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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, -Jón Þór Pétursson (University of Iceland) Valdimar Tr. Hafstein (University of Iceland)
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on the microbiopolitics of skyr. We explore how practitioners see their skyr practices in light of past traditions and future prospects for healthy sustainable living, and how sociality, community, identity and emotional bonding is achieved through these ecological interactions.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the microbiopolitics of skyr and the maker cultures that skyr-making practices engender. Dating back before Iceland’s settlement in the 9th century, the co-production of skyr in the dairy by Icelandic women and live bacterial cultures of skyr provides a prime example of long-term symbiosis between microbial cultures and human cultures. In recent years, skyr has morphed from everyday staple to national food heritage and global superfood. Slow Food added skyr to its “Ark of Taste” in 2007 and emphasized that the main differences between traditional skyr and its industrialized counterpart are, first, the use of a pinch of older skyr to make a new batch and, second, a lengthy preparation time due to older methods of straining. To make skyr the old-fashioned way is to slow down the process, breaking away from the frantic pace of contemporary life and the industrial food system. Through this definition of traditional skyr, the microbial cultures emerge as the bearers of tradition and guarantors of historical continuity.
We investigate how practitioners see their skyr practices in light of past traditions and future prospects for healthy sustainable living as part of the “probiotic zeitgeist”, and how sociality, community, identity and emotional bonding is achieved through these ecological interactions. The paper examines the value of human-microbial collaboration and how microbial cultures engender and maintain human cultural practices. Skyr making highlights the social value of inter-species symbiosis between humans and microbes, or the reciprocal, co-evolutionary relationships between life forms.
Eysteinn Ari Bragason (University of Iceland)
Paper short abstract:
With examples from fieldwork and interviews in Iceland and Sweden this paper focuses on reforging symbiotic relations with microbes and conflicting attitudes towards the use of dry toilets and the possibility and craft of composting human excrement to make nutritious soil.
Paper long abstract:
In The Humanure Handbook, Joseph Jenkins, a.k.a. “the pope of poop” or “the ambassador of crap”, lifts up the fact that we live in a closed ecological system. He came up with the word “humanure”, from the words “human” and “manure”. Concerned about the unsustainable and destructive ways of modern waste disposal and enthusiastic about the potential of composting discarded matter, Jenkins incites his readers to rethink the value and potentialities of turning shit into soil and reconnect with their excrement. Taking care of our shit by composting it instead of flushing it away, making it a “matter out of place” (Douglas, 1966), becomes a means of reforging symbiotic relations with microbes, that live in us, on us and help keep our bodies and worlds functioning.
Systems and infrastructures in human modernity are built to alienate unruly matter but efforts to develop and promote alternative approaches to sanitation through the making of humanure also becomes part of forging different relationships with matter and other species that together with human craftsmanship turn organic matter into soil through composting.
With examples from fieldwork and interviews in Iceland and Sweden this paper focuses on conflicting attitudes towards the use of dry toilets and the possibility and craft of composting human excrement to make nutritious soil. Some recognize the value of returning nutrients back into the soil (with microbes as allies) but others might be more concerned about hygiene and fear microbes that live in the excrement (or are simply disgusted by the thought).
Kristofer Hansson (Malmö University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses how people make microbiota matter in relation to a future where antibiotics have stopped working – a so called post antibiotic era. How are everyday practices and human-microbes relations, renegotiated in relation to this future?
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I will use the questionnaire “If antibiotics stop working” that was distributed with the help of The Folklife Archives with the Scania Music Collections at Lund University between 2017 and 2018. Over 100 replies came in and some from those who answered discussed the meaning of microbiota. In these themes, the narratives focus on the relation between food and a healthy body. Its semes as if the goal is to find a bodily balance where good and healthy bacteria can stop what is harmful and evil to the body and comes from the outside – let it be resistant bacteria, viruses, or other dangerous microbes. In this way the narratives generate imaginaries for which relationships the individual should have with microbes at large. But it is also imaginaries that can affect gut feelings and consciousness when the individual shop for food or sit down at the dinner table to eat. I will in my paper use Esposito's (2011) theories on how the body needs to be analyzed as “the negation of a negation“. In what ways do the narratives from the questionnaire problematize this theory of how the body can be reformed and refined by letting the “right” bacteria’s in? Or with other words, how is “evil” seen as something that shall be fought from inside?