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

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.