Daniel Münster

Image of Daniel Münster
Norwegian version of this page
Room 259
Username
Visiting address Kirkeveien 166 Fredrik Holsts hus 0450 Oslo
Postal address Postboks 1130 Blindern 0318 Oslo

Academic interests

  • Health and Environment
  • More-Than-Human Health: People, Plants, Fungi, Animals, Microbes
  • Anthropology of Food and Agriculture
  • Anthropology of Mental Health / Critical Suicide Studies
  • Anthropology of Drugs and Drug Use
  • Toxicity/Pollution/Pesticides; Chemical Ethnography
  • Disease Ecologies and Climate
  • Soil, Land, Landscape
  • Medical Pluralism; Traditional Medicine; Alternative Medicine
  • Postcolonial Science Studies
  • South Asia (esp. South India: Kerala, Tamil Nadu); Norway; Germany

About

Daniel Münster's research is located at the intersection of medical and environmental anthropology. Drawing on ethnography and historical anthropology, he studies power, health, and ecology in the contemporary world. He has focused his work on rural communities in the Global South. Daniel's ethnographic work with smallholder farmers in South India explores the possibilities for an alternative agriculture based on decolonial and ecological understandings of people and their non-human others, including plants, animals, microbes and soils.

Writing on such issues as farmer suicides, pesticide use, food scares, landscape changes, fermentation, and alternative agriculture, he studies the possibilities for health and recuperation for people and their environments in a world threatened by ecological destruction and political-economic crises. Combining interdisciplinary theorizing from the fields of science and technology studies, multispecies studies, and political ecology with empirically grounded studies of rural communities, Daniel explores a variety of crucial topics in medical anthropology, such as suicide and mental health, biopolitics, toxicity and environmental poisons, drugs and drug use, more-than-human health, and planetary health.

Courses taught

  • HES9280 – Introduction to Medical Anthropology
  • HELSEF4410 – Introduction to Qualitative Methods

Background

Daniel Münster received his PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from LMU Munich (2005) and his Habilitation (2019) from Heidelberg University (venia legendi: Social and Cultural Anthropology). 2013-2018 he was leader of the Junior Research Group “Agrarian Alternatives: Agrarian Crisis, Global Concerns and the Contested Agro-Ecological Futures in South Asia” at the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" at Heidelberg University, Germany. Prior to coming to the University of Oslo, Daniel has taught anthropology at Bielefeld University (2005-2007), Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (2007-2013), Heidelberg University (2013-2018), the University of Cologne (2019), and Bremen University (2019-2020). In June 2020, Daniel joined the Institute of Health and Society as Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology.

 

Tags: Medical Anthropology, Environmental Anthropology, Food and Agriculture, Health and/as Ecology, Science and Technology Studies, Historical anthropology, Toxicity, Drugs and Drug Use, Postcolonial Studies, South Asia, India, Kerala, suicide and suicidal behaviour, Mental health, chemical ethnography, alternative agriculture

