The "posthumanist turn" in critical theory comprises efforts to recognize and analyze the interdependence of human existence with non-human entities, including other animals, spaces, and technologies. Scholarship aligned to and debating posthumanism pertains to public health, but has yet to be clearly articulated for a public health audience. This commentary and an appended glossary illustrate the relevance of these ideas for enhancing critical theory in public health.2

Public deliberation is increasingly marshalled as a viable avenue for climate governance. Although climate change can be framed in multiple ways, it is widely assumed that the only relevant public meaning of climate change is that given by the natural sciences. Framing climate change as an inherently science-based public issue not only shields institutional power from scrutiny, but it can also foster an instrumental approach to public deliberation that can constrain imaginative engagement with present and future socio-environmental change. By fostering the normative value of pluralism as well as the substantive value of epistemic diversity, the interpretive social sciences and humanities can assist in opening up public deliberation on climate change such that alternative questions, neglected issues, marginalized perspectives and different possibilities can gain traction for policy purposes. Stakeholders of public deliberation are encouraged to reflect on the orchestration of the processes by which climate change is defined, solutions identified and political collectives convened.

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This article introduces the concept of trans-biopolitics to account for complexity in the intermingling of animal and human bodies, with particular attention to diseases capable of crossing the species divide from animals to humans. While zoonotic diseases never disappeared, they had re-emerged as pressing concerns by the 21st century. The concept of trans-biopolitics takes into account the power relations inherent in human and nonhuman lives in contemporary global, industrial, and technological formations. More specifically, trans-biopolitics revolves around practices determining whose lives are possible or legitimate to prolong, whose bodies are sacrificed in order to preserve the vitality of other bodies, and whose bodies are sustained yet ultimately rendered insignificant. To illustrate, we examine connections between bovine spongiform encephalopathy and feline spongiform encephalopathy, to show how certain bodies (humans, livestock) are taken into consideration in terms of health and food regulations, whereas other bodies (pets) remain at the periphery. Acknowledging human-animal relations in contemporary technological and global contexts challenges us to rethink ways in which the politics of health continues to evolve.

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This paper draws attention to food as a site around which a historically particular form of public engagement has emerged. In the past decade, some of the most lively debates and policy actions for science and publics have focused on food related issues: first with BSE and subsequently with genetically modified organisms. Even though much of the literature surrounding publics and science acknowledges that the very definition of "publics" is shifting, little attention has been paid to food as a significant arena in which publics are engaging in politically motivated challenges to techno-scientific practices, policies and institutions. Taking food seriously means contextualizing publics as well as extending discursive models of democratic engagement to embrace consumer practices.

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The principle of public participation is increasingly recognized as central for effective climate governance, although underpinning assumptions about what constitutes participation are not always clearly articulated. This article inquires into the challenges faced when lay citizens are asked to engage in deliberative 'mini-publics' geared towards providing input into climate policy. While advocates claim that these innovative forums improve collective decision making by creating the conditions for a socially diverse constituency to learn about and deliberate on salient public issues, critics caution that the democratic potential of deliberative initiatives can be compromised from the outset by a deeper set of assumptions that position public meanings as the domain of expert institutions. Rather than opening up public issues to diverse meanings, mini-publics can inadvertently close down public debate where only expert issue framings are considered valid, reasonable and credible. The admirable objective to include lay publics in climate policy can be limited in practice by a tendency to frame climate change as an inherently expert-based issue. Defining the discussions as the exclusive preserve of experts can implicitly preclude wider public involvement, in turn limiting the knowledge and perspectives available for policy makers.