al. (2017) discussed how, in order to have rabies and dog bite research enhance policy alignment and task integration between animal control and public health services, they developed a forum to share the results of their research with animal control officers and public health officials in a variety of settings. Many anthropologists have advocated for ‘greater social science involvement in One Health initiatives, seeing possibilities to attend to new dimensions of inequalities revealed at human–animal interfaces within enlarged understandings of pathology’ (Craddock and Hinchliffe, 2015, p.1) and ‘others have identified opportunities for “critical and constructive social science engagement with One Health” ’ (Brown and Nading, 2019, p. 9). (For further discussions see also Rock et al. (2009) and Dzingirai et al. (2017).) There is a need for better documentation of how social science has made changes to the effectiveness of joint and integrative identification of problems, design of interventions and their implementation, including their success in being relevant to, culturally appropriate for and meeting the requirements of those in greatest need.
Discussion
Discussing the added value of integrated approaches in One Health strikes at the core of complexity studies, where we acknowledge that the interconnectedness of the human–animal–environment interface requires a multiplicity of lenses to capture enough information to make syntheses typical of academic research a reasonable endeavour. Social scientists, trained to understand emic models of self and other, are well positioned to address the interpretative nature of paradigms shaping particular knowledge systems within the professions and disciplines (e.g. the diverse interpretations of veterinary doctors or epidemiologists as to what variables need to be addressed in One Health), facilitating intra-team dialogues to better represent the human–animal–environment subsystems.
Going beyond state-of-the art scientific production, One Health claims include the dimension of producing socially robust approaches contributing to public health. The role of social sciences then becomes evident as foundational for the co-production of interdisciplinary understandings of One Health by linking disciplinary experts in relevant approaches to particular complex health problems and various societal contexts. As the case studies show, a socially robust orientation requires contextualized thinking, an approach sensitive to cultural, historical and gender aspects shaping determinants of human, animal and environmental health. Additionally needed are mechanisms to see the linkages and feedback loops of human behaviour and observable disease, with the animal world and environments, and a capacity to address and integrate multiple ontologies and epistemologies of diverse stakeholders. The social sciences can provide evidence around power relationships, and the differential positions of various groups of people in social settings and economic markets, which support addressing the inequities often seen in accessing health interventions (Craddock and Hinchcliffe, 2015). Craddock and Hinchcliffe (2015, p. 2) note that social science brings to the One Health agenda an ability to ‘foreground uneven geographies, uneven power relations, discrepant risks and variable access to resources’.
Social science also fosters participatory approaches that recognize multiple epistemologies and join academic disciplines, engaging partners, including communities, in mutual understanding of practices and explanatory models. It assists in examining the ‘myriad configurations, textures and dynamics of human and non-human relations’ (Craddock and Hinchcliffe, 2015, p. 3; see also Fuentes, 2010) and supports recognition of the voices, agency and expertise of the ‘oft-forgotten’ – communities, minorities and vulnerable populations. This was illustrated in Case study 1 for women food producers in Africa and Asia, in Case study 2 for indigenous populations in Guatemala and in Case study 3 for the Kwaio peoples of the Solomon Islands. This participatory transdisciplinary approach will undoubtedly yield robust interventions that are more effective in achieving desired outcomes and impacts and more likely to be sustainable.
However, as we have shown, social science interventions are not yet systematically used in One Health programme design and evaluation, which is often developed as research to address a problem with or without linkage to a service delivery. Lapinski et al. (2015, p. 52) note that ‘there is a paucity of research regarding efficacious approaches’. This requires social science to be utilized in programme development. What should be done about this underutilization of social science approaches in One Health programmes and interventions?
There remain other questions about the level of integration of social science approaches and the insights they provide into One Health programmes and approaches, and especially, the territory beyond infectious diseases. These include the following.
• Are social scientists partnered with to conceptualize a programme, to value the unique insights provided in complex and adaptive systems?
• Are social scientists undertaking these studies in parallel to programme developers, where the value of integration is not yet fully appreciated?
• Are they only used to help access communities and populations, so that interventions are ‘accepted’ (tolerated) by the ‘target populations’?
• Are well-trained social scientists being employed, or are social science methods being used by others without robustness, to try to improve acceptability of their programmes, or at least foster community engagement and health education? For example Keck (2019, p. 38), when reviewing social science engagement in programmes of zoonotic infection control, questioned whether the social scientists were being engaged to bring ‘intellectual interest and ontological challenges of an anthropology of zoonosis beyond the regular calls for expertise on epidemiological contagion or on social participation’.
• Are we really seeing One Health social science or animal, human and environmental social sciences methods that are siloed? As demonstrated, if a social science approach is used, medical anthropology seems to be the dominant approach to develop a One Health understanding of human health problems, with little integration with environmental, ecological and non-human species anthropologies. However, emerging sub-disciplines like multispecies ethnographies are challenging this dominance, and platforms like the One Health–Social Science Initiative Hub may assist in crossing these ‘boundaries’.
Conclusion
As outlined in this chapter, social science adds value in identification, design and implementation of One Health interventions. It has been used to provide insights into the importance of reflexive methodologies, how knowledge systems help shape the research and intervention outcomes, the ethnocentricity of etic explanatory models and the significance of emic views or multiple epistemologies, and how such understanding helps generate more robust data and mechanisms for implementation of these interventions.
The One Health approach enables a broad range of social science disciplines to come together to examine these issues, fostering theoretical and integrative innovations in understanding culture, economics, gender, ecology, behaviours, political contexts and indigenous knowledge.
There remains a need for social science to take a more active role in the design and conceptualization phase of programmes, and in helping multidisciplinary teams address potential design bias, inaccurate representation of various agencies, or cultural myopia. There is also a need to develop more robust approaches to evaluation of the success and sustainability of transdisciplinary approaches and the integration of social science into One Health
