As the title suggests, this edited volume covers an array of areas: geographically, thematically, and temporally. The strength of such an ambitious volume is that it allows for readers to gain a sense of how pervasive notions of health and the environment have shaped societies throughout all human history and cultures. With the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, this volume seems all the more prescient in showcasing that the construction of knowledge around any disease or conception of health is rarely separated from the cultural and political approaches to understanding the environment.
At the core of Making Sense, the authors ask how has humankind “observed, imagined, and conceptualized the links between the environment and health” (2). Taking a non-Eurocentric approach to this history ensures that what is understood as “health,” “disease,” and the “environment” is fluid, and thus the term “milieu” is employed to evoke the various conditions that give rise to particular meanings of health and disease. In order to support their method, the volume is structured into four parts, with the first two focusing on “Observations, Definitions, and Theories about Environment, Disease, and the Body” and the subsequent two tackle what is “Healthy or Unhealthy Environments.”
