'Ecosocial Theory, Embodied Truths, and the People's Health' book launch

Abstract

This book employs the ecosocial theory of disease distribution to combine critical political and economic analysis with a deep engagement with biology, in societal, ecological, and historical context. It illuminates what embodying (in)justice entails and the embodied truths revealed by population patterns of health.

Chapter 1 explains ecosocial theory and its focus on multilevel spatiotemporal processes of embodying (in)justice, across the lifecourse and historical generations, as shaped by the political economy and political ecology of the societies in which people live. The counter is to dominant narratives that attribute primary causal agency to people’s allegedly innate biology and their allegedly individual (and decontextualized) health behaviors.

Chapter 2 discusses application of ecosocial theory to analyze: the health impacts of Jim Crow and its legal abolition; racialized and economic breast cancer inequities; the joint health impacts of physical and social hazards at work (including racism, sexism, and heterosexism) and relationship hazards (involving unsafe sex and violence); and measures of structural injustice.

Chapter 3 explores embodied truths and health justice, in relation to: police violence; climate change; fossil fuel extraction and sexually transmitted infectious disease: health benefits of organic food—for whom? ; public monuments, symbols, and the people’s health; and light, vision, and the health of people and other species.

The objective is to inform critical and practical research, actions, and alliances to advance health equity—and to strengthen the people’s health—in a deeply troubled world on a threatened planet.

Panellists

• Mauricio Avendano Pabon
• Linda Rae Murray (University of Illinois Chicago)
• Mahasin Mujahid (University of California, Berkeley)
• Desi Rodrigues-Lonebear (University of California, Los Angeles)

Agenda

This is a hybrid event. This talk will be online, with the opportunity to see it in-person at the Anatomy Theatre, followed by a drinks reception at the Anatomy Museum.

This event is part of the Age of Health series, hosted by the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at King's.