Those who bathe within the Anthropocene

Maria Paula Prates
The Anthropocene is a cosmopolitical question. It manifests in the form of microplastics and toxicities in the flesh of people and the Earth. It is found in streams, rivers and oceans, and in the diseases caused by predatory relations with forests, such as malaria. It is more than human footprints left on the planet’s crust and in its geo-thermodynamics; it is a concern integral to different modes of existing and relating to vitalities, both human and other-than-human. It is also a question of reproductive justice. In this piece, the author presents ethnographic data showing how the restricted access to Indigenous territories and their devastation are intrinsically related to the medicalisation of Indigenous women’s reproductive and sexual health. “The territory is our life, our body, our spirit”: this and similar statements are found in the outcome document of the first Indigenous Women’s March held in Brazil, in August 2019, and assertively expresses the conception of life for these collectives.
Maria Paula Prates is a social anthropologist working on health, illness and care subjects. In general terms, she works on conceptions of person, body, health, life, and care relations. (Re)productive health and the Anthropocene, including midwifery knowledge(s), the medicalisation of childbirth and its connections to environmental devastation, as well as pollution, toxicities, and obstetric and environmental racism, are at the core of her current research themes. She joined the UCL Department of Anthropology to work as a Research Fellow in Medical Anthropology of the Anthropocene for the EIA project in 2021. Currently, she is a Collaborating Professor at the Postgraduate Programme of Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (PPGAS/UFRGS) and a Research Affiliate at the School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography (SAME) at the University of Oxford.

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