Workshop: The twin environmental/health crises

As part of the Planetary Healing Research Project, we are pleased to announce a workshop on this topic featuring guests from Mexico. The two-part workshop will take place at Oettingenstraße 67 at two different venues. It is also possible to join the event online. Anyone interested should contact Sarah Mund (Sarah.Mund@lmu.de) to get a link to the online session.

Part 1:
2:00–4:00 p.m.
Room U133
or online (please request the access link via Sarah.Mund@lmu.de)

How diabetes “works”: An exploration of work, labor, and care in everyday experiences of diabetes among Indigenous people in Mexico

With Laura Montesi

Drawing on long-term fieldwork in diverse Indigenous Mexican contexts, this talk explores “how diabetes ‘works’”, tracking the multiple dimensions of “work” in Indigenous experiences of living with diabetes. As a starting point, “how diabetes ‘works’” stands for diabetes etiology and pathophysiology models at the individual level. However, a deeper analysis unveils other, less immediate meanings of “work” which are intimately tied with Indigenous ideals of living/working well together. Illness narratives evoke larger concerns about changing labor patterns and altered human-nonhuman relationships; perceived contradictions between competing civilizing models; a nostalgic longing for communal, non-capitalistic living; and renewed commitments and efforts to collective healing and cosmological care. Reflecting on the relationship between work and diabetes helps to go beyond restrictive notions of care and imagine broader approaches to health in times of planetary crisis.

Short bio

Laura Montesi is a SECIHTI (Mexican Secretariat of Science) researcher based at CIESAS (Centre for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology) in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is a medical anthropologist specialised in the study of chronic diseases, particularly among Indigenous populations, with a focus on health disparities. She is co-editor of the books Managing Chronicity in Unequal States: Ethnographic Perspectives on Caring (UCL, 2021) and Los huaves en el tecnoceno. Disputas por la naturaleza, el cuerpo y la lengua en el México contemporáneo (INAH-Editpress, 2022).

 

Part 2:
4:00–6:00 p.m.
Room 027
or online (please request the access link via Sarah.Mund@lmu.de)

Conflicting interpretations of indigeneity: challenge or opportunity towards environmental healing? Notes from the field by an environmental journalist

With Juan Mayorga

The roles of indigenous people as land defenders and planetary healers are often taken for granted by well-intended environmentalists, however this representation of ‘otherness’ and ‘indigeneity’ risks overlooking a vast array of indigenous lifestyles, behaviors and political views that do not necessarily align with the environmental goals set by NGOs, researchers, international conventions or governmental agencies.
Based on over a decade of journalistic covering of environmental conflicts in rural Mexico, mainly in the ethnically diverse state of Oaxaca, this presentation points to a complexity of situations that reveal colliding experiences of what it means and what it entails to be indigenous vis-à-vis contemporary environmental crises. As identity contradictions prevail at all levels (from the personal to the community level, the national and the international setting), this talk aims to point out the conceptual and practical challenges and opportunities of embracing a pluralistic vision of indigeneity in relation to a much-needed environmental healing.

Short Bio

Juan Mayorga is a Mexican independent journalist specialized in environmental issues. He has covered climate change, energy transitions, food production, public health, urban pollution, indigenous populations, biodiversity conservation, among other crises of our time.

He has bylines in major Mexican outlets as El Universal, CNNMexico, Expansion, Animal Politico, SinEmbargo, Chilango, Gatopardo, among others, as well as international ones including The Guardian and Climate Home News. He has covered international environment processes as the UN climate change and biodiversity conventions, and followed social environmental movements as well as community and indigenous-led initiatives from different parts of Mexico.

Juan holds a bachelor’s degree in Communication from Mexico's UNAM, and a master’s in Public Management-GeoGovernance from Potsdam University.