The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life
When:
—
Venue:
Online
The Anthropocene is the outcome of an antibiotic mode of managing life, characterised by systemic efforts to eradicate, control and simply ecological systems. This rationalisation of life has enabled a specific and selective mode of human flourishing. But it comes at a cost. Across a range of scales, we are now experiencing Anthropocene blowback: the intensified emergence of pathogenic and dangerous risks, from pandemics to extreme weather.
In response to these risks, a growing range of scientists, citizens and politicians are experimenting with probiotic approaches to managing life. Probiotic approaches use life to manage life; introducing ecologically significant keystone species to deliver desired functions and services. Examples range from rewilding to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change in the countryside to microbiome restoration for gut and soil health. These interventions involve target programmes of controlled decontrolling.
This lecture provides an overview of these developments, reflecting on the specific mode of biopolitics they perform, and the unequal implications of the probiotic turn for the human and nonhuman lives it governs and neglects.
Contact name:
Paul Watt
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Jamie Lorimer
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Jamie Lorimer is Professor of Environmental Geographer in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. His past research explores the histories, politics and cultures of wildlife conservation. Projects have ranged across scales and organisms – from elephants to hookworms. Jamie is the author of Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation after Nature (Minnesota, 2015) and The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life (Minnesota, 2020). Probiotic Planet argues that a shift is underway in important parts of the Western world in which citizens and scientists are using life to manage life: reintroducing species and managing ecologies to deliver desired functions and services. Jamie has explored this shift in past work on rewilding, looking at the introduction of keystone species like beavers. His current research explores the social and environmental dimensions of livestock farming in the context of the concerns about the relationships between agriculture and global heating.