and increased adverse consequence) in human impact on the environment.
Contemporary ecosystems that we label natural often were reshaped by
human activities in the past. For example, in contrast with an older pristine
myth about Native Americans, a now extensive literature makes clear that,
among the indigenous peoples of North America (Whitney 1994, Williams
2002) (and elsewhere with regard to other local conditions), there emerged
recognition that deer (and other species, like nuts and blueberries) were
most easily acquired not in forests but in grassy meadows among the
trees where they could find an abundance of food. Building on this insight
(borne of keen environmental observation), they learned to burn forest
edges to expand meadows and improve hunting (and gathering) success,
significantly altering the environment long before the arrival of Columbus.
Were the resulting meadows Nature? Or Culture? As Raymond Williams
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observes, nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary

amount of human history (1980:67).
This recognition of the centrality of nature/culture interconnections and
species entwinements is intensified by the realization that, for the last
several hundred years, we have been living in an ecohistoric epoch best
termed the Anthropocene, an era in which the human footprint on Earth
has gradually [grown] into a significant geological, morphological force
(Crutzen and Stoermer 2000:17).
Animals Revised
Also influencing the emergence of multispecies ethnography is an ongoing
psychosocial reconceptualization of animals, including their cognitions,
emotions, subjectivities, and rights. In The Cognitive Animal, for example,
Bekoff, Allen, and Burghard (2002) bring together over 50 essays authored
by practitioners of an array of disciplines (e.g., behavioral psychologists,
cognitive ethologists, computer scientists, philosophers, neuroscientists)
that examine the internal psychological states of animals as diverse as
earthworms, bees, rats, pigeons, snakes, sea lions, pronghorns, dolphins,
and primates. Regarding the first of these, Crist recalls Darwins work on
what might be called the inner life of earthworms, noting: In Darwins portrayal, the inner life of worms is indeed a cognitive worlda world about
which worms form judgments. The inner life of worms also includes their
subjective worlda world of perception and work that they experience,
rather than sleepwalk through (2002:3). As a result of his willingness
to think about what previously had been unthinkable for many people,
Darwin found mindboth cognition and subjective experiencewhere
it was presumed not to exist (Crist 2002:7). This point is stressed as well
by Wasserman based on his research with as intellectually challenged
a beast [allegedly] as the pigeon, a species whose behavior in various
cognitive tests, in fact, affirms a continuity of mental processes in human
and nonhuman animals (2002:180).
The movement toward a rethinking of animals is fed by multiple
streams, including intensive ethological studies. Based on his year-plus
experience raising a human-imprinted flock of wild turkeys in a dense
swampy area of Florida, for example, naturalist and wildlife artist Joe
Hutto (2006), has observed that, contrary to human expressions like bird
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brain, turkeys are possessed of an extraordinary intelligence characterized by true problem solving reason, and a consciousness that was undeniable, at all times conspicuous, and for me, humbling (Nature 2011).
Surviving a 20 million year history as prey animals for various species,
including our own, Hutto notes, has produced an animal that lives in a
state of complete sentient wakefulness. Yet, Huttos observations of his
own species suggest that we find it difficult to recognize a higher order of
experience in nonhuman animals. The challenge presented by this kind
of naturalistic study for a cultured species like our own is seeing animals
as they are, and not in some kind of anthropomorphic reflection of our
own nature (Crist 1999, Kennedy 1992; cf. Candea 2013). Still, repeatedly, ethnological and other research tends to support Huttos conclusions
about the complexities of animal experience and cognition (Bekoff 1995,
Cheney and Seyfarth 1990, Hanggi 2005).
The parallels and historic relationships between human and nonhuman
animal anatomies and diseases, and yet presumed significant emotional
and cognitive differences between the two, provide the rationale for one of
the particularly fraught ways animals figure in human society as well as in
the consequences of human perceptions of animals. It has been estimated
that as many as 100 million vertebrates, especially mice, are used experimentally each year, most of which are subsequently euthanized. In particular, animal experimentation is driven by regulatory laws and agencies that
require the toxicity testing of new chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals,
and other commodities. Social debate and controversy over such treatment of animals is over 350 years old, but has intensified in the era of global
discourse on human rights. Philosopher Bernard Rollin (1989), who specializes in animal consciousness, for example, argues that animals have
moral rights and that the benefits that accrue to humans do not outweigh
the harm and suffering done to animals. Similarly, critiquing speciesism,
which he likens to racism and sexism, philosopher Peter Singer (2007)
maintains that one thing we share with nonhuman animals is a capacity to
suffer and this sentient capacity means that they, like us, have interests.
From this perspective, a critical question Tom Regan (2003:94) asks is, do
nonhuman organisms have an experiential welfare that is of importance
to them, independently of their possible usefulness to use? He answers:
Like us, they are somebodies, not somethings (2003:94).
