Slippery Knowledge

Ignorance, Ecologies, and Environment in Endometriosis Framing

Bibliographic Data

ID2289309
AuthorsAndrea Ford (0000-0003-0462-9669, Centre for Biomedicine, Self, and Society University of Edinburgh Edinburgh UK, corresponding author)
Year2025
Pagese70002-e70002
Publication date2025-05-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.70002
PMID40393045
OpenAlexW4410531780
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited69

Despite a growing body of literature linking environmental toxins and endometriosis, environmental issues make only occasional appearances in public, patient, and specialist conversations about endometriosis. These conversations may hover at the edges of public discourse, but do not gain traction. Based on ethnographic work in the United Kingdom, this article develops the concept of "slippery" knowledge as that which evades action. Ignorance of environmental or ecological etiologies is less a dearth of information than a dearth of possibilities for action. This article elaborates two ways of conceiving of environmental or ecological disease: the exposure model predicated on harmful external factors "getting in" to damage individuals or communities and the embodied ecologies model, which posits inevitable and ongoing mutual imbrication among living and non-living entities. Knowledge regarding endometriosis is "slippery" in both models. Whether knowledge seems actionable or not is inextricable from deep-seated power dynamics related to colonialism, gender, and race, which perpetuate ways of knowing (and acting) on endometriosis that are troubling and troublingly durable

Environmental ethics · Framing (construction · Geography · Ignorance · Political science · Sociology · Endometriosis Research and Treatment · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access