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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.