The intersection between Political Ecology and Health Geography at the scale of the

Introduction This progress report proceeds from a political ecology vantage point to explore the engagement by political ecologists with human health. Literature in political ecology, with an explicit interest in issues of health, remains a somewhat recent and narrow field of enquiry within the discipline. This paper explores this body of literature within its broader intellectual terrain along three tracks. First we introduce a brief genealogy of political ecology in order to highlight two important junctures that may be relevant to our larger discussion on political ecology and health: the localizing trend in political ecology towards issues of livelihood and individual experience and the ‘reinvention’ of nature to include the body material-semiotic ‘natural’ object. Second we assess some recent and literally field-defining essays in political ecology to assess their commitment, if any, to issues of human health. In this section we find a body of literature which has made explicit attempts to explore local, embodied livelihoods but which often times falls short of addressing explicit issues of health. Third we discuss the modest body of literature that effectively bridges political ecology with health geography. Here, we summarize how key arguments and positions within this work are consistent with both the discursive and material approaches found in political ecology.