Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 May 7;35(1):2497358.
doi: 10.1080/09581596.2025.2497358. eCollection 2025.

Does One Health need an ontological turn?

Andrea Kaiser-Grolimund  1   2   3 , Salome A Bukachi  3   4 , Julia Karuga  3 , Laura Kämpfen  5 , Frédéric Keck  6 , Jakob Zinsstag  1   2 , Hannah Brown  3
Affiliations

Does One Health need an ontological turn?

Andrea Kaiser-Grolimund et al. Crit Public Health. .

Abstract

One Health has gained global prominence in recent years. Alongside its emergence, there have been extensive social science critiques. In this contribution, we make the case for the value of recent theoretical discussions in the field of anthropology - sometimes referred to as an 'ontological turn'. We argue that taking theory seriously benefits One Health as an integrated approach that has interdisciplinary collaborations at its heart, but which encounters challenges when conversations based on different epistemological and ontological positions result in voices talking past each other. In this contribution, we offer two examples of what One Health specialists can gain from anthropologically-informed ontological thinking. Both require questioning ontological premises. Firstly, questioning assumptions about distinctions between animals and humans. Secondly, questioning the universality of biomedical knowledge. In the conclusion, we underline the importance of an ontological openness when it comes to the constitution and position of the actors as well as different bodies of knowledge that are involved in One Health and we show that talking to each other with awareness of different ontological positions is not impossible.

Keywords: One Health; anthropology; human-animal health; multispecies ethnography; ontology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Adisasmito, W. B., Almuhairi, S., Behravesh, C. B., Bilivogui, P., Bukachi, S. A., Casas, N., Cediel Becerra, N., Charron, D. F., Chaudhary, A., Ciacci Zanella, J. R., Cunningham, A. A., Dar, O., Debnath, N., Dungu, B., Farag, E., Gao, G. F., Hayman, D. T. S., Khaitsa, M., Koopmans, M. P. G., … Zhou, L, One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP) . (2022). One Health: A new definition for a sustainable and healthy future. PLOS Pathogens, 18(6), e1010537. 10.1371/journal.ppat.1010537 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bessire, L., & Bond, D. (2014). Ontological anthropology and the deferral of critique. American Ethnologist, 41(3), 440–456. 10.1111/amet.12083 - DOI
    1. Braverman, I. (2022). Introduction. More-than-One Health, more-than-one governance. In Braverman I. (Ed.), More-than-One Health. Humans, animals, and the environment post-Covid (pp. 1–23). Routledge.
    1. Brookes, V. J., Ward, M. P., Rock, M., & Degeling, C. (2020). One Health promotion and the politics of dog management in remote, northern Australian communities. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 12451. 10.1038/s41598-020-69316-0 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Collins, K. (2023). Critical posthuman ethnography: grappling with human-more-than-human interconnection for critical public health. Critical Public Health, 33(5), 848–855. 10.1080/09581596.2023.2273199 - DOI

LinkOut - more resources