Escaping Toxicity: Health and Care in a Cluj Full of Chemicals

Abstract

Based on two months of ethnographic fieldwork in Cluj, Romania, this thesis explores the themes of health, care, vitality, toxicity and violence through the following question: How do notions of health and toxicity emerge through daily acts of care in Cluj, Romania?

For my collaborators, health is a question of maintenance and food is what enables people to maintain their health. However, there is a problem with food when it comes to health: chemicals are always in the mix. Chemicals were described by my collaborators as toxic synthetic substances that often, if not always, also play a large part in environmental pollution. This leads to a contradiction: food is what keeps you healthy, but it is also what makes you ill.

This thesis departs from such contradictions that arise from living in a world that is permeated with toxic elements and discusses health and toxicity are notions which go beyond materiality, and which highlight the interconnectedness of beings, things and processes that compose the world through space and through time. It shows how care and violence are often two sides of the same coin as well as how capitalism contributes to the near inescapability of today's scariest forms of toxicity.

Overall, this thesis aims to offer a better understanding of how humans grapple with health and toxicity as it relates to food, medicine, the environment at large and the relation we foster with other beings and things by writing about people's doubts, fears, frustrations, disappointments, and outrage, but also about their hopes and solutions as they relate to our toxic world. Ultimately, this thesis is an ethical discussion on "the good life" and the toxic elements that prevent us from living it as my collaborators understand it.