These discussions of the ethical treatment of animals and of animal rights
inform multispecies ethnography in several ways, including by revealing
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some of what might be seen as the most extreme human treatment of other
species (e.g., forcing them to ingest toxins with the intention of benefiting human health), the kinds of suffering nonhuman animals endure at human hands, our constructed understandings of ourselves as variously the
crown of creation or the apex of evolution, the rise of human/nonhuman animal relationships as an appropriate subject for academic research,
the intensifying conflicts among humans over our views of and treatment
of animals, and the rise of and resistance to active advocacy movements
intended to change our ways (Phelps 2007, Rudacille 2001).
From the standpoint of zoonotic diseases, this discussion raises questions both about pharmaceutical and other biomedical research (e.g., in
virology, bacteriology, etc.) and with reference to the accepted prioritization of human health that underlies the mass extermination of animals
(e.g., chickens, pigs) to halt diseases like avian flu, swine flu, or SARS from
spreading to humans. Based on an ethnographic examination of avian flu
policies and practices in Vietnam that was informed by Foucaults notion
of biopower, Porter observes: avian influenza policies provoke dilemmas
surrounding whose lives and livelihoods are worth protecting in multispecies biopowerparticularly when they are implemented in historically and
culturally specific situations (2013:144). Issues of authority and resistance in the implementation of containment policies, cross cultural differences in the understanding of particular non-human species, human experience of animal treatment in a zoonotic epidemic, and human response
to diseases spread from humans to animals (e.g., Lowder et al. 2009) are
among the several arenas of research generated by a multispecies focus
in the spread of diseases.
Communities-Within and the Building of a

More-than-Human Perspective
As Douglas Chadwick (2003) notes, entities like lichen are not a single
organism but an interactive group of species. They constitute a doorway between organisms [or individual species] and ecosystems. Look
out one direction, and you see individual things; look the other way, you
see processes, relationshipsthings together. This is the new level in understanding biology (2003:119). Even with reference to our own species
there is an emergent more-than-human perspective that both understands human communities as comprising many species (both wild and
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domesticated, and including rodent and insect vectors as well as microorganisms) and not just humans, as well as a recognition of human bodies
as comprising more than human cells (including various microbes that are
vital to our survival or present threats to it). As Roossinck indicates with
reference to viruses, they
have long had a bad rap; since the discovery of tobacco mosaic
virus (TMV) in the 1890s, they have been largely viewed as pathogens. This bias has led to a misunderstanding about viruses, and
few researchers have looked specifically for viruses that might be
beneficial to their hosts. (2011:99)
Every person, in fact, constitutes a community that includes hundreds
of microbial species, many of which are uncultivable and remain unidentified. The human gut alone, a complex in-host environment, is home to 100
trillion bacteria (of 1,000 different species), weighing some three pounds
in residents of developed countries and five in those living in underdeveloped ones (in large part because of worm weight). From an evolutionary
perspective, as Donna Haraway argues in When Species Meet, becoming
is always becoming with... (2007:244). Thus, there can be no understanding of how we came to be what we are as a species independent of our
interactions with and genetic and other responses to the challenges and
opportunities presented by other life forms. Suggests Paxson, for example,
neglect of the microbe (any organism, in the singular, invisible to the naked human eye) continues to distort our anthropological view of the social
world (2008:19). Further, as Anna Tsing (2005) asks, What if we imagined
a human nature that shifted historically together with varied webs of interspecies dependence? Human nature is an interspecies relationship. So
too is human biology. This is particularly evident in zoonotic syndemics
which can involve multiple hosts, vectors, and pathogens.
Beyond Animal Symbolism: Revisiting the

Balinese Cockfight
One of the best known, indeed classic, ethnographic studies of a human/
nonhuman animal relationship is Clifford Geertzs (1972) celebrated essay, Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. As both a personal
and deeply analytical paper, Geertzs text epitomizes one of the ways
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anthropology has traditionally sought to make sense of what it means to

be human culturally, by exploring mans connectionboth experiential
and symbolicto the animal realm. Specifically, Geertz sought to show
that the deeply meaningful drama of cockfights was a core cultural enactment in Bali, Indonesia. The reason for this lies in the complex social and
symbolic relationship of people with their fighting cocks.
On the one hand, he asserts, the Balinese, or more particularly Balinese
men, intensely identify with their birds. According to Geertz (1972:60), To
anyone who has been in Bali any length of time, the deep psychological
identification of Balinese men with their cocks is unmistakable, and the
double meaning of the word (referencing both birds and male genitals) is
as meaningful in Balinese as in English (providing an always evident embodiment of the human/animal symbolic connection). This identification
is played out daily and not only during actual cockfights. Rather, Geertz
observes, identification with their fighting birds is more than metaphorical;
it is a deep passion that occupies long hours of physical contact, thought,
and emotional experience. He notes, Balinese men, or anyway a large
majority of Balinese men, spend an enormous amount of time with their
favorites, grooming them, feeding them, discussing them, trying them out
against one another, or just gazing at them with a mixture of rapt admiration
and dreamy self-absorption (1972:61). Indeed, a fighting cock is seen as
the symbol expression of its owners personality and innermost being.
