Technomolecular flows in coastal cities: an anthropological approach to new materialist ethics of the anthropogenic microscale

Abstract

Urban life is crisscrossed and affected by events and matter in various scales, of which the microscopic has been only partly addressed in scholarship and policymaking. In this article, I propose that it is urgent to incorporate new materialist ethics for a better urban governance of technomolecular flows, that is the multiple ways anthropogenically induced microscopic elements are affecting cities. Chemicals, minerals, fungi, viruses, bacteria, and other forms of life and matter affect human and environmental health as well as the shape and materials of the built environment. Coastal cities are particularly prone to such flows of chemical-, mineral- and bio-materials because of their location between sea and land. Existing legal and institutional frameworks tend to lag behind the uses of microscopic elements by industry and urban dwellers. A new materialist ethics would help rethink institutional architectures and responses to existing entanglements and the emerging risks they pose.