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- Convenors:
-
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein
(University of Iceland)
Salla Sariola (University of Helsinki)
Jón Þór Pétursson (University of Iceland)
Matthäus Rest (University of Fribourg)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Posthumanism
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 23 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
The panel-workshop explores symbiotic living between humans and microbes and how that coexistence is shaped through everyday cultural practices, present and past. The session combines presentations with hands-on fermentation.
Long Abstract:
This panel-workshop experiments with everyday symbiotic practices of humans and microbes, their effects, affects, and social imaginaries. It combines presentations and hands-on fermentation.
Images of homemade sourdough bread have flooded social media during the pandemic, with accounts of successes and failures; a model of resilience in times of lockdown and social distancing. Recently, scientific knowledge, popular interest and commercial investment in intimate relations between humans and microbes have grown exponentially. This raises new questions and challenges for research, even as multi-species collectives that have fermented together for hundreds of human (and millions of microbial) generations are threatened with extinction.
Human-microbial relations involve varied and conflicting social practices, including circulation of microbiota, narratives and epistemologies within and between the communities these engender. Indeed, fermentation, composting and various agricultural practices may be seen as forms of interspecies communication, complemented by anecdotes and jokes conveying a sense of purpose and belonging. How are these interspecies relations shaped through everyday practices, present and past? This panel challenges scholars to break away from immunitarian models that define microbes as intruding others to address how to live with companion species that have sustained humans for millennia.
During the first day we will bake sourdough bread and those who want to bake should bring along flour and a starter culture. All presentations will take place on the first day. During the second day, we will make cheese and for that you will need 1-2 litres of milk, vinegar, and yoghurt.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In this auto-ethnographic paper, I shed light on the role sourdough and bread-making practices have played during the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating their agency and the new and renewed relations that emerged from them.
Paper long abstract:
Relying on auto-ethnography, I reflect on the role sourdough and bread-making practices have played during the COVID-19 pandemic. I explore the agency of a non-human entity—the sourdough—and the relations that emerge from nurturing it. In particular, I inquire what living relationally means for me—a professional migrant—in a time that is not only challenging, due to the pandemic and consequent lockdown away from my country of origin, but which has also forced me to proactively and creatively respond to being in a precarious employment. Sourdough and bread-making practices have allowed me to create, recreate, and reinforce new and existing relations. I, thus, indicate to what extent such practices activate kin making and knowledge making, whilst counterbalancing the alienation and distress that come from experiencing a pandemic.
Paper short abstract:
An intersubjective ethnographic exploration of the dialectical relation between microbes, spirituality and science
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I will delve into the spiritual conceptions of Wisdom, a young Namibian man with a deep and passionate fascination of human-microbial symbiosis. He perceives such a symbiosis to be a unifying factor across (Western-)scientific and spiritual/religious epistemological boundaries, and as a way for human beings to develop a more harmonious engagement with their surroundings. As he stated during my latest visit to his house: “I don’t think a baker could ever kill someone…”. I explore Wisdom’s spiritual reasoning and our intersubjective knowledge and practice exchanges over our shared experiences of forming symbiotic relations with microorganism through various fermentation practices such as sour-dough baking, komboucha brewing and lactic acid fermentation of vegetables. Through Wisdom's and my experiences of microbial symbiosis I first argue that we as ethnographers need to pay a closer attention to the ways in which our interlocutors forge systems of knowledge that bridge between otherwise rigid and seemingly contradictory epistemological and ontological boundaries. Secondly, I point to the methodological fruitfulness of engaging in shared everyday practices with our interlocutors and how intersubjective exchanges of everyday practices – in this case Wisdom’s and my shared fascination for fermentation – acts as sites for sharing embodied ethnographic knowledge and insights into the ontological and epistemological foundations for our interlocutors’ and our own daily practices.
Paper short abstract:
Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with traditional food practitioners in Turkey and Bulgaria, this paper focuses on the old practices of yogurt-making to demonstrate how fermentation constitutes a plot where ants, plants, and rains emerge as the protagonists.
Paper long abstract:
In my search of diverse yogurt-making practices, I noticed that some of them were already at risk of being lost as they were hardly practiced anymore. My intention with this paper is to record and thereby preserve by sharing the multispecies stories of three old methods of yogurt fermentation before they are totally forgotten. Each of these practices has a different mediation of fermentation. The first involves collaboration with an ant colony; the second uses the root of nettle (Urtica dioica); and the last one gets the help of springtime rains. These practices illuminate how people cultivate diverse and localized modes of multispecies collaborations in their daily lives to enhance nutrition, taste, and other properties of their staple food.
Although this paper takes fermentation and specifically yogurt as its starting point its broader ambition is to trace lost interspecies relationships and the “socio-natural” connectivity of food. Here I believe fermentation provides a fertile ground to grasp how we are made and unmade by the relations we cultivate with other species. From a multispecies perspective, these practices call for an ecological approach that puts practitioners in the context of an active engagement with beings around them. By thinking with fermentation, it provides insights on how localized foodways create the interdependent flow of relations and multispecies collaborations which differ substantially from one place to another like the indigenous tastes each location holds.
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 consumption and sustainable living, and how sociality, community, identity and emotional bonding is achieved through these discourses.
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 modern 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 ethical consumption and sustainable living, and how sociality, community, identity and emotional bonding is achieved through these discourses. The paper examines the value of human- microbial collaboration and how microbial cultures engender and maintain human cultural practices. Food crafting and the maker cultures that such practices nurture are prime examples of the social value of inter-species symbiosis between humans and microbes.