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

P bl h d b r h n t n n v r t n t t t f r thn r phR r hDOI: 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 LensAs 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 organisms—a relation-ship Shipman (2010, 2011) refers to as the “animal connection”—com-monly 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 (Germonpré 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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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) facili-tates 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., sig-nificant increases in the incidence of human malaria infection in urban settings and the adoption of new antibiotics to fight malaria), which im-pact 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 thou-sand 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 mos-quito vectors of the Plasmodium family of protozoa, infectious agents of malaria. The result was a significant jump in human malaria infection, hu-man suffering, and the selection for and increase of the sickling trait in hu-man plasma, which offered a degree of protection from malaria. Cormier (2010:257) posits a somewhat similar account of New World malaria in-volving 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 interac-tions…where diseases can be shared” between monkeys and people. Humans responded with the development of new (or adapted) cultural practices—like the bathing of infected individuals in aromic plants—to treat malarial fevers.

As these examples suggest, mutually causal processes involve rela-tionships 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 symbols—have been pressed into the foreground in recent ethnographies. Animals, plants, fungi, and microbes once confined in anthropological ac-counts to the realm of zoe or “bare life”—that which is killable—have 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 mi-crobes” (2003:57). In this way, efforts are afoot to subvert human excep-tionalism (Haraway 2007).

As yet, however, multispecies recalibration is only begun (Candea 2010, Fuentes 2000, Kohn 2007, Raffles 2010, Willerslev 2004). This so-cial 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 hu-man communities in environmental contexts that include nonhuman be-ings; naturalistic contextualization is one of the distinctive features of the discipline. For example, in his influential account of the Nuer, Evans-Pritchard 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 histori-cally has been on understanding and explaining the human side of multi-species 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 forc-es” (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 reference—are 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 rel-evance 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 anthropology—and especially (but not only), the anthropology of infectious disease (Inhorn and Brown 1997)—must be concerned with in-teractions among multiple life forms. Traditionally, medical anthropology’s interest in other species—including vectors and pathogens, but also the extraction of medicines from various plants and animals or the use of ani-mals as therapeutic agents in clinical settings or as exercise promoters in people’s homes—has 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 in-complete 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 bioso-ciocultural 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 consid-eration 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 microbe’s inherent properties, but because of the op-portunities afforded to microbes and their evolutionary trajectories by so-cial 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 driv-ers, 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 re-search in anthropology and to locating this project within a multispecies ethnographic framework.

The Nature of NatureTo borrow a phrase from Harvey Moloch, “nothing stands alone” (2003:1). Rather than only seeking to comprehend the processes of human becom-ing, culturally and biologically, multispecies ethnographers are concerned with seeing interaction as a two-way (or multiple way) process that im-pacts the bodies, minds, behaviors, social lives, and natures of all involved organisms. Thus, we cannot understand ourselves unless we fully appre-ciate 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 traf-fic along the global superhighway created by international trade and travel (Armelagos 1998, Morse 1993). In this work, even the traditional boundar-ies 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 understand-ing 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 codi-fied 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 them-selves as part of nature, their general perception of natural envi-ronments excluded any humans or human involvement while their general perceptions of unnatural environments included mostly hu-man-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 encoun-ter 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 hu-man gain and advancement, and the intended and unintended conse-quences (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 in-creased 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 RevisedAlso 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 Darwin’s work on what might be called the inner life of earthworms, noting: “In Darwin’s por-trayal, the inner life of worms is indeed a cognitive world—a world about which worms form judgments. The inner life of worms also includes their subjective world—a 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 mind—both cognition and subjective experience—where 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 character-ized by true problem solving reason, and a consciousness that was un-deniable, 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, Hutto’s 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, repeated-ly, ethnological and other research tends to support Hutto’s 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 experi-mentally each year, most of which are subsequently euthanized. In particu-lar, 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 treat-ment of animals is over 350 years old, but has intensified in the era of global discourse on human rights. Philosopher Bernard Rollin (1989), who spe-cializes 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 benefit-ing human health), the kinds of suffering nonhuman animals endure at hu-man hands, our constructed understandings of ourselves as variously the “crown of creation” or the “apex of evolution,” the rise of human/nonhu-man 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 ques-tions both about pharmaceutical and other biomedical research (e.g., in virology, bacteriology, etc.) and with reference to the accepted prioritiza-tion 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 Foucault’s notion of biopower, Porter observes: “avian influenza policies provoke dilemmas surrounding whose lives and livelihoods are worth protecting in multispe-cies biopower—particularly when they are implemented in historically and culturally specific situations” (2013:144). Issues of authority and resis-tance in the implementation of containment policies, cross cultural differ-ences in the understanding of particular non-human species, human ex-perience 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 PerspectiveAs Douglas Chadwick (2003) notes, entities like lichen are not a single organism but an interactive group of species. They constitute “a door-way between organisms [or individual species] and ecosystems. Look out one direction, and you see individual things; look the other way, you see processes, relationships—things together. This is the new level in un-derstanding biology” (2003:119). Even with reference to our own species there is an emergent “more-than-human” perspective that both under-stands human communities as comprising many species (both wild and


