S7E2: Healthy Publics with Melanie Rock and Gwendolyn Blue
Gwendolyn Blue and Melanie Rock join Claudia on the show to discuss ‘healthy publics.’ They explore how the idea of ‘public health’ has persistently been conceived of as human and unpack some of the opportunities and challenges with conceiving of multispecies health. From the historical roots of the ‘One Health’ to the modern challenges of public participation and representation, Melanie and Gwendolyn offer thought-provoking perspectives on stretching health frameworks beyond humans.
Gwendolyn Blue and Melanie Rock
Melanie Rock is a professor at the University of Calgary is in the Department of Community Health Sciences. Since joining the University of Calgary’s medical school in 2003, Melanie has drawn on her training in anthropology, health promotion, and social work in a series of projects centered on multi-species research. These projects have spanned community services, family dynamics, and social policy. The funders have included the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. To date, Melanie has led or co-authored more than 100 scholarly publications. Learn more about Melanie here.
Gwendolyn Blue is a critical interpretive social scientist who conducts research on environmental governance, public science, and participatory practice. Her focus is primarily on symbolic and epistemic politics (e.g. how issues are represented, whose expertise counts, which values matter), and how these politics influence participatory engagement across issues such as climate change, genomics, and zoonotic disease. She is particularly interested in identifying the assumptions, values, and contexts that ‘open up’ and ‘close down’ inclusive engagement. Gwendolyn’s research traverses science, politics, and communication and her research goals are oriented toward promoting inclusive engagement with public issues that involve science and technology, including efforts to extend the 'demos' of liberal democracy beyond human-centered approaches. Learn more about Gwendolyn here.
Featured:
Animal Publics: Accounting for Heterogeneity in Political Life by Gwendolyn Blue and Melanie Rock
When Species Meet by Donna Harraway
Biosecurity with Steve Hinchliffe on The Animal Turn.
The Public and its Problems by John Dewey
Materials and devices of the public by Noortje Marres and Javier Lezaun.
ANIMAL HIGHLIGHT:
Priyanshu Thapliyal tells us about Haddi (a.k.a Bones), a small underweight dog who had to learn how to navigate the socio-spatial rules of a marketplace in India. Priya unpacks how the market constitutes a space in which the health of animals like Haddi become a public concern through acts of care and indifference.
Haddi (Bones)
“The idea that language is the central vehicle of politics—that language, in fact, founds and sustains the difference between human politics and the lives and quarrels of those (beasts or gods) who exist outside the polity— is so deeply ingrained in our preconceptions of the political that it is almost impossible to imagine a public, particularly a democratic one, not constituted primarily by acts of discursive deliberation" (Marres and Lezaun, 2011: 492.
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; Remaking One Health (ROH) Indies for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Rebecca Shen for her design work, Priyanshu Thapliyal for the Animal Highlight, and Christiaan Mentz for his audio editing. This episode was produced by the host Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder.
