Environmental imaginaries and the environmental sciences of antimicrobial resistance

Abstract

The environmental dimension of antimicrobial resistance has expanded the scope and scale of policy concern and research interest in antimicrobial resistance to include not just clinical and agricultural settings but a wide variety of environmental spaces and places. This article examines the ways in which environmental scientists researching the environmental dimension of antimicrobial resistance produce culturally specific forms of environmental imaginaries as a means of stabilising complex, uneven and open-ended environmental, human and microbial relations. These imaginaries work to structure the gaze of scientific enquiry towards particular places, objects and scales, and justify particular decisions and practices over others. Drawing on the imaginaries literature from Science and Technology Studies and Cultural Geography, our analysis examines the spatial and temporal dimensions of environmental imaginaries. In doing so, we identify four imaginaries, the environmental hotspot, the pristine environment, the fluid environment and the environmental reservoir. These distinct but interconnected imaginaries produce a constellation of ideas and assumptions that shape scientific practices, the ways and places in which the environmental dimension of antimicrobial resistance becomes known, and the types of interventions and actions that are made apprehensible as a result. In opening these imaginaries to interrogation at this relatively formative stage, we aim to identify ways in which social science contributions can complement and enhance the ways in which the figure of ‘the environment’ is brought to bear on responses to antimicrobial resistance.

Is ecology anti-urban? Urban ideas and imaginaries across one hundred years of ecological publications

“…This is all the more obvious in recent articles in which ecologists offer recommendations regarding future urban planning. Contributing to existing discussions on imaginaries and more specifically urban imaginaries, their performative dimensions (Helliwell et al, 2020;Salomon Cavin and Kull, 2017;Watkins, 2015) and their political implications (Slater, 2009), our analysis highlights that urban imaginaries in ecology becoming more complex and ambivalent coincides with the development of ideas around planning and an increase in conceptual debates on cities and urbanisation. Future studies focusing on ecological planning within the city and the role played by ecological science within urban planning projects, as well as studies based on interviews with ecologists, could further highlight the performative aspects of ecology's urban imaginaries.…”

Antimicrobial resistance in dairy slurry tanks: a critical point for measurement and control

“…At a superficial level, the slurry tank appears to meet many criteria presumed to define a ‘hotspot’ for AMR, which cite a high abundance of bacterial populations and the routine presence of antimicrobial residue (80). However, the concept of an AMR ‘hotspot’, where bacterial and antimicrobial abundance are assumed to lead to increases in AMR prevalence, alongside the related concept of ‘reservoir’, assumed to represent the nascent AMR genes circulating in the environment poised to be mobilised through antimicrobial exposure, are open to critique (81). Our findings suggest that the tank, rather than generating resistance, can ameliorate resistance, depending on the waste management practice, and that slurry be stored for at least two months without fresh slurry inputs to the system/tank.…”

Antimicrobial Resistance in Dairy Slurry Tanks: A Critical Point for Measurement and Control

“…At a superficial level, the slurry tank appears to meet many criteria presumed to define a 'hotspot' for AMR, which cite a high abundance of bacterial populations and the routine presence of antimicrobial residue (Lima et al, 2020). However, the concept of an AMR 'hotspot', where bacterial and antimicrobial abundance are assumed to lead to increases in AMR prevalence, alongside the related concept of 'reservoir', assumed to represent the nascent AMR genes circulating in the environment poised to be mobilised through antimicrobial exposure, are open to critique (Helliwell et al, 2020). Our findings suggest that the tank, rather than generating resistance, can ameliorate resistance, depending on the waste management practice, and that slurry be stored for at least two months without fresh slurry inputs to the system/tank.…”