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Humans are inextricably linked to each other and our natural world, and microorganisms lie at the nexus of those interactions. Microorganisms form genetically flexible, taxonomically diverse, and biochemically rich communities, i.e., microbiomes that are integral to the health and development of macroorganisms, societies, and ecosystems.

Abstract:For 15 years now the U.S. has been facing an "obesity epidemic" that, according to the dominant narrative, is harming the nation by worsening the health burden, raising health costs, and undermining productivity. Much of the responsibility is laid at the foot of blacks and Latinos, who have higher levels of obesity. Latinos have provoked particular concern because of their rising numbers. Michelle Obama's Let's Move! Campaign is now targeting Latinos. Like the national anti-obesity campaign, it locates the problem in ignorance and calls on the Latino community to "own" the issue and take personal responsibility for embracing healthier beliefs and behaviors. In this article we argue that this dominant approach to Latino obesity is misguided and even damaging because it ignores both the politicaleconomic sources of minority obesity and the political-moral dynamics of biocitizenship in which the obesity issue is playing out. Drawing on two sets of ethnographic data on Latino immigrants and U.S.-born Latinos in southern California, we show that Latinos already "own" the obesity issue; far from ignorant, as members of a biocitizen society they are fully aware of the importance of a healthy diet, exercise, and normal weight. What prevents them from becoming proper thin, fit biocitizens is structural barriers associated with migration and assimilation into the low-wage sector of the American economy. Failure to create the normative body has led them to internalize the identity of bad citizens, assume personal responsibility for their failure, naturalize the conditions for this failure, and feel that they deserve this fate. We argue that the blaming of minorities for the obesity epidemic constitutes a form of symbolic violence that furthers what Berlant calls the "slow death" of structurally vulnerable populations, even as it deepens their health risks by failing to address the fundamental sources of their higher weights. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:The authors would like to thank UC MEXUS for providing a dissertation research grant to conduct Carney's fieldwork, the participants in both projects, and the Comparative Border Studies Institute at Arizona State University for supporting Carney during the write-up of this article. We are also indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for offering additional valuable insights during the development of this article.

Attention to culinary care can enrich the framing of health within medical anthropology. We focus on care practices in six Latin American kitchens to illuminate forms of health not located within a singular human subject. In these kitchens, women cared not for individuals but for meals, targeting the health of families and landscapes. Many medical anthropologists have critiqued health for its associations with biomedicine/biocapitalism, some even taking a stance 'against health.' Although sympathetic to this critique, our focus on women's practices of caring for health through food highlights dissonances between clinical and nonclinical forms of health. We call for the development of an expanded vocabulary of health that recognizes health care treatment strategies that do not target solely the human body but also social, political, and environmental afflictions.

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Burnett, D. 2014. "Utilizing Photo-Elicitation to Explore the Impact of the Nutrition Transition on the Consumption Patterns,

Global climate change and the continued neoliberalization of food systems have exacerbated levels of food insecurity and hunger, producing an ever-expanding population of displaced persons who are also nutritionally vulnerable. Restrictive immigration policies in post-arrival and resettlement contexts compound with other cultural, social, political, and economic conditions to negatively affect the food security and health of displaced persons. This article engages a comparative ethnographic perspective for examining the migration-food security nexus. Drawing on ethnographic research with Mexican and Central American im/migrants in the Western United States, Haitian im/migrants in the Dominican Republic, and African im/migrant populations in Italy, this article analyzes local experiences of food insecurity in restrictive immigration policy contexts through an intersectional lens. Finally, this article examines the possibilities for engaged research oriented toward generating “healthy publics” and addressing food insecurity across disparate geographical and political settings and amid structural and social constraints.