Paper short abstract:

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork among Bokashi households, I explore, how are microbes enacted within bokashi. I ask, how are microbes known and communicated with and about in bokashi practice. To do this, I analyse corporeal encounters with bokashi and narrated stories of these encounters.

Paper long abstract:

Bokashi composting is a lay method of composting with a help of a specific consortium of ‘beneficial microbes’ which anaerobically ferment the organic matter, which are then rapidly incorporated by soil biota. The method produces nutritious soil in just a few weeks. The origins of bokashi lie in Japan and rural Southeast Asia, but during the recent few years, it has gained popularity also among Western and urban dwellers.

In my ethnographic fieldwork among bokashi making households, I have witnessed, how bokashi practicing makes us practitioners aware of the multitude of microbes ‘collaborating’ with us in transforming the waste substance into soil.

By drawing from my ethnographic fieldwork, I set out to explore, how are microbes enacted within bokashi practice. I ask, how is the existence of these tiny, invisible creatures known and how are they communicated with and about in bokashi practice. To do this, I analyse both corporeal encounters with bokashi matter as well as narrated stories of these encounters.

I propose that bokashi practice, in all its mundane everydayness, has a capacity to radically disrupt and transform waste relations as well as human-microbe 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 us practitioners aware of the microbial abundance of the world and providing us with will and skills for nurturing human-microbial relations.