Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the intricate processes underlying the transformation of intellectual work into assets within the field of microbiome research. Through ethnographic exploration of a personalised nutrition startup in Italy and the UK, we explore the dynamics shaping the intersection of knowledge production with scientific, economic, and health value. Two key findings emerge: firstly, the conversion of knowledge into assets, where laboratories and academic institutions function as semi-entrepreneurs in a neoliberal market, actively extracting economic value from epistemic resources. Secondly, our analysis reveals a unique hybrid model, distinct from traditional commodity and rent-based structures, wherein the commodification of scientific knowledge converges with rentiership dynamics of accumulation. This hybridity challenges conventional narratives, highlighting cooperative business models between institutions, breaking away from competitive frameworks. Importantly, the study unveils a nuanced relationship between data, research, and economic drivers, with data guiding scientific inquiry rather than market forces. Critically, this third model, while economically sustainable, imposes costs on individuals, carrying significant sociopolitical implications for future health policies. Our study reveals how, in the context of academic capitalism, academic science can sometimes inadvertently contribute to specific economic forms, emphasizing the need for a socio-anthropological lens to unpack the ever-increasing complexity of value production in microbiome research.

Paper short abstract:

Examining a successful microbiome startup and the social meanings of gut-microbiome commodification, our ethnography explores user perceptions of their 'microbial self.' Initially embracing a 'symbiotic singularity' promoted by AI products, users ultimately revert to a modernistic individuality.

Paper long abstract:

Research on the human microbiome – the vast microbial communities in and around the human body – has recently highlighted human-microbe interdependence, thus providing a fundamental epistemic shift from a modernistic individuality towards a multi-organismic, symbiotic self. This shift is largely afforded by complex machine-learning algorithms and the vast datafication of microbes, which has similarly led to the popularization and commodification of this episteme. Particularly, numerous start-up companies have begun to offer microbiome-based AI products and offer the users the homo-microbial episteme in an app. While anthropologists have begun to explore the various social meanings of microbiome science, the commodification of the microbial self has been largely overlooked. Based on the case study of a successful start-up that offers to algorithmically leverage consumers’ homo-microbial identities to create tailor-made, personalized nutrition, we ask: How do users of microbiome-based personalized services perceive their “microbial self”? How does this affect their understanding of their identity, body, subjectivity, and agency? We show that while microbiome-based startups offer their consumers a “symbiotic singularity” – an idiosyncratic multi-organismic identity – and while consumers initially embrace this new identity, they eventually scale back to a more modernistic and generic view of humans – to an individuality that is neither multi-organismic nor singular. We conclude by discussing the social meanings of the commodification of the microbiome, and of the disillusionment from the homo-microbial, singular hope.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on 'gut feeling' as an important tenant selection tool, with the aim of understanding its discriminatory (and potentially subversive) agency.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from the persistent discrimination in the tenant selection process revealed by studies on the private rental housing market in various places (e.g., SORA 2023), this paper focuses on 'gut feeling' as an important tenant selection tool (also revealed by other studies, e.g. Garboden et al. 2018, Reosti 2020, Rosen et al. 2021, Rosen and Garboden 2022, without further conceptualising it). Previous conceptualisations of 'gut feeling' have mainly problematised it as a way of legitimising and enacting racism (e.g., Stoler 2018) or accessing visceral knowledge (e.g., Gigerenzer 2007), the latter wrongly equating it with mere subjective judgement. Rather than seeing 'gut feeling' as an intentional legitimation strategy or as unintentional knowledge based on subjective experience, this paper draws on empirical evidence to argue that in order to understand the discriminatory and potentially subversive agency of 'gut feelings', it needs to be understood as a practice in the specific context (cultural, social and political) in which it is adopted.

Paper short abstract:

Centred on the gut microbiome, this digital ethnography follows Brazilian health and fermentation Instagram influencers to comprehend their discourse and underlying dynamics of the human-microbe relationship in the health and dietary practice they advocate.

Paper long abstract:

The gut microbiome research has transcended the boundaries of laboratories and academic papers, extending its reach to health practitioners, cooks, and individuals keen on enhancing their well-being. This inquiry is rooted in the cultivation of lifestyle changes and dietary habits that prioritise the pivotal role played by gut microbiota. Within the framework of a Post-Pasteurian cultural paradigm, as Paxson (2008) expounded, microorganisms are no longer perceived solely as a threat to humans.

This study delves into the practices and discourses surrounding these microorganisms by employing an ethnographic approach that centres on gut microbes and eating practices. Such an exploration can reassess our corporeal boundaries with the world, as Mol (2021), thereby challenging entrenched notions of human superiority and centrality (Haraway, 2019). At the same time, as Mayer (2016) and other gut microbiome specialists proposed, pursuing optimal health may inadvertently give rise to healthism practices perpetuating the illusion of human control over other organisms, as in Hey (2020).

