Posthuman perspectives: relevance for a global public health

Cohn, Simon; Lynch, Richard

doi:10.1080/09581596.2017.1302557

Cited by 28 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…This more-than- or post -human (see Cohn and Lynch, 2017) aspect of healthy publics generates challenges of participation and speech. Yet we take it that all actors, including people, genes, animals, geologies, chemicals and so on, are potentially active in the development of a healthy public.…”

Section: Healthy Publicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Healthy publics: enabling cultures and environments for health

et al. 2018

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Despite extraordinary advances in biomedicine and associated gains in human health and well-being, a growing number of health and well-being related challenges have remained or emerged in recent years. These challenges are often ‘more than biomedical’ in complexion, being social, cultural and environmental in terms of their key drivers and determinants, and underline the necessity of a concerted policy focus on generating healthy societies. Despite the apparent agreement on this diagnosis, the means to produce change are seldom clear, even when the turn to health and well-being requires sizable shifts in our understandings of public health and research practices. This paper sets out a platform from which research approaches, methods and translational pathways for enabling health and well-being can be built. The term ‘healthy publics’ allows us to shift the focus of public health away from ‘the public’ or individuals as targets for intervention, and away from the view that culture acts as a barrier to efficient biomedical intervention, towards a greater recognition of the public struggles that are involved in raising health issues, questioning what counts as healthy and unhealthy and assembling the evidence and experience to change practices and outcomes. Creating the conditions for health and well-being, we argue, requires an engaged research process in which public experiments in building and repairing social and material relations are staged and sustained even if, and especially when, the fates of those publics remain fragile and buffeted by competing and often more powerful public formations.

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Section: Healthy Publicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Healthy publics: enabling cultures and environments for health

et al. 2018

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“…Because vital materialism is a nonhumanist philosophy, researchers and theorists used to a humanist lens may struggle to fully incorporate it into nursing. Nonhumanisms have proven useful to research in other typically humanist professions, such as social scientists, public health, exercise, nutrition and kinesiology (Cohn & Lynch, ; Fox & Alldred, ; Monforte, ). To the interested‐yet‐skeptical researcher, I echo the advice that other writers have given about incorporating varied strands of new materialism into research.…”

Section: Importance To Nursing Practice Research and Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Vital and enchanted: Jane Bennett and new materialism for nursing philosophy and practice

Neff

2019

Nursing Philosophy

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Nursing theories are typically anthropocentric and emphasize caring for a person as a unitary whole. They maintain the dualisms of human–nonhuman, natural–social and material–ideal. Recent developments in nonhuman ontology question the utility of that approach. One important philosopher in this new materialism is political theorist Jane Bennett. In this paper, I explore Bennett's vital materialism and enchantment as two concepts arising from the nonhuman turn that should inform nursing philosophy. Vital materialism considers the lively power of matter to affect the world and be affected in relations. Enchantment refers to a sense of wonder and captivation with matter. While summarizing her important contributions, I also describe common criticisms and responses. I consider the human as an assemblage of matter as well as the agency or “thing power” of matter external to humans. This has implications for nursing thought and practice, and it can inform a more capacious research methodology. I also discuss how compassion fatigue or burnout and other professional issues may be seen as a form of disenchantment with the material world. I argue that embracing these and other elements of Bennett's new materialist philosophy can help nurses and other health professionals enrich their theories and practice to advance their disciplines and improve care for persons and populations.

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“…‘More‐than‐human solidarity’ takes place whenever human efforts to care for each other extend to caring for non‐human animals, or whenever humans take practical steps to care for non‐human animals (Rock and Degeling ). Conceptually, more‐than‐human solidarity aligns with posthumanist approaches to health promotion (Cohn and Lynch , , Friese and Nuyts , Rock , Rock , Rock and Degeling , Rock and Degeling , Rock et al . , ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

From more‐than‐human solidarity to multi‐species biographical value: insights from a veterinary school about ethical dilemmas in One Health promotion

Rock

Degeling

Adams

2020

Sociology Health & Illness

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This article features a partnership between a veterinary school and a charity that aims to enhance the wellbeing of low-income people. Through this partnership, the charity periodically hosts veterinary clinics for clients and their pets. Even as the veterinarians and veterinary students duly examine people's pets, these pop-up clinics aim to help people and their pets. Hence our analysis revolves around the ethics of 'more-than-human solidarity'. By 'more-than-human solidarity', we mean efforts to help others that either center on or that implicate non-human beings. To delve into the ethical and sociological implications of subsidised veterinary services, and to assist with program planning, we conducted several in-depth interviews with veterinarians. Most substantively, we found that the veterinary school's outreach clinics give rise to multi-species biographical value, which is prized as a pedagogical resource for veterinary students. The veterinarians whom we interviewed felt troubled by the extent to which the pop-up clinics ultimately benefited the veterinary school, but also by the shortage of subsidised veterinary services in the vicinity. Based on these interviews and our own reflections, we invite more scholarship on cultural, economic and political influences that shape the lives of human beings and non-human animals alike.

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Posthuman perspectives: relevance for a global public health

Cited by 28 publications

References 31 publications

Healthy publics: enabling cultures and environments for health

Healthy publics: enabling cultures and environments for health

Vital and enchanted: Jane Bennett and new materialism for nursing philosophy and practice

From more‐than‐human solidarity to multi‐species biographical value: insights from a veterinary school about ethical dilemmas in One Health promotion

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