Centering the body in agricultural development: Bridging conceptualizations of bodies-as-mechanism and bodies-as-affective

Carly E. Nichols and Nidhi Kumari

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 366, issue C

Abstract: There is resurgent interest in making agriculture more “nutrition sensitive” to address longstanding rural health disparities. Yet, the relations between agri-ecological systems and producer wellbeing and health are complex, and approaches to studying them are scattered across multiple disciplinary traditions. This paper forges a methodological framework to study how bodily and social wellbeing may be facilitated/hindered amongst individuals engaged in agriculture by centering the material body within agriculture-nutrition analyses. Our framework integrates approaches that view bodies in mechanistic terms – using energy balance models, time-use data and diet diversity metrics - alongside those that view bodies in material and relational dimensions where affects, emotions, sensations, and discourse are important “variables'' imbricated in producer health and wellbeing. We use this framework to examine qualitative data from diverse sites in the United States heartland and central India. Our analysis highlights the contradictions that emerge when desires for chemical-free, diversified foods intersect with lived realities of laboring for such food, particularly within contexts riddled with inequity across multiple scales. We find that while mechanistic approaches collect important quantitative data about bodies as laborers and consumers, the everyday acts of laboring and feeding (others and self) are steeped in social meaning and sensorial richness that have strong effects on wellbeing. We conclude by reflecting on the lack of “win-win” solutions in making smallholder food systems more conducive to nutritional wellbeing, and instead outline important trade-offs that emerge and offer suggestions for potential policy solutions.

Keywords: Nutrition-sensitive agriculture; Affect; Agroecology; Gender; Political ecology; Nutrition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117593

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