In this congress, I will present the findings of a digital ethnography to be conducted between March and May 2024. Focused on Brazilian content creators on Instagram—medical professionals, nutritionists, and fermentation enthusiasts—whose endeavours centre on gut microbes, this study aims to elucidate the fundamental tenets underpinning the human-microbes relationship within health-conscious dietary practices. By examining these influencers' discourse, I aspire to comprehend the underlying principles of the human-microbes relationship in healthy eating practices, thereby paving the way for a more profound ethnographic exploration of our relationship with microbes through dietary practices in Brazil.

Paper short abstract:

Following a Dutch consortium with disciplines as public health, microbiology, computational science and sociology, I explore how particular modes of ordering (cf. Law) the oral and gut microbiome reflects a situated relating to microbes entangled with multiple enactments of raced and classed bodies.

Paper long abstract:

Along lines of health disparities literature and inclusion and difference paradigms in biomedical research, Public Health's impetus for health for all tends to employ categories of class and race for the recruitment of underrepresented minorities. This is for instance materialized in a Dutch interdisciplinary research project wherein microscopic and micro-sociological inquiries are steered towards raced and classed guts, mouths and bodies of, in this case, babies.

Within an STS and empirical ethics of care understanding, I intend to ethnographically explore this project as a case wherein a variety of techno-scientific, clinical and caring practices can reflect particular modes of ordering the gut and oral microbiome. Such reflections of relating and attending to microbes, as a human species, can then be contrasted with other modes of ordering the microbiome, so to enable a comprehensive valuation and re-inscription of the values embedded.

More specific inquiries will be geared towards the enactments of objects as race and class, throughout various sites - microbiome laboratories, clinics and families in the Netherlands.

Paper short abstract:

Creeping fat is a mysterious part of Crohn’s disease (CD), protecting the gut from bacterial leaks at the cost of obstruction. Leaks and obstructions make some with CD feel the gut is haunted by ghosts. This paper explores subjectivity via uncanny gut processes that make a g(host)ly body habitable.

Paper long abstract:

Crohn’s disease (CD) is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that affects all layers of the gastrointestinal tract. Chronic inflammation erodes the bowel, risking perforation. As the inside/outside threshold of the gut collapses, fecal bacteria gravely flood the body. Severe CD is characterized by a mysterious phenomenon called “creeping fat.” Finger-like projections from adjacent abdominal tissue wrap around gut lesions, causing obstructions as the gut narrows. Creeping fat remains enigmatic because it cannot be clearly distinguished through medical imaging nor directly experienced. Recently, a microbial theory has posited creeping fat as a harmful and protective consequence of gut perforation. It prevents fecal flooding of the host environment at the expense of bowel obstruction. Amidst the microbial creep of leaks and obstructions, some with IBD feel their gut is haunted by ghosts. In the same breath, gut ripples are recognized as bacterial blooms and phantoms of surgical resection. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in New York City, this paper explores the convergence of the microbial host and the ghosts of haunted guts through the metabolic processes and experiences of people living with CD. How does subjective life persist through the uncanny gut when the mediating capacity of this inside/outside border is overspilled by its own microbial entanglements? Approaching the uncanny metabolically, reveals a form of subjective existence that continues at the limits of microbial embrace. In the wake of perforation, creeping fat becomes how people living with severe CD come to inhabit a g(host)ly body in the gaps of a narrowing gut.

Paper short abstract:

This talk analyses understandings of the gut in Assamese herbal healing tradition, and how fermented products are used to control body heat. The gut is seen to regulate body heat, which is a starting point to wellbeing. The analysis places the body, gut and microbes in broader ecological contexts.

Paper long abstract:

When entering a house in the rural countryside of Assam, one of the states in the northeast of India, one of the first things one sees is a large plastic jar of lemons fermenting outside by the front door. These lemons are part of the local herbal healing system, bonkhoudi, where foraged and fermented plants are used for maintaining health. Fermented products such as lemons as well as rice beer have a particular role in the local healing system by cooling the body and curing specific ailments. The focus of this presentation is the understanding of the body in this healing tradition, and the specific illnesses for which the fermented products are used as remedies.

I will discuss the notion of body heat, which is a starting point to all other conditions, as well as ensures overall wellbeing. Body heat originates from gut health: balanced body temperature is regulated from the gut. Irregularities in body heat are caused by factors external to the body – weather and its changes, and food consumed.

Based on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork on fermentation, foraging and microbes, I will describe how fermented products were situated in the local healing system: how infection was understood on the one hand and how immunity and good bacteria for maintaining health were understood on the other. This analysis provides an important contribution to the anthropological writings on the body, gut as well as microbes by placing these in their broader ecological contexts.

