Health as a Multispecies Phenomenon: Towards Anti-Anthropocentrism

Area of Science:

• Geography and cognate social sciences
• Environmental health
• Animal studies

Background:

• Dominant health approaches are often human-centered.
• Planetary Health integrates human, animal, and ecological health but may retain anthropocentrism.
• Existing social science literature has explored health as a multispecies or more-than-human phenomenon.

Purpose of the Study:

• To critically review how geography and social sciences engage with multispecies health.
• To assess the success of innovations in addressing human-centeredness in health.
• To identify new conceptual avenues for equitable multispecies health.

Main Methods:

• Critical literature review of geography and social science scholarship on multispecies health.
• Analysis of ontological and epistemological innovations in health approaches.
• Drawing on multispecies justice scholarship to propose new conceptual avenues.

Main Results:

• Social science literature has advanced understanding of multispecies health dimensions.
• Current approaches have had limited success in creating species-equitable health frameworks.
• Three promising conceptual avenues for anti-anthropocentric multispecies health were identified: in-difference, intersubjectively affirmed agency, and re-animalisation.

Conclusions:

• Rethinking health requires moving beyond human-centeredness towards species equity.
• Multispecies justice scholarship offers tools for developing equitable health accounts.
• The proposed conceptual avenues provide a foundation for more equitable multispecies health frameworks.