Bacterial Vaccine Development in Benin, West Africa: Anticipating the Post-Antibiotic World

• In Event: New Social Forms of the Post-Antibiotic Era: More-than-Human Hybrids, Governance and Knowledge of Human-Microbe Relations - I

Abstract

Evolving resistance has generated a quest for alternatives to antibiotics in order to survive the world where antibiotics are no longer available to cure common infections and prevent contamination during everyday operations.
The ethnographic focus of this paper is a clinical trial of a bacterial vaccine conducted in Benin, West-Africa, from participant observation and interviews conducted in 2017-2019. The vaccine is presented as an innovative technology that would circumvent the use of antibiotics in the treatment of diarrhea in the future. The case study demonstrates how the quest for alternatives to antibiotics not only pushes global health researchers towards new scientific discoveries and technologies, it also forces scientific communities to restructure their core practices regarding research tools, ideas of evidence, efficacy, and expertise.
Studying the vaccine as an emerging technology necessitates a post-human analysis that foregrounds the objects of the vaccine – the microbes. Therefore, for social scientists, the changes urge us to conceptualize microbes despite their metaphorical and methodological invisibility. Such analysis shows how microbes are vital and malleable, rather than stable and contained and this liveliness captures the gist of the problem – given the magnitude of the changes ahead, a post-antibiotic world is nearly impossible to imagine.

Author

• Salla Sariola, University of Helsinki