Entangled agencies: Rethinking causality and health in political-ecology

The question of non-human agency has been particularly important and generative in political-ecology. Drawing from science studies, scholars have used actor-network theory and assemblage theory to decenter humans from analyses. Building on this scholarship, this article offers a decolonial approach for rethinking of agency in health for political-ecologies of health drawing from work in feminist science studies that stresses non-proscriptive relationships over individuals. By unpacking the example of isibhobho, a witchcraft illness, through the work of Karen Barad, I argue for an understanding of agency as the reconfiguration of entanglements. This approach offers new possibilities for understanding what causes illness, which moved beyond humans and non-humans to focus on entanglements. This approach challenges models of causality, taken up in both biomedicine and in political-ecology, offering a vision of causality that is relational and opening up new possibilities for healing and for politics more broadly.