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Short abstract:

Using Michel Callon’s 1984 article on a sociology of translation as a starting point, this paper examines how engineering biology research to address the problem of plastic pollution may be developed as a response-able program not only to the human need but also from a multi-species perspective.

Long abstract:

“Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay” was the title of Michel Callon’s (1984) classic STS article, in which he explains how actors with different perspectives, including scallops (non-human) as well as fishermen (human), come to participate in the program presented by a particular group of scientists. The key for their collaboration is the process of translation, where who they are, what they want and what problem they face all become defined in such a way that the program proposed is identified as the solution that they collectively can and therefore should achieve. Using this Callon’s argument as a starting point, this paper examines a line of research in engineering biology which features Ideonella Sakaiensis, the microbe discovered in 2016 at a plastic bottle recycling facility in Japan that produces a set of enzymes to degrade and utilize polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as a source of energy (Yoshida et al. 2016), and the knowledge produced by studying it. The discovery of this special microbe has stimulated interest of both scientific and non-scientific actors because its unique way of living can offer a solution to us, the humans. But does it also provide a solution to the microbe? If not, who else’s solution can it be, and how the program ought to be developed in order to enroll them as our collaborator(s)? Asking these questions, I argue, invites us to think what make the research response-able from a multi-species perspective.