Industrializing Bacterial Work: Microbiopolitics, Biogas Alchemy, and the French Waste Management Sector

Daniel, François-Joseph

doi:10.1177/01622439221119851

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 40 publications

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“…Microbial metabolism, enrolled as a form of nonhuman labour (Krzywoszynska , 2020), is at the heart of urban reproduction, being centrally involved in unglamorous, taken-for-granted, and often spatially invisible and/or distal contexts such as agricultural production, drinking water treatment, and the circulation of (more-than-just-)human waste. Some authors have begun to analyse the various mundane and uncharismatic microbial ecologies involved in the metabolism (and valorisation) of waste streams (Holmberg, 2019;Daniel, 2023). Other accounts focusing on waste metabolism implicitly enrol microorganisms in the material transformations of the urban realm .…”

Section: Introduction: Microbes In the Multispecies Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

The invisible city: The unglamorous biogeographies of urban microbial ecologies

Bradshaw

2023

Preprint

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More-than-human, multispecies, and animals’ geographic accounts of the city have tended to focus on large, charismatic, and wild organisms, to the detriment of spatially invisible other-than-humans central to urban reproduction. At the same time, urban microbial geographies have foregrounded embodied interactions between humans and microorganisms, whether they are symbiotic or pathogenic, often marginalising the material contributions of extracorporeal microbiomes to the urban fabric. Building from these two blindspots, this article focuses on microbial ecologies that live constitutively outside of (other-than-)human bodies and which are intimately caught up in the metabolic intensities and infrastructural environments of the urban realm. There are two key aims: 1) to explore different forms of urban microbial ecologies and 2) to examine their relationships with urban infrastructures and reproduction. My disciplinary lenses are animals’ geographies and urban ecology and my case study focuses on urban water metabolism. Thus, based on empirical fieldwork on the urban river Lea in East London, and supplemented by scientific literature and technical documents, I analyse three urban microbial ecologies that correspond to the urban realms ‘extended microbiomes’: those involved in slow sand filtration for the treatment of drinkable water, those involved in sewage treatment via the activated sludge process, and those emerging and evolving in disused urban canal infrastructure. These processes spatially manage microbial growth and modulate the distribution of different forms of microbial agency with important effects for the smooth functioning of urban water metabolism. Yet, considering the specific materiality and ecological agency of microbes points to a more-than-human contingency and indeterminacy at the centre of urban reproduction. Urban human-microbial co-evolution and is mired with uncertainties, ‘black boxes’, and unintended consequences.

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Section: Introduction: Microbes In the Multispecies Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

The invisible city: The unglamorous biogeographies of urban microbial ecologies

Bradshaw

2023

Preprint

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The invisible city: The mundane biogeographies of urban microbial ecologies

Bradshaw

2024

Geography and Environment

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More‐than‐human, multispecies and animal geographic accounts of the city have tended to focus on large, charismatic and wild organisms, to the detriment of spatially invisible other‐than‐humans that are central to urban reproduction. At the same time, urban microbial geographies have foregrounded embodied interactions between humans and microorganisms, whether they are symbiotic or pathogenic, often marginalising the material contributions of extracorporeal microbiomes to the urban fabric. Building from these two blindspots, this article focuses on microbial ecologies that live constitutively outside of (other‐than‐)human bodies and which are intimately caught up in the metabolic intensities and infrastructural environments of the urban realm. There are two key aims: (1) to explore different forms of urban microbial ecologies and (2) to examine their relationships with urban infrastructures and reproduction. My disciplinary lenses are animal geography, microbe studies and urban ecology and my case studies are focused on urban water metabolism. Thus, based on empirical fieldwork on the urban River Lea in East London and supplemented by scientific literature and technical documents, I analyse three urban microbial ecologies that correspond to the urban realms’ ‘extended microbiomes’: those involved in slow sand filtration for the treatment of drinkable water, those involved in sewage treatment via the activated sludge process and those emerging and evolving in disused urban canal infrastructure. These processes spatially manage microbial growth and modulate the distribution of different forms of microbial agency with important effects for the smooth functioning of urban water metabolism. I suggest these ecologies correspond to the ‘spaces' of microbes in the city, and characterise a mundane system of repetition and regulation. However, microbes continue to assert their agency within the spaces of urban water metabolism, create their own places and worlds and highlight a more‐than‐human contingency and indeterminacy at the heart of urban reproduction.

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The emergence of microbiological inputs and the challenging laboratorisation of agriculture: lessons from Brazil and Mexico

Goulet,

Fonteyne,

Ridaura

et al. 2024

Agric Hum Values

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In this article, we analyse the tensions associated with the emergence of microorganism-based agricultural inputs in two Latin American countries, Brazil and Mexico. More specifically, we examine the ways in which these technologies, which are based on the use of living organisms, leave public microbiology research laboratories and are further developed by manufacturers or farmers. To this end, we draw on the concept of the ‘laboratorisation’ of society, part of the actor-network theory. We show that the emergence of these technologies is currently facing a number of challenges, due to the risks associated with their biological nature and the difficulty involved in establishing production processes as reliable as those used in reference laboratories. Whether produced by companies or on farms, the quality and safety of the practices and of these products are the subject of debate, as well as the focus of scientific, economic and political scrutiny. These microbiological inputs are evidence for the transformation of the relationship between science, industry, users and politics that is taking place around the emergence of alternatives to synthetic chemical inputs in agriculture, and more broadly, about the use of microbiological resources in agriculture.

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Industrializing Bacterial Work: Microbiopolitics, Biogas Alchemy, and the French Waste Management Sector

Cited by 4 publications

References 40 publications

The invisible city: The unglamorous biogeographies of urban microbial ecologies

The invisible city: The unglamorous biogeographies of urban microbial ecologies

The invisible city: The mundane biogeographies of urban microbial ecologies

The emergence of microbiological inputs and the challenging laboratorisation of agriculture: lessons from Brazil and Mexico

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