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Paper short abstract

The paper analyses how microbes are mobilized for allergy prevention at the science-society interface in Finland. Utilizing the framework of environmentality, it highlights microbes’ multiple framings for health, which range from probiotic killing to symbiopolitical ecosystem modulation.

Paper long abstract

Public health’s relationship with microbes has typically been antagonistic. Efforts targeting pathogenic disease vectors and creating hygienic conditions have dominated policy. Probiotic projects that harness microbes’ protective powers are now emerging due to recent findings of the crucial role of microbes in numerous health conditions. A case in point is allergy. The prevalence of allergies has increased globally, attributed to Western lifestyle, urbanization, and excesses in antibiotic use and hygiene. The current etiological view highlights biodiversity loss and insufficient nature contact as major causes and presents environmental microbial diversity as a key protective factor.

These ideas have been adopted into allergy prevention in Finland. To mitigate the stipulated ‘lack of nature’ for urban dwellers, several approaches are currently in progress, which pave the way for future holobiont public health. They include microbial landscaping materials for urban environments, everyday consumer products containing a clinically tested microbial mixture, and urban development and landscape planning to increase greenness and biodiversity.

Based on assemblage ethnography at the science-society interface, I analyze these approaches to microbial allergy prevention as forms of environmental government (‘environmentality’) of health, which rely on different operations to render microbes serviceable. These operations range from inactivating microbes for safety to building beneficial environments for them to thrive. Microbial environmentality of allergy thus spans between the paradoxical figure of probiotic killing and symbiopolitical modulation of ecosystem dynamics. There are thus multiple framings of microbes in the allergy field, which further illuminates their situated and relational character.