On the other hand, Geertz emphasizes, roosters represent to the
Balinese the direct inversion aesthetically, morally, and metaphysically, of human status: animality (1972:61). Indeed, there is a cultural
linkage of animals with dreadful demonic spirits that pose grave threat
to Balinese sociality. Thus, by identifying with his cock, the Balinese
man is identifying not just with his ideal self, or even his penis, but also,
and at the same time, with what he most fears, hates, and ambivalence
being what it is, is fascinated byThe Powers of Darkness (1972:62).
Whatever else it is, for the Balinese, a cockfight is a blood offering to what
for them are very real animalistic phantoms that constantly menace their
ways of life. In the intensely emotional, political, social, structural, and
economic melodrama of the cockfight, there is in Geertzs interpretation a
creative interweaving of the complexities and contradictions of Balinese
daily experience, a bringing together of diverse themes, including animal savagery, male narcissism, opponent gambling, status rivalry, mass
excitement, blood sacrificewhose main connection is their involvement
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with rage and the fear of rage, and, binding them into a set of rules which
at once contains them and allows them play, builds a symbolic structure
in which, over and over again, the reality of their inner affiliation can be
intelligibly felt (1972:84).
Ultimately, Geertz maintains, the cockfight in Bali speaks (culturally)
most powerfully about human relationships, specifically status hierarchies
which are profound and dramatic matters of life and death; thus it is only
apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men (1972:60). This
interpretation is culturally appropriate for Bali as ultimately the Balinese
are a great deal more interested in understanding men than they are in
understanding cocks (1972:82).
But what of understanding in anthropology, specifically understanding
that develops within a multispecies perspective? How might Geertzs account have been different if it had been based on this alternative framework? Geertz, himself, provides a starting point for answering this question. He notes, The cockfight is really real only to the cocks (1972:79),
who are enraged, frightened, slashed, suffer, and die. For the birds, life
changes dramatically in a short brutal encounter for which they have been
raised their whole lives; for humans, by contrast, social meanings as they
construct them and social hierarchies as they enact them persist, re-experienced anew but unchanged.
Unfortunately, we know little about the social and emotional life of
roosters or chickens generally (but see Edgar et al. 2011). Notably, however, Geertz observed that the cocks are not always willing players in this
human cultural drama. Occasionally, they refuse to fight, or one of the
birds runs away from the other (giving rise to the old English and Irish
saying, That cock wont fight, also phrased as That dog wont hunt,
to mean an argument that wont work). To get them to do what is required
of them by people, Bali handlers place troublesome cocks together under
a wicker cage, a stressful experience for territorial beings. Yet, do cocks
naturally fight? Or, if they do, do they tend to fight to the death? Studies
of other fowl, including the Red junglefowl, thought by many to be the
progenitor species of the domestic chicken, suggest that, as with many
animals, ritual displays of fighting capacity are the norm, actual fights and
especially fights to the death are uncommon (particularly among birds
raised together). Based on seven months of observation of the daily activities of feral domestic chickens (in flocks that have been feral for 40
years), McBride, Parer, and Foenander report that while young roosters
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will attempt to intrude on the territories of established males, No serious

fights were observed during any of these intrusions, though the males
made several rushes at each other (1969:135). This observation is supported by farmers with mixed gender flocks (Luttmann and Luttman 1976)
and under experimental conditions (Pamment, Foenander, and McBride
1983). Rather, domestic gamecocks have been carefully and selectively
bred by people to enhance aggressive tendencies that evolved primarily to scare away rivals (Beebe 1936). Moreover, having raised chickens
and having worked in the chicken houses of an Israeli kibbutz, it is evident to me that chickens perceive people as different from themselves
and of interest (and of use). For example, in the aforementioned Israeli
chicken houses, filled to the brim with hundreds of densely packed birds
in the now-standard industrial farm model, I noticed that each day and
in every house several birds would tightly shadow me as I moved down
the length of the buildings, cleaning watering devices and retrieving dead
hens. Ultimately, it dawned on me that my companions were sticking
close to me as protection from (potentially lethal) pecking from other birds
that were attracted to specks and discolorations on their otherwise white
feathers; the birds that were shadowing me were, in short, attempting to
use me to avoid joining the dead bird census of the following day.
Returning to Geertz, there are suggestions in his thick description of
Balinese cock fighting that the complexities of culture, and its rich symbolism involving other species, is far from the whole story. Other species are
full intentional players in interspecies interactions and we must respond
to their natures even as we culturally construct understandings and uses
of our co-inhabitants of the planet. This insight has important implications, as noted below, for the issue of multispecies ethnography in medical anthropology.
