Biosocial Politics and Breathing

Biosocial politics in anthropology explores how biological and social factors intersect to shape human experiences, identities, and inequalities.

Biosocial politics in anthropology explores how biological and social factors intersect to shape human experiences, identities, and inequalities. It challenges simplistic binaries between nature and culture by examining how bodies are affected by social structures like race, gender, and class.

Anthropologists investigate how political power operates through and upon bodies, often in uneven ways, influencing health, reproduction, and vulnerability. This perspective reveals how scientific knowledge and biopolitical regulation are embedded in historical and sociocultural contexts. In addition to documenting lived experiences of respiratory disorders with innovative and collaborative approaches (Nyman 2024, Fortun et al. 2014), biosocial politics in anthropology foregrounds the entanglement of lived biology with social life, making visible the material consequences of structural power and inequality entangled with breathing troubles (Selim 2022).

Breathing, as a biological necessity, becomes politically charged in biosocial contexts where access to clean air is unequally distributed. Anthropologists trace how structural violence, environmental racism, and labor conditions shape who can breathe freely and who cannot. From police brutality to pollution, breathing is entangled with histories of oppression and resistance. Biosocial politics reveals how even the most basic bodily function is mediated by power, exposing the deep imbrication of life, environment, and social inequality (Pérezts et al. 2025, Górska 2021).

Major topics of interest include air pollution and environmental racism, carceral and policing practices affecting breath (e.g., “I can’t breathe”), and occupational health in labor environments where breathing is compromised (e.g., mining, factory work, or exposure to toxic substances).

Air Pollution and Environmental Racism

Air pollution and environmental racism intersect where marginalized communities are disproportionately exposed to toxic air due to systemic neglect and discriminatory planning (Marquardt 2022). Industrial sites, highways, and waste facilities are often placed near low-income or racialized neighborhoods, increasing health risks like asthma, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Anthropology examines how historical segregation, policy decisions, and economic disinvestment contribute to these spatial injustices. Environmental racism reflects how structural power operates through the air itself, rendering some lives more breathable than others. This framing emphasizes that pollution is not just ecological but deeply political, shaped by histories of inequality and struggles over space and survival (Harper 2004). Environmental justice issues are increasingly addressed by anthropologists through long term, multi sited, engaged modes of ethnographic research on various forms of embodied toxicity (Gutierrez, Powell, and Pendergrast 2021).

Carceral and Policing Affects

Carceral and policing practices affect breath both metaphorically and literally, particularly in racialized communities subjected to surveillance and state violence. The phrase “I can’t breathe,” uttered by Eric Garner and George Floyd, captures how policing restricts not just bodily movement but life itself. Chokeholds, restraints, and crowd-control tactics weaponize breath, transforming it into a site of domination.

Anthropology situates these acts within histories of slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism, revealing how breath becomes a contested terrain. Policing renders certain bodies hyper-visible and others disposable, with breathlessness symbolizing systemic oppression embedded in law enforcement, incarceration, and the denial of basic humanity. Abolitionist anthropologists call for a politics of breathing embodying the principles of biosocial and environmental justice (Thompson 2021).

Breathless Labor

In many labor environments, especially among low-wage or undocumented workers, breathing is compromised by exposure to dust, chemicals, or insufficient ventilation. Miners inhale silica, factory workers endure toxic fumes, and agricultural laborers breathe in pesticides—all conditions tied to profit-driven neglect and weak protections.

Anthropology examines how these health risks are racialized, classed, with multiply marginalized populations bearing the brunt. Breathing at work becomes a biosocial issue, linking socioeconomic exploitation with bodily harm (McDowell 2024). Workers' respiratory suffering is not incidental but structured into the labor system, revealing how capital extracts value while externalizing health costs onto already vulnerable communities.

Concluding Remarks

Anthropologists studying biosocial politics and breathing examine how structural inequalities shape who can breathe freely and who cannot. By analyzing how race, class, and labor conditions intersect with biology, they expose how breath itself becomes a site of political struggle.

From polluted neighborhoods to violent policing and hazardous workplaces, breathing is embedded in histories of domination and resistance. Anthropologists can document these lived experiences, trace systemic patterns of harm, and challenge the social arrangements that produce unequal exposures, offering critical insight into how power operates through the body and environment alike. Thus, ethnographic research can contribute to a deeply contextualized understanding of pollution and health (Dietrich 2021) as well as document the imaginations of environmental futures (Sutoris 2021).

References

Dietrich, Alexa S. "Pollution, health, and disaster: Emerging contributions in ethnographic research." Environment and Society 12, no. 1 (2021): 44-65.

Fortun, Kim, Mike Fortun, Erik Bigras, Tahereh Saheb, Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, Jerome Crowder, Daniel Price, and Alison Kenner. "Experimental ethnography online: the asthma files." Cultural Studies 28, no. 4 (2014): 632-642.

Górska, Magdalena. "Why Breathing Is Political." lambda nordica 26, no. 1 (2021): 109-117.

Gutierrez, Grant M., Dana E. Powell, and T. L. Pendergrast. "The double force of vulnerability: Ethnography and environmental justice." Environment and Society 12, no. 1 (2021): 66-86.

Harper, Janice. "Breathless in Houston: a political ecology of health approach to understanding environmental health concerns." Medical Anthropology 23, no. 4 (2004): 295-326.

Marquardt, Franca. "“Something in the air”: Reasserting humanity in a polluted neighbourhood." Capitalism Nature Socialism 33, no. 2 (2022): 26-43.

McDowell, Andrew. Breathless: Tuberculosis, Inequality, and Care in Rural India. Stanford University Press, 2024.

Nyman, Fredrik. Breathlessness and Biosociality: An Ethnographic Perspective on Living with Lung Disease in Later Life. Taylor & Francis, 2024.

Pérezts, Mar, Marianna Fotaki, Yuliya Shymko, and Gazi Islam. "Breathe and let breathe: Breathing as a political model of organizing." Organization 32, no. 1 (2025): 136-153.

Selim, Nasima. "The Politics of Breathing Troubles in COVID-19: Pandemic Inequalities and the Right to Breathe across India and Germany." Medicine Anthropology Theory 9, no. 3 (2022): 1-15.

Sutoris, Peter. "Environmental Futures through Children’s Eyes: Slow Observational Participatory Videomaking and Multi‐Sited Ethnography." Visual Anthropology Review 37, no. 2 (2021): 310-332.

Thompson, Vanessa E. "Beyond policing, for a politics of breathing." Abolishing the Police, S (2021): 179-191.

Dr. Nasima Selim is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in medicine, public health and anthropology. She is a breathworker, writer, researcher, and educator. Her books include “Breathing Hearts” (Berghahn 2024), an open-access ethnography, and "Ways of Breathing and Knowing" (Routledge, forthcoming), a volume of 12 interdisciplinary essays she co-edited with Dr. Judith Albrecht.