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Anthropology and Environment Society
Oral Presentation Session
Erin Koch
Associate Professor
University of Kentucky
This paper examines the significance of plant-human-microbe relations for contemporary global health problems and interventions. Based on fieldwork with plant pathologists and soil scientists, The presentation focuses on muddied cultural aspects of biodiversity and plant pathology in relation to environmental and human health. Utilizing insights from medical anthropology and feminist approaches to studying science, technology and society, I highlight the significance of plant pathology and plant health for global food security, cutting-edge advances in detecting and controlling pathogens, and the importance of plants in developing novel vaccines and alternatives to antibiotics. An ethnographic approach foregrounds the cultural and political aspects of scientific knowledge production, and the importance of collaborations between plant pathologists, food cultivators, and anthropologists for understanding and responding to muddy terrains that are at once destructive and productive in relation to health and environmental longevity.