Paleo body politics: re-wilding health, ecology, and diet during the Anthropocene
Date
2018
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Environmental politics in the Anthropocene are concerned with what humans have done to nature and in turn what this adulterated nature will mean for the health, well-being, and future of humanity. In this era of environmental anxiety, “re-wilding” has emerged as an ecological health and resiliency strategy across scales, from the human body to the planet. At the scale of the body, this has meant a reevaluation of dietary, consumption, and lifestyle behaviors among concerned consumers seeking to create healthy, resilient bodily ecosystems. Recent health trends including the Paleo Diet and Ancestral Health movements call upon an evolutionary perspective for insight as to how to re-wild one’s bodily ecosystem in the face of ecological crisis across scales, using the Paleolithic era as a benchmark for dietary and behavioral re-wilding. ☐ Drawing upon data from 55 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Paleo and Keto dieters and participant observation at the 2017 PALEOf(x)TM conference, this dissertation examines the controversial Paleo movement as a reaction to the environmental and health anxieties of life in the Anthropocene. In the chapters that follow, I investigate how the discourse and practices surrounding the Paleo and Keto diets engage with the shifting landscape of healthcare and nutrition politics, new ecological conceptions of human health and bodies, and a growing understanding of the connection between human and non-human/environmental health in an era of ecological “crisis” or transformation marked by the Anthropocene. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that the body’s ecology is a new frontier for an ecological ethic of health and sustainability and a microcosm for interrogating the politics that go along with it. Further, I argue that there is an underutilized potential of the body as both a biopedagogical site (for tuning into bodied knowledges through enhanced visceral acuity) and, in turn, a pedagogical site in a more traditional sense for understanding the dynamics between the body, food, health and ecology.