Applying Critical Theory to Environment and Health Issues

Abstract

The next four chapters of this book are designed to map out a critical approach to conducting ecohealth research and explore ways of responding to ecohealth problems through a critical lens. Most traditional literature on environment and health adopts a priori notions of environmental degradation and constructions of poor health without interrogating how these concepts or problems are conceived, who conceives them, why, how, and to what extent they accurately reflect reality? Similarly, the causal explanations offered for environment and health problems are sometimes too simplistic and attributed to factors, such as poverty, poor land use practices, and inappropriate behaviours and lifestyle, with little consideration of how unequal power relations and socio-political and historical factors shape human-environment interactions, and adversely impact health.