Brian King

Honorary Research Associate, African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town

Faculty Research Associate, Population Research Institute, Penn State University

Faculty Research Affiliate, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Penn State University

My research concentrates upon several topics, particularly the impacts of conservation and development in Southern Africa, social and environmental justice, and the intersections between livelihoods, health and environment.

Livelihoods, health and environment

My research examines the production of livelihoods and environmental change in the developing world. This work evaluates the relationships between health and environment, focusing in particular on the effects of HIV/AIDS upon social and environmental systems. I am the PI on a NSF CAREER grantPolitical Ecologies of Health: Coupling Livelihood and Environment Responses to HIV/AIDS ($485,292, September 1, 2011 – August 31, 2017, GSS 1056683). This CAREER program is conducting intensive research in South Africa working in close collaboration with research institutes and governmental agencies to examine how livelihood systems adjust in response to HIV/AIDS, how livelihood responses to HIV/AIDS rework access patterns and the rules governing resource use, and whether intra-household and intra-community variations shape livelihood responses to HIV/AIDS. This work asserts that attending to health-environment interactions is needed to understand how disease results in transformations to social and environmental systems, and how these systems in turn shape the trajectories of disease and the possibilities for sustainable disease management.

• King, B. 2017. States of Disease: Political Environments and Human Health. Berkeley, C.A.: University of California Press. For more information: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520278219 Or to order on Amazon: States of Disease: Political Environments and Human Health
• Winchester, M.S., and B. King. 2017. Constructing landscapes: Healthcare contexts in rural South Africa. Medicine Anthropology Theory 4(1): 151-176.

• Senanayake, N., and B. King. 2017. Health-environment futures: Complexity, uncertainty, and bodies. Progress in Human Geography Online at:http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/N3A8BqRntivQuIxQUXPJ/full
• King, B. 2017. Environmental health. The Companion to Environmental Studies. (N. Castree, D. Hulme, and J. Proctor editors). London: Routledge.
• King, B. 2015. Environment and health. The International Encyclopedia of Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier.
• King, B. 2015. Environmental health. For The International Encyclopedia of Geography. Wiley-Blackwell and the AAG.
• King, B. 2015. Political ecologies of disease and health. The Handbook of Political Ecology, T. Perreault, G. Bridge, and J. McCarthy (editors).
• King, B. and Crews, K. (editors) 2013. Ecologies and Politics of Health. London: Routledge. Information on the book available at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415590662/
• King, B. 2013. Disease as shock, HIV/AIDS as experience: Coupling social and ecological responses in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Ecologies and Politics of Health, B. King and K.A. Crews (editors)
• King, B. 2012. “We pray at the church in the day and visit the sangomas at night”: Health discourses and traditional medicine in rural South Africa. Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Health special issue 2012).
• King, B. 2011. Spatialising livelihoods: Resource access and livelihood spaces in South Africa. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36(2): 297-313.
• King, B. 2010. Political ecologies of health. Progress in Human Geography 34(1): 38-55.
• Yurco, K., B. King, K.R. Young, and K.A. Crews. 2017. Human-wildlife interactions in increasingly unpredictable spaces: Environmental dynamics in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Society & Natural Resources
• King, B., J.E. Shinn, K.R. Young, and K.A. Crews. 2016. Fluid rivers and rigid governance in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. LAND 5(2): 1-16.
• Shinn, J.E., B. King, K.R. Young, and K.A. Crews. 2014. Variable adaptations: micro-politics of environmental displacement in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Geoforum. Available online at: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1PbEN3pIL5fTQ
• King, B. 2013. Shifting spaces and hidden landscapes in rural South Africa. In Land Change Science, Political Ecology, and Sustainability: Synergies and Divergences, C. Brannstrom and J. M. Vadjunec (editors).
• King, B., and M. Peralvo. 2010. Coupling community heterogeneity and perceptions of conservation in rural South Africa. Human Ecology
• King, B. 2009. Conservation geographies in Sub-Saharan Africa: The politics of national parks, community conservation and Peace Parks. Geography Compass 4(1): 14-27