Resetting urban human‐microbial relations in pandemic times

Maller, Cecily Jane

doi:10.1111/gec3.12680

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 107 publications

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“…The urban realm as a particular hotbed for microbial agency has also been the focus of several interventions, including Nigel Clark's (2001) analysis on the cosmopolitan nature of urban bodies and their microbial symbionts, grounded in Lynn Margulis' revolutionary insights into symbiogenesis. More recently, as an intervention concerned with balancing covid-19-driven imaginaries of microbial agency, Maller's (2023) review summarises the various microbiomes of the city and, drawing from work across more-than-human geography and the natural sciences, offers an affirmative biopolitical and relational stance. In his account of the "zoonotic city" focuses on pathogenic microbial agency and its multiscalar connections with (extra)urban sites.…”

Section: Microbes In the Critical Social Sciencesmentioning

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: Microbes In the Critical Social Sciencesmentioning

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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Categorising and cohabiting: practices as the site of biosocial becoming

Shove,

Blue,

Kelly

2024

Soc Theory Health

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In this article we argue that social practices, which consist of sayings and doings that extend across space and time, generate and sustain distinctive patterns of microbial interaction. In taking this approach, we position practice theory within and not outside the realm of contemporary biological processes, including processes that matter for human health. In working towards this conclusion, we show how categories and distinctions (e.g. between communicable and non-communicable disease) are embedded in medical responses and in the lives of potentially harmful bacteria like Helicobacter Pylori. Our next step is to explain how social practices engender patterns of cohabitation, interaction and mutual adaptation between microbes within and beyond the body, processes we illustrate with reference to anti-microbial resistance. The conclusion that human and microbial coexistence is, in various ways, defined by the lives of social practices provides an important bridge between the social and natural sciences and a starting point from which to approach fundamental questions about the dynamics of biosocial becoming, and the part that public policies play in these processes.

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Resetting urban human‐microbial relations in pandemic times

Cited by 4 publications

References 107 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

Categorising and cohabiting: practices as the site of biosocial becoming

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