Short abstract:

This paper theorises and utilises bricolage as a method for investigating other-than-human geographies and encounters - particularly environmental microbes that live outside the confines of human bodies but which intersect with anthropogenic environments, forces, and intensities in formative ways.

Long abstract:

In human geography, 'triangulation' is a method whereby multiple (re)sources are used to converge on a fixed point of interest or defined research topic. This cartographic metaphor supposes that research objects are unified, pre-exist their investigation, and are relatively stable over time and space. To counter these metaphysical assumptions, 'bricolage' has been offered as a productive alternative, one that retains flexibility with respect to a dynamic and in-process research terrain. This paper attempts to theorise and utilise bricolage as a method for investigating other-than-human geographies and encounters - particularly environmental microbes that live outside the confines of human bodies but which intersect with anthropogenic environments, forces, and intensities in formative ways. Microbial ontology is particularly fluid and it is suggested that, rather than representing a microbial 'object', bricolage resonates with its withdrawness, partiality, and flexibility. These ideas are contextualised with reference to empirical material on a disused canal lock - an urban ecological niche where microbial ecologies bloom in and out of existence. Temporary alignment with the frequencies, spatialities, and micro/macro-scales of microbial becoming demonstrates the idea of resonance as opposed to representation. Ultimately, bricolage-as-method entails the researcher's body reverberating with temporalities of environmental microbiomes via walking, gathering information, and expanding/contracting their frame of reference. This method of attunement takes cues from Gabrielle Hecht's notion of 'interscalar vehicles' to suggest productive ways to engage with scales operating beyond immediate perception and into vastly removed spatialities.

Short abstract:

The talk focuses on research on bacteriophages (viruses that infect other microbes). I explore how scientists use the image of phages as ‘the dark matter of the biosphere’, and I trace the distinct enactments of ‘nature’ and phages agency across different branches of phage research.

Long abstract:

Since their discovery in the 1910s, bacteriophages have been defined as viruses that interact with other microbial cells, such as bacteria, archaea or other viruses. Such a definition entrenches bacteriophages in their relationality with microbes, and it configures phages’ agency as the capacity to infect microbial cells. However, the past decades of bacteriophage research can be characterised as a process of reconfiguring the scope of phages’ agency. Studies have shown that phages have a fundamental impact on shaping the Earth’s biogeochemical cycles, therefore, phages have been recognised as agents that play a key role in maintaining the conditions that enable life in the biosphere.

Bacteriophages are studied with a range of experimental techniques: bioinformaticians use metagenomic characterisation to map the genomic diversity of phages, while lab-based techniques, such as plaque assays, explore interactions between specific phages and bacterial species. Building on thematic analysis of current scientific literature on bacteriophages, as well as qualitative semi-structured interviews with scientists, I interrogate how bioinformaticians who work with genomic data contrast their work with lab-based methods of studying phages. Drawing on literature on ontological enactment and multiplicity in science and technology studies, I explore how scientists who use different methods to study bacteriophages enact ‘nature’, as well as phages’ agency in distinct ways. I also ask how bioinformaticians and lab-based scientists use the image of phages as ‘the dark matter of the biosphere’ to frame phages’ agency and to draw attention to issues surrounding the detection of phage activity with traditional scientific methods.

Short abstract:

This paper investigates the scientific practice of bioremediation; how it shapes human-microbe relationality and ideas of techno-solutionism in ways that lead away from the dominant modes of technoscience.

Long abstract:

Bioremediative microbes typically exist in distant proximity to human bodies, cleaning up and alleviating naturecultures of anthropogenically polluted environments. However, these microbes are managed and modulated by scientists in the practice of bioremediation, a technoscientific nature-based solution (NbS) to alleviate soil and water pollution. This paper investigates the human-microbial practice of bioremediation, and how it shapes human-microbe relationality and ideas of microbially-based techno-solutionism. This paper is based from multispecies ethnography conducted in Finnish Lapland at scientific bioremediation pilot and field sites. The paper discusses the laboratory as a preconstructed, predetermined space that is tied to technoscientific norms of biological extraction, valuation and capital accumulation. This is in contrast to the outdoor environment of the ‘field’ where my interlocutors describe the indeterminancy of microbes, the situatedness and contingency of microbial bioremediation, and their decenteredness in relations of control. These factors have shifted their thinking and approach to the microbes they work with. The changing nature of relations and the ontological shift occurring I liken to the dwelling perspective, a state of being in the world that is “of formative and transformative processes” (Ingold 2008:1801). This highlights that working with nonhumans like microbes in settings less (pre)determined by humans can change scientific practices and how microbially-based science can be conducted. This paper points to the small steps to move away from the dominant modes of technoscience, pointing to a technoscience otherwise – the spectrums of relationality that the technosciences might dwell within.

