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

我们生活在一个极度不确定的时代。这种不确定性既是社会的、环境的、气候的，现在又是大流行的。在这个不确定的时刻，一些人重新与他们当地的环境联系起来，在这样做的过程中，重新思考他们自己的健康，以及它与非人类生命健康和环境景观的亲密关系。在我的论文研究中，我探讨了面对不确定性时这种重新联系的一个微观例子，记录了英格兰东南部赫特福德郡一条有争议的河流沿岸的对话者如何重新思考健康的意义。我追踪了那些在气候和社会变化造成的日益严重的干旱中调查河流并努力确保非人类生命健康的人，以及那些在河中游泳的人，他们在流行病不确定的时代寻找与自然的内在联系和健康形式“发现”而不是“告诉”公共卫生。我从这些不同的群体中汲取主题，思考暂时性、风险管理形式的兴起以及与健康相协调的公民形式，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。在这个极度不确定的时刻，这项研究既及时又必要。我提供了一个深入的民族志描述，这些微观事件如何反映了英国视角中更广泛的宏观转变，即健康意味着什么，以及个人如何通过他们面向现在的行动，试图解释和减轻日益不确定的未来。我的民族志是关注“蓝色空间”的一小部分，但它正在不断增长，人们发现它有助于社会的积极健康，但迄今为止还没有像“绿色空间”和绿色健康那样吸引同样的学术关注。与我的田野调查同时出现的，是环境署关于英国水道状况的报告。尽管政府在过去四年中承诺改善，但这一比例有所下降。因此，公众对水环境困境的认识越来越高，使我的研究及时，并将在未来十年发展成为一个研究领域。这项研究对人类学、环境和人文地理学领域以及公共卫生政策都有帮助，因为公共卫生政策必须关注对健康的含义的不断变化的看法，以及如何越来越多地以多物种、当地环境关系的方式看待健康。通过学习，我掌握了人类学方法方面的技能。作为一名民族志学者，我磨练了自己的技能，进行了广泛的参与性观察、半结构化访谈，并通过参与他们的活动，试图获得对他们观点的更本能的第一手理解，让自己沉浸在对话者的生活世界中。我也获得了网络和抽样研究的技能和信心，增加了研究的范围，讨论和结论的工作。我在进行文献综述方面发展了我的研究技能，在公共卫生和人类学领域内适合我的研究，同时也努力为该领域贡献新知识。我参加过会议，展示了我的演讲技巧，也展示了我与本领域内外学者交流的能力，通过他们的建议和评论丰富了我的工作。这项奖学金使我能够提高自己的写作技巧，将我的数据章节写成学术期刊文章，确保收集到的数据可以在论文本身之外获得有意义的影响。

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.