Re-lating to the local and reimagining health in an era of uncertainty: Surveyors and swimmers of the River Beane

我们生活在一个极端不确定的时代。这种不确定性是社会的，环境的，高潮的，现在，流行病。在这个不确定的时刻，一些人正在与当地的环境联系起来，并在这样做的过程中重新思考自己的健康，以及它与非人类生命健康和环境景观的密切关系。在我的论文研究中，我探索了一个微观的例子，在面对不确定性时，记录了英格兰东南部赫特福德郡沿着一条有争议的河流的对话者如何重新思考健康的含义。我追踪那些测量河流和工作，以确保健康的非人类生命在面对日益严重的干旱，从气候和社会变化，到那些在河里游泳，寻找一个内在的连接到自然和健康的形式“发现”，而不是“告诉”公共卫生在流行病的不确定性的时代。我从这些不同的群体中提取主题，思考时间性，风险管理形式的兴起和健康协调的公民形式，这些形式不断受到不断变化的社会，环境和气候世界的影响。在这个极端不确定的时刻，这项研究既及时又必要。我提供了一个深入的民族志帐户，这些微观事件如何反映了更广泛的宏观转变，在英国的观点，这意味着什么是健康的，以及个人是如何通过他们目前的导向行动，试图既占，并减轻，越来越不确定的未来。我的民族志是一个小的，但越来越多的文学机构参加“蓝色空间”，这已被发现有助于积极的健康来在社会上，但迄今为止还没有吸引到同样的学术关注“绿色空间”和绿色健康。与我的实地考察同步出现的是环境署关于英格兰水道状况的报告。尽管政府在过去四年中承诺改善，但这一数字仍有所下降。因此，越来越多的公众意识到水环境的困境，使我的研究及时和一个研究领域，这将在未来十年增长。该研究对人类学，环境和人文地理学领域以及公共卫生政策都有用处，这些政策必须关注对健康意味着什么的不断变化的观点，以及如何越来越多地以多物种，当地环境关系的方式看待这一点。通过学生生涯，我发展了人类学方法的技能。作为一名民族志学者，我磨练了自己的技能，进行了广泛的参与式观察，半结构化的采访，并通过参加他们的活动，试图对他们的观点获得更深入的第一手了解，让自己沉浸在我的对话者的生活世界中。我还获得了在网络和研究取样方面的技能和信心，增加了研究的范围以及讨论和结论。我已经开发了我的研究技能进行文献综述，在配合我的研究在公共卫生和人类学景观，同时也致力于贡献新的知识领域。我参加了各种会议，展示了我的演讲技巧，以及我与我所在领域内外的学者交往的能力，通过他们的评论和评论丰富了我的工作。奖学金使我能够发展我的写作技巧，将我的数据章节写进学术期刊文章，确保收集的数据可以在论文本身之外获得，从而产生有意义的影响。

We are living in an era of extreme uncertainty. This uncertainty is at once social, environmental, climactic, and now, pandemic. In this moment of uncertainty, some individuals are re-lating to their local environments, and in doing so, rethinking their own health, as well as its intimate relationship to the health of nonhuman life, and environmental landscapes. In my thesis research I explore a microcosmic example of this re-lating in the face of uncertainty, documenting how interlocutors along one contested river in Hertfordshire, in the South-East of England are rethinking what health means. I trace those surveying the river and working to secure health for nonhuman life in the face of mounting drought from climate and social change, to those swimming in the river, searching for a visceral connection to nature and form of health 'found' rather than 'told' by public health in an era of pandemic uncertainty. I draw the themes together from these disparate groups, thinking about temporality, the rise of forms of risk management and health-attuned forms of citizenship that are continually being shaped by a changing social, environmental and climactic world. In this moment of extreme uncertainty this research is both timely and needed. I offer an in-depth ethnographic account of how these microcosmic events reflect a broader macro-shift in UK perspectives on what it means to be healthy, and how individuals are through their present-oriented actions, trying to both account for, and mitigate, increasingly uncertain futures. My ethnography is part of a small but growing body of literature attending to 'blue space', which has been found to contribute to positive health comes in society, and yet has thus far not attracted the same scholarly attention as 'green space' and green health. Emerging synonymously with my fieldwork, was the Environment Agency's report on the status of waterways in England. This has dropped despite government commitments to improvements in the last four years. Thus there is growing public awareness about the plight of water environments, making my research timely and an area of research which is set to grow in the next decade. The research is of use to the spheres of anthropology, environmental and human geography and for public health policy, which must attend to changing perspectives on what it means to be healthy, and how this is increasingly seen in a more multi-species, locally environmental relational way. Through the studentship I have developed skills in anthropological methods. I have honed my skills as an ethnographer, undertaking extensive participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and immersing myself in the life world of my interlocutors, by taking part in their activities to try and gain a more visceral first hand understanding of their perspectives. I have also gained skills and confidence in networking and sampling for research, increasing the scope of the research and the discussions and conclusions it works to make. I have developed my research skills in conducting literature reviews, in fitting my research within the public health and anthropology landscape, whle also working to contribute new knowledge to the field. I have taken part in conferences, demonstrating my presenting skills and also my ability to engage with scholars in my field and beyond, enriching my work through their suggesitons and comments. The scholarship has allowed me to develop my writing skills, writing up my data chapters into academic journal articles, ensuring the data collected can have meaningful reach by being available outside of the thesis itself.