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domesticated, and including rodent and insect vectors as well as micro-organisms) 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 patho-gens. 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 unidenti-fied. 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 underdevel-oped 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 understand-ing 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 na-ked 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 inter-species 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 Geertz’s (1972) celebrated es-say, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” As both a personal and deeply analytical paper, Geertz’s 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 man’s connection—both experiential and symbolic—to the animal realm. Specifically, Geertz sought to show that the deeply meaningful drama of cockfights was a core cultural enact-ment 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 em-bodiment 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 owner’s personality and innermost being.

On the other hand, Geertz emphasizes, roosters represent to the Balinese “the direct inversion aesthetically, morally, and metaphysi-cally, 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 by—The 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 Geertz’s interpretation a creative interweaving of the complexities and contradictions of Balinese daily experience, a bringing together of diverse themes, including “ani-mal savagery, male narcissism, opponent gambling, status rivalry, mass excitement, blood sacrifice—whose 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 Geertz’s ac-count have been different if it had been based on this alternative frame-work? Geertz, himself, provides a starting point for answering this ques-tion. 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-ex-perienced 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, how-ever, 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 won’t fight,” also phrased as “That dog won’t hunt,” to mean an argument that won’t 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 ac-tivities 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 sup-ported 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 primar-ily to scare away rivals (Beebe 1936). Moreover, having raised chickens and having worked in the chicken houses of an Israeli kibbutz, it is evi-dent 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 symbol-ism 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 implica-tions, as noted below, for the issue of multispecies ethnography in medi-cal anthropology.

Bird and Human Diseases Flock TogetherOne 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 an-swer (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 fre-quent avian diseases that constitute health risks for humans, but the full list of avian pathogens that have leaped the species barrier to infect hu-mans 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 vi-ral disease, attracting the interest not only of researchers, epidemiolo-gists, 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 impor-tant 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 edu-cational 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 multispe-cies interaction is critical to understanding this costly pandemic.

In passing, it merits mention (as further proof of the complexities of mul-tispecies research) that some of the deaths that occurred during the 1918-1919 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 recom-binant virus, it was injected in various forms into mice, chicken embryos,

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and monkeys, which were then monitored for viral reproduction, morbid-ity, 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 BoundariesBased 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 hemagluti-nin 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 ca-pacity for individual recognition, and unexpected levels of emotion and intelligence—characteristics 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 nation’s 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 pan-demic 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 conse-quences 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 flu”—Influenza A virus subtype H1N1—the 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 reas-sortment 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 hu-man genes has been in circulation among the US pig population since the late 1990s (World Health Organization 2009). H1N1 is thought to have origi-nated 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 devastat-ing influenza pandemic of the 20th century (which, as noted, was the 1918-1919 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 com-paratively mild version of its deadly ancestor of 90 years ago. However, H1N1 did prove to be a health disparity disease, with some minority popu-lations 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 dis-proportionately 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 popu-lations 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 re-lationship 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 re-introduction 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 DiseasesAs this discussion of influenza highlights, diseases that jump the spe-cies 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 pat-tern has been: 1) changes wrought by people in physical or social envi-ronments or in patterns and practices in the use of antibiotics, facilicate 2) changes in pathogens which lead to new or enhanced infectious po-tential, which then lead to 3) subsequent human biological, demographic,


