Abstract Through an ethnographic study of snakebite governance in Kerala, India, this article argues that social scientific theories of toxicity elucidate the biosocial dimensions of snakebite envenomation (SBE). SBE is a medical emergency engendered by the toxins in a venomous snakebite. By drawing upon work from the social sciences and humanities that conceives of the material and semiotic dimensions of biological toxins (such as venom and poison) and synthetic toxicants (such as industrial contaminants) in an integrated frame of toxicity, this article demonstrates how these theories clarify the structural drivers, indeterminacies, and multispecies health impacts that characterise SBE’s manifestation as a public health issue in Kerala. It thus asserts the value of integrating insights drawn from analyses of toxicity across biological and synthetic molecules, responding to recent influential reviews that omit biological toxins from this frame due to their supposed natural genesis and constrained circulation and harms. This article consequently argues that scholars should avoid reproducing rigid taxonomic distinctions between ‘natural’ toxins and ‘synthetic’ toxicants, as insights drawn from across classes of molecules and mobilised within a unified heuristic of toxicity elucidate the structural conditions and localised experiences of toxin and toxicant exposure.

Abstract An ongoing shift toward multidisciplinary pain care and growing emphasis on non-pharmaceutical treatment are reshaping the parameters of how chronic pain is assessed and treated. The article explores these ongoing changes through a chronic gynecological illness, endometriosis. Drawing on interviews with clinicians, people with endometriosis and endometriosis activists in Finland, we ask how pain is understood and its treatment envisioned in cases where the standard course of endometriosis treatment does not alleviate pain. The analysis shows that difficult-to-treat endometriosis pain is conceptualized differently at different clinical sites including endometriosis clinics, pain clinics, emergency care, and primary care settings. We demonstrate that pain treatment in endometriosis is not fixed but constitutes an object of ongoing negotiations between the patient and clinician. In particular, tensions arise when patients move between the siloed clinical sites, and their pain is re-evaluated and approached through different epistemic framings of pain and pain care.

Abstract Contemporary work is based on harnessing the cognitive resources of workers. Conversely, knowledge of the brain is applied to understand and solve issues of this kind of work. In this article, we inquire about how brain culture manifests in the public discussion of working life in Finland. How are the problems of working life, along with their solutions and the labouring subject, constructed, when knowledge of the brain is applied to work? Based on the analysis of 45 texts published online, we suggest that neurobiologization of the labouring subject emerges from the identified mismatch between the human brain and contemporary work. Neurobiologizing the labouring subject constructs working subjectivity in a way that renders problematic one’s relationship to work and requires the constant effort of protection and optimization. Brain discourse, as applied to working life, recognizes the problematic structural features of contemporary work such as its diffusion outside of the working hours. The texts analysed here combine this problem diagnosis with normative claims about moral principles of a responsible neurobiologized labouring subject. Brain discourse functions as a way to discuss and manage complex issues of working life on a level of individual and organizational behaviour grounded on purported neutral expertise.