ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the broader issue of anthropocentrism in human life. From the perspective of a critical environmentally-informed medical anthropology, it also focuses on the issue of environmental health in both senses of the term: the health of the environment and human health as shaped by the environment; and, especially, the interrelationship of these two core arenas of the anthropological project. This type of analysis requires a multidisciplinary approach that views health as the complex product of interacting social structures and activities and human and natural ecologies. Examination of these issues suggests a pathway for framing future work in the anthropological study of environmental health. Moreover, central to the incipient planetary health movement, as it must be to any meaningful response to the dangers of climate change, is a commitment to equity in a world of unjust societies and unequal relations among societies.
