Eric Carter is a medical geographer, with connected interests in people-environment
geography and historical geography, and a regional focus on Latin America.
His research in global health is steeped in the intellectual tradition and analytical
approaches of people-environment geography. He takes a political ecology approach to
health and disease, viewing health problems—particularly infectious and vector-borne
diseases—as an important yet often overlooked instance of the relationship between people
and their environment. The uneven geography of global health—just like the uneven
geography of hunger or of environmental quality—is structured by political-economic
conditions and complicated by proximate, local-scale processes. To understand the root
causes of persistent public health problems it is important to analyze ecological change,
social conditions, development policy, and belief systems, cultural values, and ideology.
Thus his geographical research takes an interdisciplinary approach, bridging the realms
of international development, global health, and environmental studies.
While continuing research in the area of global health, Eric has launched another project
more recently to understand environmental values, attitudes, and politics among Latino
immigrants in the United States. He has also published research on a variety of other
geographical topics, including borders and political identity in Misiones province,
Argentina; the commemoration of the socialist revolutionary Ernesto "Che"
Guevara in Rosario, Argentina; and the perceptions and concerns of
"stand-alone" geographers in North American colleges and universities.
EDUCATION: B.A. University of California, Berkeley; M.S. University of Wisconsin,
Madison; PhD University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Carter began teaching at Macalester in Fall 2012.
