Dr. Mara Linden, University of Mainz, Cultural Geography
Wo: Seminarraum 00.210, Tennenlohe, Wetterkreuz 15
Moderation: Dr. Aaron Bradshaw
Most people have consumed fermented products: coffee, yoghurt, pickles, or kombucha. Another staple that has recently become trendy again is sourdough bread – but none of these foods would exist without microbes as co-actors. The trend towards fermented foods reflects an attention towards the positive side of microbial action rather than seeing microbes only as harmful viral or bacterial threats to human life, in what has been termed a “probiotic turn” (Lorimer 2020). But what does the trend towards fermentation tell us about human life, society, and relations with nature and environment?
This presentation explores these microbial more-than-human relations by focusing on sourdough bread-making. By conceptualising yeasts and bacteria as co-workers, it analyses the fragile, contested and sometimes unruly relationships between microbes, humans and the environment. From the microbial, it explores the conditions of production, consumption and the socio-political relations in which bread-making takes place. Using autoethnography and insights from artisan bakers, Mara Linden’s postdoctoral project highlights microbial-human relations in the context of sourdough assemblages and the technologies to capture, tame, and domesticate microbial actors. She shows how actively considering microbial actors as co-workers and co-creators of human-microbial-environments might make humans more attuned to and caring for more-than-human life.
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