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Paper short abstract:

The paper explores Bokashi as an emerging form of symbiotic infrastructure that demands allying with microbes. This hands-on practice both challenges and complements currently existing infrastructural assemblages, and as such enables imagining different more-than-human futures.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores an emerging form of symbiotic infrastructure, which both challenges and complements currently existing infrastructural assemblages, and as such enables imagining different more-than-human futures.

Bokashi composting is a relatively new form of waste care in urban households. It is based on fermenting food waste with a help of a symbiotic consortium of beneficial microbes. The method makes practitioners aware of the multitude of microbes - and even requires allying with them. Welcoming unruly microbial life into an urban home challenges prevailing imaginations considering purity, health, danger, and even life and death. Therefore, in all its mundane messiness, bokashi is a hands-on practice of making different futures, and not solely for human benefit. However, bokashi is not all about unconditional welcoming. The paper, therefore, asks, what forms of communities and collectives are formed in the practice of bokashi composting. Whose health is being cared-for, and whose neglected? With whom do bokashi makers form bonds and ally with striving for collective futures? And further, who are closed out of these collectives?