Paper short abstract:

How do certain forms of life, and bioactivities, come to count as promising? This paper provides an account on how Norwegian Arctic and subarctic microbes came to be seen as holding great potentials for the production of next generation antibiotics

Paper long abstract:

Bioprospecting is the search for forms of bioactivity in nature holding a commercial potential. It is often performed through a fairly standardized set of steps starting with the harvesting of samples in natural environments, sample preparation, production of isolates and extracts, screening, and chemical production. People involved in bioprospecting refer to these serial practices as the 'biodiscovery pipeline'. This paper provides an ethnographic account on scientists work in the biodiscovery pipeline to unlock the potentials of rare and exotic microbes towards the production of antibiotics that are likely to not encounter resistance. It turns a special attention to how rare Arctic and subarctic environments are often invoked to advertise the extraordinary properties of marine microbes as economic agents. In the biodiscovery pipeline, microbes are translated from just nature, to samples and isolates in petri dishes, and eventually into digital collections (data). I describe how scientist work to overcome microbes' resistance to be cultured and to inhabit research infrastructures.The paper describes scientist's research practices as extractive, infrastructural, and future oriented. I inquiry on how promise is inbuilt in infrastructural work (Anand, Gupta and Appel, 2018), and how the marine microbial biodiversity came to count as a national resource in Norway.

Anand, N., Gupta, A. and Appel, H. The Promise of Infrastructure. London: Duke University Press.

Paper short abstract:

Anthropological research on milk fermentation in two pastoral communities of different gender ideologies, followed by a bibliographic research on the writings of Aristotle and Francesco Redi, to the theories of Pasteur on microbes and Bruno Latour, form the basis of this presentation.

Paper long abstract:

Is fermentation a gendered process? This paper sheds light on the panel's questions about how do people live with microbes in fermentation or how boundaries of human and nonhuman bodies are un / made by the bacteria that flow between environments and bodies.

Anthropological research on milk fermentation in a matrilocal society of the Cyclades, Greece, followed by a bibliographic research which ranges from the writings of Aristotle and Francesco Redi, to the theories of Pasteur and Bruno Latour, form the basis of this presentation.

During my fieldwork, milk fermentation came out to be a highly microbiopolitical process informed by discourses concerning vital force, the generation of life, fertility and reproduction. Although the process remains the same in a Basque pastoral society, it becomes the object of a different narrative on the agency of ferments, due to the different gender ideology of the community. I suggest that the representations of vital processes, the ethno-theories of life growth, regeneration, reproduction or decay and the causes that produce them are reflected in and reinforced by gender ideologies.

The two different theories of milk fermentation highlighted by the Greek and the Basque communities create two different materialities of milk: lively and active or inert and passive.

There is however a blind spot in these different optics towards materiality: the different gender ideologies which inform these optics rely on the existence or not of the dichotomy between spirit and matter, dichotomy that, as through a kind of epistemological fate, confines matter to inactivity.

Paper short abstract:

An ethnography of microbial intimacies on a Beninese poultry farm in the context of economic scarcity and social ecologies of food production. How are immunity and intimacies forged as hens and technicians live together with microbes in the context of food production and livelihood in West Africa?

Paper long abstract:

What life matters in the situated socioeconomics of food production? How are the politics of public health and profitability negotiated? What kinds of microbial affiliations are forged—intentionally or incidentally—as a result?

I present the results of a brief ethnography and microbiology study of a poultry farm in Benin, West Africa. Located on the outskirts of the country's urban hub, the farm is a large, well-managed egg production enterprise, and employs around 15 technicians. The Director attributes his farm's success, in part, to the training he gives his technicians. As with any industrial farm, the health of the hens is closely observed. Biosecurity measures are employed, and health is managed with vaccinations, vitamins, and high quality, expensive feeds. In comparison, the technicians residing on the farm's boundary live in unhygienic conditions and struggle to manage their health and nutrition on meagre wages. Increasing production costs combined with decreasing product value result in cost-saving measures targeted at technicians' protective clothing. Thus, the hens and technicians are in continuous and intimate contact with each other's habitats and microbial companions.

The hens are seemingly valued more than the technicians, although neglecting the health of the latter risks the health of the former, creating porous boundaries that microbes—including drug-resistant pathogens—continuously cross. However, both hens and technicians appear healthy and strong. Drawing upon concepts of pathological life (Hinchliffe et al 2017), I examine immunity and intimacy as hens and technicians live together with microbes in social ecologies of food production and livelihood in West Africa.