Bird and Human Diseases Flock Together

One question raised by this discussion regards the ways humans have
been shaped by our long interaction with avian species (in the case of
chickens, 8,000-10,000 years). In light of recent human experiences with
H5N1 influenza (see further discussion of this below), and because of
the specific concerns of medical anthropologists, the most obvious answer (although partial in that dietary impacts and ways of life for both
species merit discussion) is through zoonotic diseases. Chlamydiosis,
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salmonellosis, arizonosis, colibacillosis, and influenza are the most frequent avian diseases that constitute health risks for humans, but the full
list of avian pathogens that have leaped the species barrier to infect humans is far longer (Jacob, Pescatore, and Cantor 2011). In the case of
influenza in human communities, fairly good records exist for at least a
300 year history of infection although the virus was not identified until
1932. Prior to the emergence of HIV/AIDS, flu was the most studied viral disease, attracting the interest not only of researchers, epidemiologists, physicians, and the pharmaceutical industry, but also politicians,
the media, and the general public (Potter 2001). Potter (1998) suggests
that as many as 13 global influenza pandemics have occurred since 1590.
Most notable was the pandemic of 1918 to 1919, which took as many as
100 million lives around the world and remains one of the most important global health events in human history (Crosby 1989, Pettit and Bailie
2008). The disease left a severe legacy in the bodies of sufferers who
survived, especially among those who were exposed in utero. As Almond
(2006:693) comments, findings from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 US Census
surveys show a broad array of persistent effects, including reduced educational attainment, socioeconomic status, and labor force participation,
as well as heightened levels of disability. Notably, the severe impact of
this pandemic appears to stem from the fact that it was caused not by a
single microbe but by syndemic interaction between a virus and at least
one strain of bacteria (Herring and Sattenspiel 2007, Morens et al. 2008,
Singer 2010b). In other words, appreciating the importance of multispecies interaction is critical to understanding this costly pandemic.
In passing, it merits mention (as further proof of the complexities of multispecies research) that some of the deaths that occurred during the 19181919 pandemic were the result of animal attacks in communities whose
infrastructures collapsed as many of their citizens were overwhelmed by
illness. Writes Collier (1974:300), What the flu had begun, the dogs had
ended. Crazed with hunger, they smashed through windows, worried
down doors, attacking those still alive as impartially as the dead.
Additionally, of note in light of one of the roles animals play in scientific
research relative to human health, 87 years after the 1918-1919 influenza,
pandemic researchers at CDC and several other institutions used frozen
lung tissue from people who died during the pandemic to successfully
reconstruct the implicated virus. To test the pathogenicity of the recombinant virus, it was injected in various forms into mice, chicken embryos,
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and monkeys, which were then monitored for viral reproduction, morbidity, and mortality (Tumpey et al. 2005). All of the reconstructed viral forms
proved to be a greater threat to life than several control viruses.
The Blurring of Species Boundaries

Based on her multispecies ethnography in Indonesia, Lowe (2010) notes
that, like other H5 influenza strains, H5N1 initially was believed to be an
avian-only virus. Then, in 1997, Lam Hoika, a three-year-old child, died of
influenza induced by this virus. The emergence of the viral ability to live
and reproduce in humans required only small changes to the hemaglutinin molecule on the viral surface to unlock access to human cells. With
these changes, the
virus proved capable of infecting a limited number of people who
seemed to have some unique constellations of genes that made
them susceptible. If the H5N1 virus were to suddenly mutate again,
and generate a H5 hemaglutinin molecule that was fully compatible
with human cellular receptors, the disease could suddenly become
as infectious as a garden-variety flu. (Lowe 2010:631)
In response to fears about avian flu, various policies and practices in
the world were initiated with the chicken as the most significant casualty
(Lowe 2010:637). Rather than a species with complex social lives, the capacity for individual recognition, and unexpected levels of emotion and
intelligencecharacteristics that have emerged in research with chickens
(Potts 2012)they were reconstructed as grave threats to humanity. In Bali
and elsewhere in Indonesia, millions of chickens, including fighting cocks,
were culled for every human death from H5N1, resulting in a total death
toll of as many as 400 million birds (Sipress 2009). In Vietnam, the mass
culling of chickens constituted a significant economic blow, as export of
food items, including chicken products, had been built into the nations
plan for economic development (an agenda that led to the quadrupling of
the chicken population in the country prior to the avian flu panic). Indeed,
intensification of poultry production may well have played a potent role
in sparking the pandemic. Lockerbie notes that, while H5N1 had a long
history with chickens, It was not until chickens were kept in cramped
spaces, creating an optimal scenario for viral commerce that the disease
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emerged into public view (2008:4). This fact led Nikiforuk (2006:6) to refer
to H5N1 as a predictable man-made plague.
In global economic and health discourse, however, blame for the pandemic was laid on the free-range practices involved in traditional backyard
chicken raising by small farmers rather than on the mechanical practices
of factory farms. Additionally, as a result of the mass slaughter of chickens
on small farms, the poor lost access to a critical source of livelihood and
protein. Ironically, in Vietnam, with few birds available, access to poultry
came to be reserved for the elite, the educated, and the urban, while
becoming a symbol of social and cultural capital (Lockerbie 2008:9). In
short, both the making of the H5N1 avian flu pandemic and its consequences entailed a multidimensional interaction of people and poultry and
culture and nature. In no small part, hierarchical relations between humans
and chickens were but a reflection of human relations with each other.
