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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.