Open Access
From the human to the planetary
Author(s) -
Miriam Ticktin
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
medicine anthropology theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2405-691X
DOI - 10.17157/mat.6.3.666
Subject(s) - flourishing , humanity , politics , biosocial theory , environmental ethics , the imaginary , sociology , epistemology , space (punctuation) , health care , engineering ethics , political science , psychology , social psychology , computer science , law , engineering , philosophy , personality , psychotherapist , operating system
This is largely a theoretical, speculative essay that takes on the question of what ‘care’ looks like at a moment when climate change is increasingly taking center stage in public and political discussions. Starting with two new practices, namely, humanitarian care for nonhumans and One Health collaborations, I seek to determine what forms of political care can incorporate the well-being of future generations and future iterations of the earth. After an exploration of One Health as an approach to planetary care, I ask what its parts enable us to think, despite its limitations; I focus on the new human-nonhuman assemblages connected through different biosocial models, such as neuroscience or immunology, to see how these scientific theories might enable new possibilities. I argue that a focus on biological ecologies at different scales – as opposed to ethicomoral categories like humanity – can open the way to a larger imaginary of human and nonhuman flourishing and a space for nonmoralistic politics.