As it turns out, the so-called swine fluInfluenza A virus subtype
H1N1the most common cause of human influenza globally during 2009
and 2010 (with an overall international incidence rate of 11 percent to 21
percent prior to the development of a vaccine [Kelly et al. 2011]) has an even
more complex multispecies history than H5N1. H1N1 is a quadruple reassortment virus that blurs species (or quasi-species) boundaries by uniting
genes from the flu virus that is normally found in pigs in Asia and Europe
with both avian and human flu genes. This species-bending complexity is
not unique. For example, a triple reassortment with swine, avian, and human genes has been in circulation among the US pig population since the
late 1990s (World Health Organization 2009). H1N1 is thought to have originated in pigs because they can be infected with strains of different species
origin, and thus can serve as mixing vessels for varied influenza genes.
As both a direct descendent of the virus involved in the most devastating influenza pandemic of the 20th century (which, as noted, was the 19181919 influenza pandemic) and the source of the first truly global pandemic
of the 21st century, the appearance of the H1N1 virus sparked significant
public health (as well as political) concern. From the standpoint of severe
morbidity and population mortality, however, the virus proved to be a comparatively mild version of its deadly ancestor of 90 years ago. However,
H1N1 did prove to be a health disparity disease, with some minority populations suffering significantly higher rates of intensive care hospitalization,
respiratory intervention, and death than did majority populations. The key
factor was the biological interaction of H1N1 with other diseases, such
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as diabetes mellitus, asthma, and tuberculosis, that are known to be disproportionately common among lower income and socially subordinated
ethnic minorities (e.g., Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Alaskan
Natives in the US, and structurally similar populations elsewhere in the
world). As a result, the H1N1 pandemic (or more precisely, the H1N1/
chronic and infectious disease syndemic) was of gravest threat to populations already at comparatively high risk for a range of other health and
social burdens (Lipsitch et al. 2009). As this example suggests, structural
inequalities among humans often find expression and exposure in our relationship with other species. So too, inequalities among humans have
significant consequence for animal health and well-being (Davis 2005).
Since 2009, H1N1 has continued to circulate among species, with reintroduction to pigs, for example, being described in Hong Kong in 2010.
Concern has been expressed that ongoing reassortment of H1N1/2009
with swine influenza viruses could produce variants with transmissibility
and altered virulence for humans (Vijaykrishna et al. 2010:1529).
Zoonosis in a World of Emergent Infectious Diseases

As this discussion of influenza highlights, diseases that jump the species barrier from other vertebrate animals to humans (zoonotics) and,
in the other direction, from humans to other animals (reverse zoonosis
or anthroponosis), as well as those in new form that subsequently jump
back again from animals to humans (as happens with influenza), play a
fundamental role in shaping the global health profile. A review of 1,415
infectious species known to be pathogenic found that 61 percent are of
zoonotic origin, primarily wild species (Taylor et al. 2001). More broadly,
health researchers have devoted increasing attention in recent years to
the accelerated pace of emergence of infectious agents that either have
entered the human population (or a segment of it, such as via movement
into a previously uninfected country) for the first time or have reemerged
because of a newly evolved drug resistant (or multidrug resistant) strain (or
as a result of environmental or other changes) (Binder et al. 1999, Morens
et al. 2004, Singer 2009b). In these cases, the common interspecies pattern has been: 1) changes wrought by people in physical or social environments or in patterns and practices in the use of antibiotics, facilicate
2) changes in pathogens which lead to new or enhanced infectious potential, which then lead to 3) subsequent human biological, demographic,
1295
social, and behavioral changes, including those intended to cope with

rising disease risk and infection. The result has been significant adverse
changes in global health in both developed and underdeveloped regions,
and considerable impact on national political economies, especially of
poorer countries. The critical element in this process is the human element; as Armelagos, Barnes, and Lin stress, most of the emerging diseases are of cultural origin (1996:6). Moreover, Worthman and Kohrt observe, Human behavior and ecology influence not only infection, but also
rates of evolution and virulence of pathogens (2005:867).
A telling example of the human role in the emergence of human pathogens and pathogenic virulence is suggested by Drucker, Alcabes, and
Marx (2001), with reference to HIV and a set of other significant zoonotics
that together account for over a million deaths annually. Specifically, they
suggest, the failure to sterilize syringes by clinical practitioners, a pattern
that has been observed in low resource clinical settings, played a pivotal
role in the iatrogenic transformation of SIV into HIV (and may have done
so with other pathogens as well). The starting point of this possible processwhich has come to be known as the Serial Passage Theory of HIV
Emergencewas the transmission of SIV to humans through contact with
nonhuman primates (e.g., during the harvesting of bushmeat) and resulting cuts or bites that allowed passage of the animal pathogen SIV to humans, a transfer made possible because a high percentage (70 percent)
of chimpanzees and Sooty Mangabys carry SIV. With repeated exposures
through this route, the transmission of a virus that, through high rates of
mutation, was partially pre-adapted to the human environment may have
occurred (allowing human cell infection but not human-to-human transmission, and hence not capable of sustaining an epidemic). Unsterile syringe re-use (e.g., for the administration of arsenicals for the treatment of
syphilis in the network of colonial and missionary clinics established in
sub-Saharan Africa beginning in the late 19th century), however, could
then have spread weakly adapted SIV to a growing number of human
hosts, creating the opportunity (though genetic recombination) for the
subsequent full adaptation to reproduction in human cells and humanto-human transmission (Ppin et al. 2010). Lack of prior immune exposure to an emergent zoonotic is known to be associated with increased
pathogenicity (Cayabyap et al. 1999), leading to a highly lethal pandemic
facilitated by various other human behaviors, including illicit drug injection, which became an increasingly global practice in the era of AIDS.
