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As well, Kasey Jernigan (2018) has developed an embodied heritage approach in work on obesity with the Choctaw of Oklahoma that brings “meaning making” into a critical biocultural approach. She situates the bodies, biology, social life, and cultural identity of Choctaw today within the historical traumas of the past, ranging from the Trail of Tears, broken treaties and loss of food and land sovereignty, forced assimilation through residential schools, and government-run food distribution programs. Jernigan links traumas of the past to meanings of Choctaw identity in the present, including the complex understanding of large bodies and related health outcomes. These are just three examples among others that illustrate the power and potential of bringing to the forefront analyses of the feelings, thoughts, emotions, concerns, and anxieties of lived experience into biocultural frameworks tying structural inequalities to biology and health.

Critical biocultural anthropologists have also begun to ask questions about the biosocial consequences of social issues such as the culture of capitalism as in the work of Elizabeth Sweet and colleagues (2018) on debt and “embodied neoliberalism,” and Hoke and Boen’s (2020) recent research into the health effects of eviction. Taking up subjects of debt, eviction, addiction, incarceration, and homelessness are obvious topics for which a critical biocultural approach might offer insights. These will become ever more critical in upcoming years as a product of profound inequalities and pandemic effects.