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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.