Introduction Open Access
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Published:May 2025
The introduction provides an orientation to the problem of CKDnt in Nicaragua and to the sugarcane zone. It introduces the key players, including the advocacy organization whose leaders are the main ethnographic subjects. Next, it presents a case for a critical view of planetary health, one in which conditions of work and labor are at the center. It then provides an outline of that argument, showing how residents of the sugarcane zone navigated six “life support systems”: a transnational grievance mechanism operated by the World Bank; occupational health programs; water and irrigation; agrochemical regimes; social security; and dialysis treatment. An argument is presented for the value of linking plantation studies to medical anthropology, and for theorizing planetary health from the perspective of localized, grassroots action.