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Multispecies interactions, holobionts and hologenomes, and metaphors of “unstable bodies” (Palsson 2016) and biosocial becomings (Ingold and Palsson 2014) speak to the relationality of all organisms and the irreducible interpenetration of the social and biological. As Fuentes (2019, p. 157) notes, “Bypassing the conceptualization of the biological, social, and ecological as distinct domains, and thinking of them as obligatorily intertwined processes of becoming (e.g., Ingold 2000 ), presents a powerful lens for understanding ourselves and our relationships with others in the Anthropocene – and a necessary tool to grapple with the complexities of health in the rapidly changing landscape of the 21st century.” All of these changes in the field speak directly to the critical role of environmental context writ large in shaping bodies, biology, and health, and that to “situate” bodies and biology ethnographic grounding is necessary.

Biocultural anthropologists have increasingly focused on the health, nutritional, and other biomedical consequences of social and ecological vulnerability. Here we briefly discuss four “big tent” nodes, or meeting grounds, in critical biocultural research: (1) the biology and health of poverty and inequality; (2) social change, conflicts, and health; (3) biopsychosocial responses to stress; and, (4) the embodiment of race and the health consequences of racism. These nodes are neither the only ones we could choose nor are they independent from each other; rather, there are strong overlaps. Indeed, many health inequities are found at the intersection of poverty and inequalities, racism, and biopsychosocial stress. We present them as illustrative of studies that go beyond standard measures of socioeconomic status to study vulnerabilities along multiple axes that include race, gender, income, occupation, and access to health care.