Paper short abstract:

Situated in a hospital setting, preeminent in clinical research on functional digestive disorders (FGIDs) in India, the paper examines how patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome are seeking cure, utilizing dietary and technological interventions in order to optimize their digestion.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper is an ethnographic study of functional digestive disorders and modern-day gut pathologies in contemporary urban India. Based at a gastroenterology department of a distinguished medical institute and simultaneously attending outpatient consultations of an Ayurvedic clinic, I follow how patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are seeking care in and across the medical pluralist landscape. Conversing with patients about their personal narratives and the complexities of their long-term medical trajectories, I aim to shed light on how they perceive, interpret and reconcile with their diagnoses in the absence of an organic cause. In this pursuit, the invisible worlds of microbes and troubled guts become the object of scientific experiments and tests, promising detectable results in the hope of facilitating a reliable medicalized remedy. Besides inquiries into the established technologies of care and cure of IBS, the research is set out to engage with patients’ fragmented notions of ‘their’ illness, their hopes, and their distinctive tactics of negotiating their condition and care. I examine how deeply embedded cultural notions concerning diet, local ideologies about social norms and health-seeking behaviour in Indian society influence how patients make meaning of their disturbed guts and navigate the attached label of IBS. The proposed paper aims to advance our understanding of how microbiome science is embodied and enacted within and between the realms of biomedical and Ayurvedic practice, contemporary clinical research and patients’ bodies and lifeworlds in the Indian context.

Paper short abstract:

This autoethnographic paper draws on my own gut and that of smaller creatures like bees to reflect on the consequences of our current food systems in one of the world’s agribusiness-driven deforestation hotspots, the South American Gran Chaco, where I have conducted fieldwork since 2010.

Paper long abstract:

Deforestation: Lessons from the Gut about the Limits of our Food Systems

This autoethnographic paper draws on my own gut and that of smaller creatures like bees to reflect on the consequences of our current food systems in one of the world’s agribusiness-driven deforestation hotspots, the South American Gran Chaco, where I have conducted fieldwork since 2010. Our current food systems have been linked to rising rates of human gut complaints, particularly in affluent and highly industrialized societies: from leaky gut, IBS and gut-related autoimmune disorders like celiac disease to more serious illnesses like colin cancer. But what if these ailments are enmeshed in a wider multispecies story? The Gran Chaco dry forest – as well as its human and non-human inhabitants - are increasingly being displaced by soy and cattle ranching that deplete the area’s biodiversity, impact patterns of drought and flooding, and leach an array of legal and illegal agrochemicals into the soil, water and air that affect microbiomes of all sizes. The recent election of right-wing climate denier Javier Milei as President of Argentina – where most remaining native Chaco forests are concentrated - threatens to give a carte blanche to these trends, which are typically framed as an effort to “feed the world.” Using my own gut as guide, I take an autoethnographic and interspecies approach to explore the mimicries and incommensurabilities between different forms of gut disturbance, from my own, to those arising in soils and in the guts of insects like bees.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing from semiotic theory and multispecies ethnography in the borderland of Southwest China, this research examines how the Dai identity is situated in the gut—where humans, plants, and microbes are entangled with affection, culture, and the climate through culinary practices and kinship rituals.

Paper long abstract:

As a major group in the multiethnic borderlands of Southwest China, the Dai people are known for their long history of wet rice cultivation and elaborate culinary cultures. Drawing from multispecies ethnography and semiotic theory, this research examines how the Dai identity is situated in the gut—where humans, plants, and microbes are entangled with affection, culture, and the climate. First, freshness is essential in the Dai cuisine, which requires multisensory attentiveness to plants in a hybrid agroecological landscape including home gardens, wet markets, and forests. While Han-Chinese market foods extend the shelf life, the Dai collaborate with microbes in preserving the freshness and creating sourness/spicy that adapts the body to the humid, subtropical climate. Second, fixed combinations of ingredients represent traditional knowledge that connects human bodies with the local environment through the guts. Key technologies such as the fermented bean paste turn what is inedible for others to desired nutritions for the Dai. Lastly, culinary practices become a semiotic ground for kinship and community rituals. In festivals and gatherings, gastronomic tradition is co-created and negotiated across generations—this gut connection is even extended to the ancestors and spirits through ritual offerings. Overall, health, kinships, and agroecology are viscerally connected in the referential knowledge (Heiddeger) of food preparation and rituals, where humans and nonhuman form semiotic processes—the corresponding sign-object and interpretant-object relations (Peirce)—that are expressive of Dai identity and agency. The insight from the Dai people reveals new ways to study indigenous foodways and multispecies relations through different feelings in the gut.