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Merrill Singer
On average, in recent years, three new human infectious diseases are

identified every two years, with an emergent or re-emergent pathogen being reported in the health literature every week. Between 1940 and 2004,
Jones et al. (2008) report on the emergence of 335 infectious diseases
around the world. Just over 60 percent of emergent infection events in their
sample are proximally caused by zoonotic pathogens, and most of these
(71.8 percent) are caused by pathogens of wildlife origin. Additionally, the
number of wildlife-origin zoonotic infections increased significantly over
the 64 years of their review. Vector-borne emergent diseases also contributed to a significant rise in the number of emergent infectious diseases
occurring during their study period. The pattern they observe corresponds
with climate changes adding support [for] the hypothesis that climate
change may drive the emergence of diseases that have vectors sensitive
to changes in environmental conditions (Jones et al. 2008:991). These
researchers, like others (e.g., Smolinski, Hamburg, and Lederberg 2003;
Weiss and McMichael 2004), report that overall their analysis supports the
hypothesis that disease emergence is largely a product of anthropogenic
and [human] demographic changes, and is a hidden cost of human economic development (Jones et al. 2008:990). Climate change also may
stress wildlife, causing displacement and increased contact and disease
transfer with domestic species.
The emergence of Nipah as a zoonotic disease in Peninsular Malaysia
presents an exemplary case (Chua 2003, Chua et al. 2002, Looi and
Chua 2007). Recognition of this emergent disease began in 1998-1999
with the appearance of 265 severe febrile encephalitis cases, including
105 deaths, primarily among individuals associated with pig farming.
Ultimately, it was determined that a paramyxovirus (subsequently named
Nipah) was the immediate infectious agent of the outbreak. However,
various connected bio-sociocultural and environmental factors were
critical to the spread of this disease to humans. First, Pteropid fruit bats
(Pteropus hypomelanus and P. vampyrus), colloquially known as flyingfoxes, were found to be infected with the Nipah virus (NiV), which previously had not been found among humans. Second, because of climate
change and other consequences of human activities (including deforestation for industrial planation development and pulpwood extraction),
there was an acute reduction in the availability of flowering and fruiting
forest trees that had been traditional food sources for fruit bats. Third,
in response to deforestation and habitat loss, there was a movement of
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these bats into cultivated fruit orchards, in part driven by the smoke of
fires that were set to clear forested areas. Fourth, pig farmers in the area
had begun to expand their farms into surviving forest areas and planted orchards, resulting in tree branches overhanging the new pigsties.
Fifth, fruit bats, which are large, highly social animals that roost in family
groups on branches, routinely dropped partially eaten fruit into the sties
and their excreta into feeding troughs, which pigs consumed, leading to
their infection. Fifth, the development of an export market for pig products motivated the dense packing of pigs into sties, allowing the rapid
pig-to-pig transmission of disease. Sixth, farmers were exposed to the
virus when caring for and slaughtering pigs. Facilitated by this exposure
and mutation, Nipah leaped the species barrier. Finally, the movement of
infected pigs (through sales) allowed the disease to spread to new areas
in Malaysia and to Singapore. In Bangladesh, anthropological research
revealed that other human behaviors (namely drinking fresh date palm
sap from clay collector pots that fruit bats also visited) facilitated human
infection (Luby et al. 2006).
As the account above suggests, ethnographic study of behaviors and
interactions among multiple species (fruit bats, pigs, humans, and viruses), assessment of human impacts on the environment, and identification
of specific political economic drivers of these changes, along with epidemiologic and virologic data, are needed to understand this case and
inform preventive measures.
In addition to climate change and deforestation, or in conjunction with
them, are many other anthropogenic factors that contribute to increasing
numbers of zoonotic infections, including overpopulation, disruptions
due to military actions, mass migrations of populations due to disasters,
migration to large urban centers [and residential crowding in servicelimited areas], and inadequate food and water supplies (Weiss 2008:2).
Additionally, the clearing of new areas for food cultivation or other new
land use patterns has exposed people to new animal populations, disease vectors, pathogens, and subsequent zoonotic transfer. The evident
convergence of human and nonhuman animal diseases underlines the
adoption of a multispecies perspective (and clinical approach) to environmental health in medical anthropology (Rabinowitz and Conti 2009).
