Prospecting Pure Life: Sampling Practices in Human Microbiome Research

• In Event: Biomedicine and Difference

Abstract

From epidemiological questions to mysteries in human evolution, scientists are seeking answers in the human microbiome. In particular, researchers are directing attention toward a new frontier in microbiological exploration: the hunter-gatherer microbiome. The Hadza people in Tanzania and Matses people in Peru are at the center of flora sampling practices, as the Human Microbiome Project replaces the Human Genome Project in an effort map diverse microbiological samples. In this process, hunter-gatherer bodies have become representative of Western consumers’ desire for a microbiome supposedly unadulterated by modernity. In this paper, I analyze several microbiome-related projects, both public and commercial, that range from raw biome data collection to medical application-based research. My findings address striking discourses about ancientness, purity, risk, origin, and biodiversity that run through these projects.

In this study, I bring recent theories from Kim TallBear (on race, indigeneity, and science), Jordana Rosenberg (on critiquing molecularity), and Elizabeth Povinelli (on the “tense of the other”) to broader notions of biopower and bioeconomies. I argue that the microbiome now plays a significant role in our understanding of health and the value derived from liveliness. But this paper also interrogates the embedded meanings in everyday practices of medical and anthropological research and continues the project of reading STS through indigenous and postcolonial theories.

Author

• Sophia Anne Strosberg, University of Minnesota