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Paper short abstract

This paper revisits labs as empirical sites, focusing on how microbial innovations build "resilient food systems" in a trans-disciplinary research consortia of Stockholm. It focuses on microbial time, theorises (a)synchronicities of human-microbe lifeways, and re-imagines lab ethnographies in SSM.

Paper long abstract

Microbes are increasingly called upon to mitigate environmental crises in the Anthropocene, through the likes of engineered biofuels, cellular agriculture, and reclaiming food waste. Yet, as scholars from STS and Social Studies of Microbes (SSM) note, different frameworks of time affect how research gets conducted and thus the kinds of conclusions drawn (e.g., Schrader 2010). This paper examines microbial innovations aimed at building "resilient food systems" in the context of a Stockholm-based, trans-disciplinary research consortia, with particular attention to microbial time. Specifically, the paper will attend to more-than-human timescales, timekeeping, and synchronicity, attending to the tensions between the hands-on material practices that take place in laboratory settings and the discursive talking points about the microbes being developed as environmental interventions. Based on preliminary experiences of a long-term laboratory ethnography, and with comparisons from regionally-specific discourse analysis, the paper will discuss the temporal enactments of microbes alongside their assumptions, dissonances, and material stakes. By scrutinising the epistemic practices of microbial knowledge "in the making," the paper will nuance microbial ontologies beyond bio-objects to manage but as timings to negotiate. As such, the paper’s contribution at a conceptual level will be in theorising the (a)synchronocities between human–microbial lifeways in the context of "resilient" futures. At a disciplinary and methodological level, the paper will also contribute to the re-imagination of laboratory ethnographies in SSM, and the roles they can play in constructing situated, more-than-human knowledges.