Short abstract:

Humans and their microbiotas are yet another devastated ecosystem subject to a major loss of biodiversity. Body-milieu porosity is therefore the setting of another power struggle with existential implications. How do microbiome scientists enact such a crisis of nature, humanity and society?

Long abstract:

Thanks to sequencing, bioinformatics and computational technologies, the gut microbiota has become a prolific object of biomedical research. Post-genomic technologies produce a gut microbiome that could be qualified as an ecobiosocial interface: it stands as a modulating nexus between bodies and environments. From an analytical standpoint, microbiome studies reconfigure the ontoepistemic boundaries between what is commonly delimited as "the social" and "the biological". The biological subject and object of human medicine comes to be considered as an ecosystem with porous, dynamic and actionable boundaries. In turn, this porosity gets offered to individuals, health systems and political institutions as a locus of action and control, as a site for prevention, treatment, and optimization.

Inextricably linked to the porosity of human bodies with their ecosocial environments is the devastation of (this and others) ecosystems. Several studies have detailed how the ecobiosocial Human is subject to a dramatic loss of biodiversity in the industrialized world: an “invisible extinction” is happening in our gut. Thus, body-milieu porosity becomes the setting of a power struggle, of evolutionary deterioration, and of menacing uncontrollability. In this paper, we explore the negotiations around threats, values, and the ecobiosocial boundaries of humanity in the case of a specific international gut microbiota banking initiative: the Microbiota Vault. We argue that the practices and discourses of this initiative reflect and participate into the (re)production and circulation of a peculiar ontopolitics of the ecobiosocial Human: one that transforms the embodiment of a post-industrial society in a crisis of nature, humanity and society.

Short abstract:

This paper discusses the potential of 'negotiation' as a method to relate and live-with microbes. Based on the preliminary questions and findings of my fieldwork with permaculture practitioners in Finland, I will explore the materialisation of an alternative way of approaching microbial threats.

Long abstract:

Despite the long tradition of "Pasteurian" anti-microbial practices in industrialised societies (Latour, 1993), various actors in these societies are becoming more and more aware of the interdependence between human and microbial worlds (Lorimer, 2020). However, these human-microbe relationships are not easy or straightforward. Microbial entities such as fungi, bacteria, or viruses are an essential part of life processes, but they can also ruin harvests, make us sick and even kill us. Human societies all over the world rely on antimicrobials as a structural way of dealing with microbes (Chandler, 2019), but this war-like approach is causing problems of its own, affecting not only human health but also the health of the planet.

This paper discusses the initial methodological approach of my PhD project, in which I explore these issues in the context of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and soil biodiversity. Based on the preliminary questions and findings of my fieldwork with permaculture practitioners in Finland, I will explore the materialisation of an alternative approach to relating and living-with microbes. In my project, I suggest that it is possible to ‘negotiate’ with microbes, dealing with our tensions in a non-hierarchical, more-than-human way. For this, I will engage with theories of more-than-human communication, exploring the possibilities that it offers when applied to the microbial world. Using concepts such as biosemiotics (Hoffmeyer 2008) and perspectivism, I will present a method of knowing and engaging with microbes by ‘consciously anthropomorphising’ them, reflecting on their potential for negotiating AMR-related tensions with the microbial world.

Short abstract:

Algal blooms formed by marine microbes have become more common during the last decades due to issues like pollution and warmer temperatures. This presentation explores boundaries between land, water, nature, and culture connected to the toxic threat posed by cyanobacterial blooms in Finland.

Long abstract:

The way humans relate to aquatic bodies and their nonhuman inhabitants is mediated by a long history of both coexistence and distance. Humans of course depend on water for survival, with obvious examples like hydration or fishing. However, access to water bodies continues to be challenging and humans depend on technology to enter, survive, and know them. This has meant for many communities a strong aquatic attachment that is now at stake given the ongoing ecological crisis leading to, for example, pollution and warming temperatures. In my work I follow the challenges posed by cyanobacteria, a marine microorganism known to be the first ever oxygen producer, nowadays also playing a central role in marine food webs. Besides these arguably positive characteristics, cyanobacteria can form massive blooms that are toxic to human and nonhuman animals. Massive blooms have become common in Finland (among other regions), especially during the summer, since cyanobacteria thrives in eutrophic warm waters (linked to climate change and fertilizer pollution). Their impact brings humans closer and further from aquatic environments. It leads to scientific efforts to know better their role in ecosystems but at the same time health concerns keep people away from interacting with waters they have coexisted with most of or even their entire lives. In this presentation, I explore how boundaries between land, water, nature, and culture, are challenged by this bidirectional move towards and away from cyanobacteria and the water bodies that they inhabit, offering a chance to challenge anthropocentric understandings of microbe-environment-human relations.