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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 ele-ment; as Armelagos, Barnes, and Lin stress, “most of the emerging dis-eases are of cultural origin” (1996:6). Moreover, Worthman and Kohrt ob-serve, “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 patho-gens 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 pro-cess—which has come to be known as the Serial Passage Theory of HIV Emergence—was the transmission of SIV to humans through contact with nonhuman primates (e.g., during the harvesting of bushmeat) and result-ing cuts or bites that allowed passage of the animal pathogen SIV to hu-mans, 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 trans-mission, and hence not capable of sustaining an epidemic). Unsterile sy-ringe 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 human-to-human transmission (Pépin et al. 2010). Lack of prior immune expo-sure 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 injec-tion, which became an increasingly global practice in the era of AIDS.

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On average, in recent years, three new human infectious diseases are identified every two years, with an emergent or re-emergent pathogen be-ing 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 contrib-uted 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 eco-nomic 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 flying-foxes, were found to be infected with the Nipah virus (NiV), which previ-ously had not been found among humans. Second, because of climate change and other consequences of human activities (including defores-tation 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 plant-ed 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 prod-ucts 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 virus-es), assessment of human impacts on the environment, and identification of specific political economic drivers of these changes, along with epi-demiologic 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 service-limited 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, dis-ease 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 envi-ronmental health in medical anthropology (Rabinowitz and Conti 2009).

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Troubles Never Come Alone: Syndemics, Ecosyndemics, and Medical AnthropologyThe 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 minori-ties 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 population’s overall disease burden; and 4) are promoted (usually) by social inequal-ity, 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 lev-els of stress from various sources, weakened immune function, emotional and/or physical trauma), and have limited access to health care—all fac-tors 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 zoonot-ic 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 resi-dence [and overcrowding], mixing of populations, forced migration, break-down of government and social institutions that provide order and protec-tion, 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. tu-berculosis 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 infect-ed 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 world’s pop-ulation, 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 sig-nificant 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 trans-mitted by the bite of an infected female sand fly in a manner similar to the mosquito transmission of malaria. Host animals include dogs, ro-dents, 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 disfigure-ment (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 con-ditions (e.g., high populations, population density, slum areas) favor ex-plosive, 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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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 associ-ated with high rates of VL.

A multispecies approach to understanding the leishmania/HIV syn-demic must include examination of four interspecies connections: leish-mania 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 increas-ing 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 dis-ease spread and virulence. In the case of leishmania, it is the result of an occlusion of a valve linking the sand fly’s 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 leishmania-infected 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 parasite-based 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 ac-quired 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 geographi-cal distribution of leishmaniasis is restricted to tropical and temperate regions that are tolerable to the sand fly. However, one factor in the in-creasing number of leishmaniasis cases is human impact on the environ-ment, including timber harvesting, mining, dam construction, irrigation


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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 co-infected 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 avail-ability 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 microscop-ic processes like pathogen–pathogen interface. To this case, multispe-cies ethnography, which gives new meaning to the notion of multisited research, brings a holistic lens that facilitates seeing both the forest and the trees (including—staying within this metaphor—how the trees interact with each other and with other forest flora and fauna, a changing climate, and the international lumber industry).

ConclusionA multispecies approach to the ethnographic study of zoonotic ecosyn-demics focuses attention on the continuous and consequential interactions

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that occur among biological, sociopolitical, and environmental phenom-ena. Further, it seeks to elevate the importance of the characteristics, ex-periences, 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 medi-cal anthropology raises multiple questions, including how many species to consider (e.g., within its range, leishmania interacts with other patho-gens 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 anthropology’s traditional holism enabled insights not possible with a nar-row 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

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s :

This piece benefited from a critical reading by Elyse Singer.

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F o r e i g n L a n g u a g e Tr a n s l a t i o n s :


动物传染病之生态并发流行与多元物种的民族志

Ecosindemia Zoonótica e Etnografia Multi-Espécies

Зоонотическая экосиндемика и многовидовая этнография

انتشار عدوى األمراض من الحيوانات للبرش ومنشأ تعدد الفصا

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ANIMALS Singer Merrill