Grounding the Sky

This chapter relies on three ethnographic case studies to explore how human bodies connect climate change phenomena seemingly disconnected by time and place. The case studies include IVF laboratories that must cope with the infiltration of wildfire smoke in the US; a comparison of the perception of how winds cause illness in the contemporary Indo-Malay world and in early 20th-century America; and an examination of the nascent field of North American climate psychiatry. Each case explores the interconnections of embodied health and climate change by interrogating the role of experts, the concepts they employ, and the implications of their work for historically marginalized communities. Throughout this chapter reflects on the history and present of environmental anthropology, the value of ethnography, and anthropology’s distinctive contribution to the study of environmental health during this era of climate crisis.