To address objective 1, in this action I teased apart some of the different definitions of justice in use within global health work and how articulated how these definitions reproduce or counteract ideologies reminiscent of earlier moments in transnational health (i.e. colonial tropical medicine, international health). Second, I explored persistent discriminative ideologies that continue to influence local public health practice in Honduras, and related local public health practice in Honduras to the larger and highly influential space transnational global health practice. Third, I addressed the tension between local public health, conceptions of care, infectious disease transmission, and an inability to separate economic speculation from the development of public health policy in Honduras.
To address objective 2, in this action I explored the relationship between One Health, justice, and global health practice, with a particular focus on how ethical presuppositions shape definitions on health and how these definitions in turn impact how we measure the success or suitability of given global health practices. Second, I addressed the limits to health-related deservingness in contexts marked by historically produced and ideologically maintained socio-racial hierarchies. I addressed the limits of health-related deservingness by highlighting how formal notions of rights in Honduras, in regards to public investments in health, are always already informed and shaped by emotional, relational, or “common sense” understandings of a given populations worth. In that sense, health-related deservingness should not be considered separate from formal conceptions of rights. Third, I sought to interrogate the origin of moral concepts like deservingness and to situate them within a large conversation on philosophical anthropology and how we define the limits of interpersonal ethical engagement.
To address objective 3, in this action I proposed alternatives to the decolonization of global public health both by situating global health within a set of wider practices towards justice and by suggesting some alternative models to global health. Second, I explored how disciplinary allegiances obfuscate novel theoretical production and may lead to conceiving of partial categories as absolute representations of reality (i.e. global health). Third, I addressed the relationship between speculation and colonial ideologies in Honduras beyond public health by focusing on how the Honduran state responded, and made space for, transnational projects that pitted future economic growth against the present sacrifice of the livelihood and wellbeing of given Honduran citizens.