Publications

  • Münster, Daniel (2022). “Plants of Internal Colonization: Critical Descriptions of Agrarian Change Through Plant Agencies in South India.” . In Bubandt, Nils; Andersen, Astrid Oberborbeck & Cypher, Rachel (Ed.), Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene: Doing Fieldwork in Multispecies Worlds. University of Minnesota Press. ISSN 978-1-5179-1165-2. p. 119–145.
  • Liang, Siran & Münster, Daniel (2022). Between Medicine and Gift How Anticorruption, E-Commerce, and Biotechnology Fostered the Emergence of "fresh Cordyceps" in Sino-Tibetan Trade. Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity. ISSN 1573-420X. 17(2), p. 251–278. doi: 10.1163/15734218-12341515.
  • Sony, R.K.; Münster, Daniel & Krishnan, Siddhartha (2022). What counts as evidence? Examining the controversy over pesticide exposure and etiology in an environmental justice movement in Kerala, India. Environmental Sociology. ISSN 2325-1042. 9(2), p. 148–164. doi: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2124625.
  • Münster, Daniel (2021). Affect Beyond the Human: Indian Agriculture in a Multispecies World, Engaging transculturality: Concepts, key terms, case studies. Routledge. ISSN 9781032093635.
  • Münster, Daniel (2021). The Nectar of Life: Fermentation, Soil Health, and Bionativism in Indian Natural Farming . Current Anthropology. ISSN 0011-3204. 62, p. 311–322. doi: 10.1086/715477.
  • Münster, Daniel (2020). The Science Question in Alternative Agricultures: Zero Budget Natural Farming and the emergence of agronomical pluralism in India. In Michaels, Axel & Wulf, Christoph (Ed.), Science and Scientification in South Asia and Europe. Routledge. ISSN 9780429353215.
  • Münster, Daniel (2019). Ethnologie, Dorf: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Verlag J. B. Metzler. ISSN 9783476054494. p. 32–38. doi: 10.1007/978-3-476-05449-4_6.
  • Münster, Daniel (2018). Agro-Ecological Double Movements? Zero Budget Natural Farming and alternative agricultures after the neoliberal crisis in Kerala, Critical Perspectives on Agrarian Transition: India in the Global Debate. Routledge. ISSN 9781138488311.
  • Münster, Daniel (2018). Performing alternative agriculture: Critique and recuperation in Zero Budget Natural Farming. Journal of political ecology. ISSN 1073-0451.
  • Münster, Daniel (2017). Zero Budget Natural Farming and Bovine Entanglements in South India. RCC Perspectives. ISSN 2190-5088. doi: 10.5282/rcc/7771.
  • Münster, Daniel (2017). Frontier in Ruins: Internal Colonization and the Making of an Agricultural Landscape in South India, Soziale Ästhetik, Atmosphäre, Medialität. Beiträge aus der Ethnologie. LIT Verlag. ISSN 9783643139115.
  • Münster, Daniel & Poerting, Julia (2016). Land als Ressource, Boden und Landschaft: Materialität, Relationalität und neue Agrarfragen in der Politischen Ökologie. Geographica Helvetica. The Swiss Journal of Geography. ISSN 0016-7312. doi: 10.5194/gh-71-245-2016.
  • Münster, Daniel (2015). Agrarian Alternatives: Agroecology, food sovereignty and the reworking of human-environmental relations in India. Rivista degli Studi Orientali. ISSN 1724-1863.
  • Münster, Daniel (2015). Farmer suicides as public death: Politics, agency and statistics in a suicide-prone district (South India). Modern Asian Studies. ISSN 0026-749X. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X14000225.
  • Münster, Daniel (2015). “Ginger is a gamble”: Crop Booms, Rural Uncertainty, and the Neoliberalization of agriculture in South India. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. ISSN 0920-1297. doi: 10.3167/fcl.2015.710109.
  • Münster, Daniel & Broz, Ludek (2015). The Anthropology of Suicide: Ethnography and the Tension of Agency, Suicide and Agency. Ashgate. ISSN 9780367597580.
  • Münster, Daniel (2015). Farmers’ Suicide and the Moral Economy of Agriculture. Victimhood, Voice, and Agro-Environmental Responsibility in South India. Suicide and Agency. Ashgate. ISSN 9780367597580.
  • Münster, Daniel & Strümpell, Christian (2014). The Anthropology of Neoliberal India: An Introduction. Contributions to Indian sociology. ISSN 0069-9667.
  • Münster, Daniel & Münster, Ursula (2012). Human-Animal Conflicts in Kerala: Elephants and Ecological Modernity on the Agrarian Frontier in South India. RCC Perspectives. ISSN 2190-5088. doi: 10.5282/rcc/6157.
  • Münster, Daniel & Münster, Ursula (2012). Consuming the Forest in an Environment of Crisis: Nature Tourism, Forest Conservation and Neoliberal Agriculture in South India. Development and Change. ISSN 0012-155X. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2012.01754.x.
  • Münster, Daniel (2012). Postkoloniale Ethnologie: Vom Objekt postkolonialer Kritik zur Ethnografie der neoliberalen Globalisierung, Schlüsselwerke der Postcolonial Studies. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. ISSN 9783531175775.
  • Münster, Daniel (2012). Farmers' suicides and the state in India: Conceptual and ethnographic notes from Wayanad, Kerala. Contributions to Indian sociology. ISSN 0069-9667. doi: 10.1177/006996671104600208.

View all works in Cristin

  • Broz, Ludek & Münster, Daniel (2015). Suicide and Agency. Ashgate. ISBN 9780367597580.
  • Münster, Daniel (2007). Postkoloniale Traditionen. Eine Ethnografie über Dorf, Kaste und Ritual in Südindien. Transcript Verlag. ISBN 9783899425383.
  • Münster, Daniel (2001). Religionsästhetik und Anthropologie der Sinne: Vorarbeiten zu einer Religionsethnologie der Produktion und Rezeption ritueller Medien. Akademischer Verlag München. ISBN 3932965523.

View all works in Cristin

  • Münster, Daniel (2022). Multispecies Anthropology: Reflections on Agrarian Wayanad.
  • Münster, Daniel (2022). Big cows vs little cows: Engineering (spiritual) livestock futures in South India.
  • Münster, Daniel (2022). Thinking like a Holobiont. Microbial soil recuperation among planetary health workers in South India.
  • Münster, Daniel (2022). Microbes as gods? Exploring more-than-human health through practices of soil recuperation in India.
  • Münster, Daniel & Münster, Ursula (2021). Pharmaceutical Care: Diclofenac, a Pharmacon of More-Than-Human Health. Cultural anthropology. ISSN 0886-7356. Full text in Research Archive
  • Münster, Daniel (2021). Fermentation, Soil Health, and Planetary Health.
  • Münster, Daniel (2021). More-than-human health. Soil and people in natural farming (India).
  • Hansen, Mette Halskov; Wellens, Koen; Münster, Daniel & Baviskar, Amita (2021). Transcendence and Sustainability: Asian Visions with Global Promise. Panel presentation and discussion.

View all works in Cristin

Published June 3, 2020 12:43 PM - Last modified Feb. 14, 2022 5:56 PM