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Troubles Never Come Alone: Syndemics, Ecosyndemics,

and Medical Anthropology
The term syndemic, which emerged within medical anthropology during
the 1990s, denotes: 1) two or more epidemics that are coterminous in a
population (such as H1N1 and diabetes among several US ethnic minorities in 2009 to 2010); that 2) results in direct and indirect adverse disease
interaction(s) of various kinds; that 3) cause an increase in a populations
overall disease burden; and 4) are promoted (usually) by social inequality, the unjust exercise of power, and social suffering (Singer 2009a).
Syndemics disproportionately occur in marginalized and subordinate
populations because they are forced to inhabit risky environments (e.g.,
those that expose them to industrial pollution), suffer elevated vulnerability
(e.g., due to structurally imposed nutrient deficient diets, heightened levels of stress from various sources, weakened immune function, emotional
and/or physical trauma), and have limited access to health careall factors that foster disease clustering (Bulled and Singer 2010, Singer 2009a,
Singer and Clair 2003, Singer et al. 2006).
Exemplary is the case of the interaction that occurs between the zoonotic diseases tuberculosis and HIV infection, two significant threats to health
that increasingly are found entwined, with adverse health consequences
in low-income and otherwise disadvantaged populations (Burke 2011;
Cohen et al. 2010; Geldmacher, Zumla, and Hoelscher 2012; Vermund and
Yamamoto 2007). The first of these syndemic partners, tuberculosis, is
most common in populations rendered susceptible by instability of residence [and overcrowding], mixing of populations, forced migration, breakdown of government and social institutions that provide order and protection, major life-threatening events, poor sanitation, high rates of certain
other diseases, [and] exposure to chemicals and particles which irritate the
deep lung (Wallace and Wallace 1998:84). As for the second, as Farmer
asserts, poverty and social inequalities are the strongest enhancers of risk
for exposure to HIV (1999:148). As a result, the infectious agents M. tuberculosis and HIV cluster together in the same disparity populations, and
develop beyond co-infection to biological or other interaction, with severe
consequences for sufferers. People with HIV infection who also are infected with tuberculosis are 800 times more likely than those with tuberculosis
alone to transition from latent to active tuberculosis (Lockman et al. 2003;
Narain, Raviglione, and Kochi 1992). Because of this syndemic, South
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Africa, whose population only comprises seven percent of the worlds population, has 17 percent of the global HIV disease burden, as well as one
of the worst tuberculosis epidemics on the planet, which, in recent years,
has been exacerbated by rising rates of drug resistant tuberculosis among
people with HIV co-infection (Karim et al. 2009).
As indicated earlier, a subtype of syndemic of particular importance to
this piece is termed an ecosyndemic. Various anthropogenic alterations
of the physical environment, such as those mentioned above, have significant implications for the clustering and adverse synergistic exchange
among zoonotic diseases. This process is seen in the rising number of
cases in the world of leishmaniasis and leishmania/HIV co-infection as
discussed below.
Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites (genus
Leishmania, of which there are several infectious species) that are transmitted by the bite of an infected female sand fly in a manner similar to
the mosquito transmission of malaria. Host animals include dogs, rodents, and humans. Leishmaniasis is one of ten diseases identified by
the World Health Organization that disproportionately burden poor and
socially marginalized populations, causing untold misery and death
[while impacting human] population dynamics, economic achievements,
and land use (Hurd 2003:142). The most severe form of this neglected
disease, called visceral leishmaniasis (VL), is variously characterized by
fever, weight loss, swelling of body organs, anemia, disabling disfigurement (often linked to the stigmatization of sufferers), as well as a high
likelihood of death if left untreated. VL can cause major epidemics with
high case fatality rates. For example, between 1984 and 1994 there was
a significant VL outbreak in Western Upper Nile State in South Sudan.
Because of multiple local risk factors, including civil unrest, disruption of
the health care system, malnutrition, syndemic disease interactions, and
lack of local availability of first-line medicines, as many as 40,000 people
died. In some villages, up to half of the population perished (World Health
Organization 2000). When leishmaniasis arises in urban areas, social conditions (e.g., high populations, population density, slum areas) favor explosive, rapidly spreading, epidemics.
One species, Leishmania infantum, is spreading northward into
Europe, a diffusion that has been possible, in part, because of changes
wrought by global warming that facilitate vector diffusion to new areas.
As a result of planetary warming, disease models accurately predicted a
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Merrill Singer
dramatic increase in VL in northern Europe during the 1990s (Kuhn 1999,

Ready 2010). In recent years, it has been found that, in addition to sand
flies, leishmania also can be transmitted through the direct or indirect
sharing of syringes (medical or illicit), which is the most common route of
infection in the contemporary leishmania/HIV syndemic and are associated with high rates of VL.
A multispecies approach to understanding the leishmania/HIV syndemic must include examination of four interspecies connections: leishmania and sand flies, sand flies and humans, humans and leishmania,
and leishmania and HIV. Research has shown that leishmania-infected
sand flies have modified feeding behavior compared to uninfected sand
flies. Specifically, infected sand flies have difficulty ingesting a full blood
meal at each attempt and consequently launch multiple bite attempts
(probes) in order to take in an adequate supply of blood, thereby increasing the chances for parasite transmission. This phenomenon, known as
the blocked fly hypothesis (Jeffries, Livesey, and Molyneux 1986), is one
form of host manipulation by a parasite that is believed to enhance disease spread and virulence. In the case of leishmania, it is the result of an
occlusion of a valve linking the sand flys foregut and midgut caused by a
gel-plug formed in part by parasite secretion.
