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).