Paper short abstract:

Viral and bacterial infections transmitted by blood have initiated deep changes in terms of legislation, discourse and practices in transfusion medicine. Microbes have a key-role in the difficulty between imperatives of providing sufficient blood and providing a safe blood for patients.

Paper long abstract:

In a context where blood is a powerful therapeutic means as well as a vector of diseases, the Belgian Red Cross, a monopoly body mandated by the State, has to ensure the best quality of blood products. The contaminated blood scandal (1980s) still impact transfusion practices today : the Red Cross has implemented a drastic blood donor filter system in order to minimize risks of infection for the recipient. Indeed, transfusion establishes a connection between a donor and a patient, to whom bacteria, viruses or parasites should not be given.

Specific blood compounds or certain types of blood are more sought after by the Red Cross, for example, donors from sub-saharan Africa, because of their particular phenotypic characteristics relevant for transfusion medicine. However, depending on travel destinations or native country, the risk of having been in contact with certain pathogens exclude the donor from blood donation. In this communication, I will talk about the challenge of managing these risks and of confining some types of microbes with which donors live, so that it cannot reach -through blood- people in vulnerable health. I will present some ethnographic materials of my research about blood donation and donors from sub-saharan Africa in Wallonia (Belgium) in order to discuss how microbes, these tiny invisible entities, can have massive repercussions going from nurse's contact with a donnor to a health organization.

Paper short abstract:

Lyme disease diagnostic and treatment problems is creating microbial socialities of political opposition between patients and scientists in Scotland. This paper explores how microbial sociality is performed as power and the effect this has on the flow of medical and social knowledge between groups.

Paper long abstract:

Recently medical authorities are publishing what patients long argued: Lyme disease, a multi-organ illness caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, is more problematic to diagnose and treat than previously thought. Due to its complex nature, B.burgdorferi may elude diagnostic tests and antibiotic treatment, which leaves a large number of patients undiagnosed and/or untreatable. In Scotland, years of disagreement over this has generated two social groups oftentimes in political opposition to one another. This paper explores how actors who "live with" B. burgdorferi in some shape or form - as patients, activists, scientists - are engaged in microbial socialities; how this sociality informs a political Other; and the effect this has on the flow of medical knowledge between groups.

My paper explores how microbial sociality is performed as power by patients demanding political and medical recognition of their illness narratives. I introduce a patient spearheading activism in Scotland by building networks between patients, the media, biotechnologies and "Lyme-literate" politicians and scientists; and a young author negotiating her biocitizenship as a Lyme disease public figure within the constraints of her body as both powerful and damaged. Both form microbial sociality with "Lyme-literate" doctors to whom their trust, diet, money and blood is given. Indubitably, this microbial sociality inverts scientist-patient hierarchies: my paper therefore introduces the scientists who, in their quest to conduct "hard science", find themselves navigating the emotional lives of the bacteria in political limelight. Finally, I consider upcoming efforts to deconstruct these microbial social borders and their challenges.

Paper short abstract:

Following Donna Haraway's invitation to 'stay with the trouble,' this paper takes up the question of what HIV prevention and treatment might look like if we take a step away from the language of elimination and eradication to imagine a less hostile encounter between species, human and viral.

Paper long abstract:

How might humans as a species make peace with and live with HIV and other viruses? What do we miss when we only 'fight' HIV, categorizing it as enemy and other? Drawing on feminist science studies' recent articulations regarding interspecies entanglements on planet Earth, this paper attempts to think with HIV: what kind of 'companion species' is it; how does it gets inscribed in human bodies; and how humanity has inscribed the virus over thirty plus years of living together? This odd companion, HIV, doesn't die once it is in us; it lives as long as we do, depending on us to host it; we keep it at bay, while also keeping it alive (by keeping ourselves, its host, alive), attending to nutrition, exercise and medicines. Similar to the way it can hide in our bodies, it hides from plain site, multiplying and thriving for many long years beyond the social gaze. And what are the advantages to co-habitation with this virus? What does it produce for humanity besides suffering and death? Among other things, it produces new forms of biosociality for the infected and affected, and interveners and researchers like us. It also increases the biovalue of particular populations, places and institutions, in addition to discourses of tolerance, human and patient rights. Moving from a framing of epidemic to one of endemic, is it possible to imagine a future in which we learn to 'live together' with HIV, a future where alterity is transformed into familiarity?