A second outcome of the pathogen-host interaction in sand flies is host
fecundity reduction. Experimental research indicates that leishmaniainfected sand flies have a lower mean number of eggs laid per female
compared to uninfected sand flies (El Sawaf et al. 1994). Whether this is a
manipulation by the pathogen or a protective response by the host is not
clear (as pathogens and hosts engage in a constant arms race in which
transmission and severity hang in the balance). One possible parasitebased explanation for reduced fecundity is that, because lowered egg
production increases host longevity, this contributes to infected sand fly
survival and results in increased opportunity for pathogen transmission to
new hosts over time (Hurd 2003).
Production of sand fly eggs requires a supply of nutrients that are acquired through a blood meal. This means that the sand fly must be able to
locate and gain access to the bodies of potential hosts. The geographical distribution of leishmaniasis is restricted to tropical and temperate
regions that are tolerable to the sand fly. However, one factor in the increasing number of leishmaniasis cases is human impact on the environment, including timber harvesting, mining, dam construction, irrigation
1301
system development, extension of cultivation to new areas, road building

in primary forests, rural to urban migration, and climate change (Lindgren,
Naucke, and Menne 2008; World Health Organization 2000). All of these
move people into the traditional range areas of leishmania species or
move infected-sand flies to new locations.
HIV and VL co-infection has been reported in over 30 countries in Africa,
Asia, Europe, and South America. World Health Organization surveillance
data indicate that over 70 percent of HIV cases in southern Europe are coinfected with VL (Molina, Gradoni, and Alvar 2003). In particular, Spain, Italy,
and southern France are experiencing a growing incidence of co-infection,
especially among youth and young adults (Bulled and Singer 2010).
Co-infection with these two diseases, which are mutually reinforcing,
can lead to substantial adverse outcomes. Thus, people with HIV who are
co-infected have a reduced immune capacity to contain initial leishmania
infection and keep it from progressing to VL. In co-infected individuals,
leishmaniasis has been found to be particularly severe and unresponsive
to treatment (Oliver et al. 2003:S85). At the same time, VL enhances HIV
infection and progression to AIDS through several complex biochemical
pathways. Human response to these comingling threats to health involves
research, disease surveillance, prevention education, and treatment, all of
which are complicated by global, regional, and local political-economic
relations, structural inequalities, popular responses, and the limited availability of resources and infrastructures.
Additionally, as this brief review indicates, the leishmania/HIV syndemic
is the product of multiple species behaviors and interspecies interactions,
including both collaborations and contestations that occur on a wide
range of scales and unite global events like climate change to microscopic processes like pathogenpathogen interface. To this case, multispecies ethnography, which gives new meaning to the notion of multisited
research, brings a holistic lens that facilitates seeing both the forest and
the trees (includingstaying within this metaphorhow the trees interact
with each other and with other forest flora and fauna, a changing climate,
and the international lumber industry).
Conclusion
A multispecies approach to the ethnographic study of zoonotic ecosyndemics focuses attention on the continuous and consequential interactions
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Merrill Singer
that occur among biological, sociopolitical, and environmental phenomena. Further, it seeks to elevate the importance of the characteristics, experiences, behaviors, and social life of multiple species in health rather
than treat nonhuman species as non-agentive objects in a human world of
meaning and action. At the same time, multispecies ethnography in medical anthropology raises multiple questions, including how many species
to consider (e.g., within its range, leishmania interacts with other pathogens besides HIV), how much environment to consider (e.g., in the case of
Nipah, do snakes or birds that prey on fruit bats have to be considered),
and with what expertise (are medical anthropologists trained or have the
resources and capacity to undertake the study of humans, multiple other
animals, plants, diverse pathogens, and multiple species interactions)? Of
course, none of these questions are completely new to ethnography, given
the holistic orientation of the field. In this sense, multispecies ethnography
can be considered an extension of an existing holistic tradition that moves
us from studying humans in physical and social contexts to unpacking
and studying contexts in which humans are important but not the only
players, and in which the agencies, cognitions, and experiences of other
species matter. It is the argument of this piece that, in the same way that
anthropologys traditional holism enabled insights not possible with a narrow lens of study, a fully developed multispecies approach holds promise
of further clarifying our impactful embeddedness in a world of intertwined,
mutually causal processes and relationships, and the ramification of this
for the health of humans and nonhumans alike.
While multispecies entwinements have always been critical to health, in
the Anthropocene, a perilous epoch of growing and often adverse human
impacts on all locations and lives on Earth, the situated connectivities
that bind us into multi-species communities (Rose 2009:87) has become
an especially vital issue within and beyond anthropology. n
Acknowledgments:
This piece benefited from a critical reading by Elyse Singer.
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