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- Convenors:
-
Jón Þór Pétursson
(University of Iceland)
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein (University of Iceland)
Håkan Jönsson (Lund University)
Salla Sariola (University of Helsinki)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- POSTHUMANISM
- Location:
- Room H-205
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 14 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel researches symbiotic living among humans and microbes and how that coexistence is reshaped through cultural practices, present and past. How do they reforge symbiotic relations and what practices, imaginaries, narratives, gut feelings, reevaluations, and social bonds do these generate?
Long Abstract:
This panel investigates the repeated symbiotic practices of humans and microbes, their effects, affects, reciprocity, and social imaginaries. Its combined format juxtaposes paper presentations and a hands-on fermentation workshop where participants discuss and relate to microbes by fermenting with lactic acid bacteria and yeasts.
During the Covid pandemic, images of homemade sourdough bread rebounded through social media, with accounts of successes and failures in caring for “the mother”; a model of resilience in times of lockdown and social distancing. This century has witnessed exponential growth in scientific knowledge, popular interest and commercial investment in intimate relations between humans and microbes. This interest raises new questions and challenges for research, even as multi-species collectives that have reproduced each other for hundreds of human (and millions of microbial) generations are threatened with extinction.
Human-microbial relations involve varied social practices, including circulation of microbiota, narratives and epistemologies within and between the communities these engender. Fermentation, composting and agricultural practices may be seen as forms of interspecies communication, replete with anecdotes and jokes conveying a sense of purpose and belonging. How do people reforge symbiotic relations with microbial species? How are these interspecies relations reshaped through everyday practices, present and past? How does microbial matter and its transmission generate practices, consciousness, imaginaries, narratives, gut feelings, and social bonds? The panel encourages creative interpretations of human-microbial relations and diverse ethnographic accounts of the expressions these relations may evoke.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 14 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This talk describes ethnographic and visual material about rice beer making in rural Assam, India. Indigenous fermenters perform sacred mythologies that connect people, land and the forest amidst ecological destruction, political oppression and industrialising food and health systems.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation presents ethnographic, and time permitting, video material about indigenous rice beer makers in rural Assam, Northeast of India. It describes fermentation as a process that necessitates a more-than-human framing where microbes are foregrounded as central characters. The talk explores cultures of cultures – the social practices of microbes and the microbes of social practices.
Looking at fermentation in this context, at the back of my mind was a question how people understood the metabolic process taking place in the transformation of the ingredients. In science parlance, the microbes, and a possible lay theory of microbes. While my questions to understand microbes were via the proxy of fermentation, the story was never just about microbes; microbes were situated in broader socio-economic and political relations. Fermentation practitioners’ lay theories of microbes are not merely microbiological but present cultural analysis situated in the political climate of increasing populism and sectarianism in India, as well as the Earthly destruction known as the Anthropocene. The presentation describes the fermenters performing sacred mythologies and spirituality that connect people, land and the forest, as well as putting forward critiques of capitalism that link ecological extraction, political oppression, modern health care and industrialisation of food production.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on an engagement with the Finnish producer and cultivator of medicinal mushrooms called Kääpä Biotech, this paper explores medicinal mushrooms as an emerging category at the intersection of medicine and personalized well-being that feeds on an imaginary of “cross-kingdom” relationality.
Paper long abstract:
Medicinal mushrooms, such as chaga, reishi, cordyceps, or lion’s mane, are typically polypore mushrooms that are posited as carrying various therapeutic properties (related to e.g., immune support, neurological health, mood, relaxation) by both complementary, alternative, and traditional medicine (e.g., Chinese) as well as, increasingly, by modern technoscience and its vocal purveyors such as biohackers. Drawing on an ethnographic engagement with the Finnish producer and cultivator of medicinal mushrooms called Kääpä Biotech (kääpä translating as “polypore mushroom”) and an analysis of targeted media texts (e.g., podcasts), this paper explores medicinal mushrooms as an emerging category at the contemporary intersection of medicine, personalized health, and consumer-led well-being that feeds on a (technoscientific) imaginary of “cross-kingdom” relationality.
Highlighting an ideology and procedure of interspecies alliance with the fungal kingdom – Kääpä Biotech manages the world’s largest chaga cultivation network as a responsible form of forest sustainability – the paper analyzes how contemporary discourses on medicinal mushrooms articulate both scientific, environmental, and ethico-moral values while reifying, recirculating, and commodifying certain privileged “somaesthetic” qualia of late modernity (e.g., bodily immunity, adaptability, and energy). More broadly, the paper sheds light on novel entanglements of CAM ontologies of the body with a secular scientific rationality as evidenced by this realm of naturopathic therapy.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the emotional and physical connection bakers have with their sourdough. I will explore why bakers make sourdough bread and what this human-microbial relationship between the baker and the sourdough mother means to the baker in his everyday life.
Paper long abstract:
Sourdough has had its comeback in the past years with the culinary turn back to slow processed food made with few ingredients. Sourdough loaves are becoming more accessible to the average consumer as artisan bakeries are popping up in every corner. Baking sourdough bread can be a long and difficult process. However, a lot of people choose to go through the long process of making their own sourdough at home, which can take up to 72 hours.
In order to bake good sourdough bread you need to have a healthy sourdough mother that needs regular feedings. A healthy sourdough mother consists of millions of microbes that work together to ferment the bread and give it its rise. To bake a good sourdough loaf the baker is therefore dependent on the sourdough mother and the microbes to function properly. In order to do so the microbes and the sourdough mother depend on the baker to feed them regularly. Sourdough baking is therefore based on the symbiosis of the baker and the microbes within the sourdough.
This paper, based on an ongoing qualitative research on the connection between sourdough bakers and their sourdough, focuses on the emotional and physical connection bakers have with their sourdough. I will explore why bakers make sourdough bread, what baking represents for them, how the behavior of the sourdough mother and the dough affects the baker himself and what this human-microbial relationship between the baker and the sourdough mother means to the baker in his everyday life.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores bokashi composting which challenges modes of living with waste in urban everyday life. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I propose that in all its mundane everydayness, the practice has a capacity to radically disrupt and transform human-microbial relations.
Paper long abstract:
Bokashi composting is a vernacular method of composting with a help of a specific consortium of ‘beneficial microbes”. Bokashi practice is getting popular in Finland, especially in urban areas, because it can be practiced indoors, even in small apartments.
In this paper, I will explore bokashi composting waste practice, that challenges modes of living with waste in urban everyday life. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Finnish bokashi practitioners, I propose, that bokashi practice in all its mundane everydayness, has a capacity to radically disrupt and transform waste relations as well as human-microbial relations in a more general sense. It can affect cultural waste imaginaries by transforming waste from inanimate and even ‘dead’ substance to a lively matter to be cared for. Moreover, practicing bokashi has ontological and ethical consequences by making the practitioners aware of the microbial abundance of the world and providing them with will and skills for nurturing human-microbial relations.
In this paper, I set out to explore, how are microbial relations enacted in bokashi practice. I ask, how is the existence of these tiny, invisible creatures known and how are they communicated with and talked about. To do this, I analyse both corporeal encounters with bokashi matter as well as narrated stories of these encounters.