In Nicaragua, two things have been growing at accelerated rates in recent decades: sugarcane production and an epidemic of chronic kidney disease of nontraditional causes (CKDnt) among plantation workers.
Unknown before the late 1990s, CKDnt is now understood to be a consequence of global climate change, and people with the disease in Nicaragua's booming sugarcane zone are being portrayed as bellwethers for a global climate crisis. But there's more to it than that, anthropologist Alex M. Nading argues in a new book.
"What is happening to the kidneys of sugarcane workers is not a result of climate change. It is climate change," Nading, associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, writes in "The Kidney and the Cane: Planetary Health and Plantation Labor in Nicaragua."
In the book, Nading follows activists, scientists and residents in the sugarcane zone, documenting how environmental justice activists are addressing the kidney disease epidemic. The complex picture that emerges from his ethnographic research critiques the "planetary health" conceit and offers what he calls "a glimpse of what the goings-on in individual bodies might tell us about planetary-scale change."
The College of Arts and Sciences spoke with Nading about the book. Read the interview on the College of Arts and Sciences website.
