This book is an ethnographic exploration of what it means to be human from a more-than-human perspective, the microbial perspective. It engages with the scientific study of the microbiome and the vast microbial biodiversity that surrounds and constitutes us. Microbes connect human bodies with the environment in which they live and have important implications for both human and environmental health. Scientists studying the microbiome are explorers of uncharted life and in this venture they are constrained by onto-epistemic working practices grounded in the reductionist paradigm of molecular biology. At the same time, however, they configure the microbiome ecosystem as an aspirational form of ecological co-habitation. The aim of the book is to critically explore the ethical, political and ontological implications of microbiome science in times of profound socio-technical and ecological transition and engage with them productively from an anthropological perspective. It suggests ways to revitalize current debates within medical anthropology, environmental anthropology, science and technology studies and anthropology at large, especially with regard to posthumanism, the ontological turn and critical data study.
Author(s): Roberta Raffaetà
Series: Routledge Studies in Anthropology
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 223
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
1.1 Why Microbes?
1.2 Humans and Microbes: the Relational and Posthuman Perspective of Anthropology
1.3 What Does It Mean to Be Human? Towards an Anthropology of Nonhumans
1.4 Transformations of Biopolitics
1.5 From Microbes to the Microbiome: Methodological Aspects of a Laboratory Ethnography
1.6 Audience and Content
Notes
References
2 What Are Microbes?
2.1 Microbes as Individual Entities
2.1.1 Contagion and Humoral Medicine
2.1.2 Louis Pasteur and the ‘Discovery’ of Microbes
2.1.3 Microbes, Health and Society After Pasteur
2.1.4 Microbes and Molecular Biology
2.2 Microbes as an Ecosystem
2.2.1 Russia and the Study of Symbiotic Processes
2.2.2 Environmental Microbiology
2.3 Metagenomics: Combining Two Visions
2.4 Rethinking the Tree of Life – Rethinking Kinship
Notes
References
3 Microbes and Health: A Paradigm Shift
3.1 The Microbiome and Human Health
3.2 Epigenetics
3.3 Microbes as Epigenetic Mediators
3.4 The Concept of ‘Environment’ in Epigenetics
3.5 The Concept of ‘Environment’ in Anthropology: a New Look at Nature and Culture
3.6 Towards an Ecosystemic Perspective of Health
3.7 ‘Ancestral Microbes’ and Modern Health
3.7.1 Bioethical Criticism
3.7.2 Beyond Criticism 1: Redefining Health in Terms of the Difference Between Normality and Normativity
3.7.3 Beyond Criticism 2: Redefining the Link Between Nature and Health
Notes
References
4 Studying Microbes: Wet Biology and Dry Biology
4.1 Wet Biology and Dry Biology
4.1.1 Lab Mice
4.2 ‘Dry’ Epistemic Practices
4.2.1 Identifying Microbial Communities ‘In the Night Sky’ – Data Analysis and Profiling
4.2.2 Development, Assessment and Updating of Informatics Tools
4.2.3 ‘Curating’ Data
4.3 In the ‘Wet’ Basement
4.3.1 Extracting the DNA
4.3.2 Lab Life
4.3.3 Creating the Library
4.4 From the Basements to the Sequencing Machines Room: Comings and Goings Between Wet and Dry Biology
Notes
References
5 “Just Think Computationally!”: How the ‘Natives’ Think
5.1 Artificial Intelligence
5.2 Is the Microbiome a Kind of Food, a Place Or a Lifestyle?
5.3 Reductionism and Error in Metagenomics
5.4 Statistics and Realism
5.5 “But Are the Microbes We See Real?”
5.5.1 Reality of Theories Or Reality of Scientific Entities?
5.5.2 A False Dichotomy? Experimental Practices as Epistemic Practices
5.5.3 Multiple Ontologies Or Similar Ontologies? Different Algorithms But the Same Epistemology
5.5 Being Pragmatic Between Accuracy and Feasibility
5.6 Reformulating Theory in Practice
Notes
References
6 The Ethics and Politics of the Pragmatic Approach
6.1 Learning to Be Pragmatic
6.2 The Pragmatic Approach and Categorisation: Who Are the ‘Westerners’?
6.3 Gender and the Microbiome: Is the Placenta Sterile?
6.4 ‘Biology Is Magic!’: the Pragmatic Approach and Humility
6.5 Critical Algorithm/big Data Studies: Bioinformatics and Anthropology After Their Encounter
Notes
References
7 “Overselling the Microbiome”
7.1 The Bubonic Plague in New York
7.2 P-Hacking Or How (Not) to Balance the Books
7.3 Tell Me Your Microbiome and I’ll Tell You Who You Are! Microbiome and Startups
7.3.1 Scientific, Economic and Ethical Aspects of Personalised Medicine
7.4 Health, Participation and Citizen Science: Research Caught Between Passion and Profit
7.4 Science and Ethics
7.6 “Theory Is Dead. Long Live Theory”
Notes
References
8 The Microbiome, Genetics and Postgenomics
8.1 The Molecular Vision – Occupational Myopias
8.2 From Molecular Vision to Ecosystemic Vision
8.2.1 The Mysteries of the Faecal Transplant
8.2.2 Functionalisms: Metaproteomics, Metabolomics and Metatranscriptomics in Comparison With Anthropology
8.3 Genomics and Postgenomics: Two Different Developments of the Cybernetic Paradigm
Notes
References
9 The Microbial Ecosystem at the Crossroads Between Disciplines
9.1 The Microbial Ecosystem as a Model Ecosystem
9.2 Systems Thinking and Its Critics
9.3 The Ecosystem as Aspirational Technology
9.4 Studying the Microbial Ecosystem in an Interdisciplinary Way
9.5 Reformulating the Problem of the ‘Reality’ of Science
9.6 Rewriting the Human: Hopes and Enigmas
Notes
References
10 Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
