Out of the mouths of babies

Global health programs tout the efficacy of nutrition interventions like Sprinkles and growth charts to optimize height during the “First 1000 Days,” treating infant growth as a proxy for future health and human capital. But how effective are these technologies in practice when they hit the ground in the most mountainous country in the world, Bhutan? During 18 months of ethnographic research with health workers, mothers, and other feeding experts across five sites in Bhutan, Shivani Kaul and co-researchers found metrics and micronutrients as universalizing technologies generated partial refusals. Some infants spit out Sprinkles, mothers often refused these sachets and stunting categories, and several health assistants refused to plot infant growth on WHO charts. Rather than interpret case studies of partial refusals as ignorance or resistance, we observe they index a relational logic of tendrel (interdependent origination) – rooted in schismogenic, sacred land relations in the Himalayas. Learning from these partial refusals can clarify how humans might grow otherwise in the Anthropocene.

Shivani Kaul is an anthropologist in the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research. She has previously taught anthropology and media studies in the Royal University of Bhutan, and in the first MA degree in Degrowth at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

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