Paper short abstract:

The big story is AMR. Where policy responses so far have reflected a conservationist, depressed approach, cause for greater optimism is found in the mundane practices of chronically ill people who cultivate non-antibiotic care practices. I offer a method to elicit these mundane practices.

Paper long abstract:

Globally, the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in clinically important microbes threatens routine medical work, from treating common infections to prophylaxis for surgery.

In the UK, responses to AMR have primarily understood it as a problem of excess, and often reflect a depression about what else might be done to care aside from antibiotics. If the ‘slow emergency’ of AMR has elicited as a transformation in healthcare, transformed antibiotic practices would be the same, but smaller.

I take the important case of urinary tract infection and, drawing on Pols’ theorisation of patient knowledge (2013), bell hooks’ theorisation of the ‘radical openness of the margins’ (1989), and Mallers and Strengers’ social practice theory (2018), I offer an object interview methodology used to elicit mundane but often innovative and creative practices of living with poor bladder health.

STS theorizing through the mundane can therefore intervene in responses to AMR by locating transformations in post-antibiotic healthcare in the mundane things that people are already doing. Instead of using large scale policy instruments to conserve resources by restricting access to antibiotics, we can recognise a multitudinous bounty of different ways to care in the small-scale mundane practices of people with chronic urinary problems. This is a route to greater optimism about a transformation in healthcare which may transform our dependence and reliance on antibiotics.

I hope to offer an interactive session led by visual sources within 20 minutes.