Call for Papers for the panel: "Microbial living in the time of antimicrobial
<br>resistance“
<br>
<br>at the 17th Annual STS conference, 7-8 May 2018, Graz, Austria
<br>
<br>Submission deadline: 19 January 2018
<br>
<br>Salla SARIOLA (University of Turku) Finland; Matthäus REST (Max Planck
<br>Institute for the Science of Human History), Germany; Charlotte BRIVES (Centre
<br>Emile Durkheim, Université de Bordeaux), France
<br>
<br>This panel explores new social forms generated by the global increase of
<br>antimicrobial resistance (AMR). While antibiotics are increasingly becoming
<br>redundant due to drug resistance, modern medicine is at the risk of being
<br>turned back by a century. As a response of this threat, various new social
<br>forms are emerging. These include new biotechnological solutions:
<br>super-antibiotics, vaccines and bacteriophages against drug resistant
<br>microbes; regulatory structures that enable their research; ensembles of
<br>funding structures between start-ups and universities; as well as social
<br>groups working towards living with bacteria, rather than against them. The
<br>panel conceptualises the new social forms to include post-human assemblages
<br>and their more-than-human agency. In this era, we argue, it is vital to gain a
<br>more granular view of the various practices of relation-making between humans,
<br>animals and microbes, and how they are affected by the threat and reality of
<br>antibiotics and AMR. Taking cue from Foucault’s notion of biopolitics
<br>(1978), Paxson (2008) has conceptualised the encounters of microbes, humans
<br>and politics as ‘micro-biopolitical’, keeping domains of microbes, power
<br>and governance squarely in view. While empirical and ethnographic examples of
<br>such co-existence are sparse, the possibility of studying pathogens in social
<br>sciences has encouraged Lorimer to argue that our disciplines are undergoing a
<br>‘probiotic turn’ (Lorimer, 2017). What does micro-biopolitics look like in
<br>the context of increasing antimicrobial resistance? This panel is interested
<br>in post-human assemblages of microbial living, in the context of AMR. Topics
<br>could include, but are not limited to, the following:
<br>- Studies of novel biotechnologies to seek alternatives to antibiotics
<br>- Biographies of antibiotics and diagnostics and the pharmaceutical industry
<br>and other R&D endeavours
<br>- How particular subjects and nations are constructed as global health targets
<br>of AMR related activities, policies and research
<br>- How are resistomes and microbiotas explored and compared?
<br>- Use of antibiotics in food production and managing life-stock, and the
<br>so-called one-health approach to the study of AMR
<br>- How are antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance affecting the human-microbe
<br>relations in fields like fermentation?
<br>- How boundaries of bodies are made
<br>
<br>KEYWORDS: microbiopolitics, antimicrobial resistance, living with microbes
<br>
<br>To submit an abstract please go to
<br>https://conference.aau.at/event/143/call-for-abstracts/
<br>
<br>
<br>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<br>
<br>Matthäus Rest
<br>
<br>Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
<br>Kahlaische Straße 10
<br>07745 Jena
<br>Germany
<br>
<br>+49 3641 686-692
<br>rest@shh.mpg.de
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