The Microbiomisation of race: postgenomic determinism at the nexus between bioprospecting biodiversity and bioinequalities in microbial science

Resumen

The human microbiome challenges the tenet of a fixed and self-contained human nature by recognising the role of microbes along with environmental and lifestyle factors in the shaping of the immune function. Does this mean that the material-semiotic paradigm of the immune self, or immunity-as-defence (Cohen, 2009), is obsolete? This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork of the human microbiome project ‘Microbiomes of Homes across Cultures’ (MHC) conducted between 2013 and 2017. MHC’s experimental core is based on the bioprospection of microbes from biodiversity-rich locales and peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. Among the principal aims of MHC was the search for ‘ancient microbes’ as potential solutions for restoring the microbiome of Western and westernised societies. Through the development of the notion of the ‘microbiomisation of race’, the article demonstrates that, contrary some perspectives in ‘more-than-human’ (Braun & Whatmore, 2010) literature (including ‘multispecies’ approaches) (Hird, 2009; Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010; Lorimer, 2016), postgenomic microbial science re-enacts an immunity model of inclusion and exclusion, self and other. I substantiate this by evidencing that the microbiomisation of race is constituted within a nexus between bioprospection (i.e. population genomic research) and bioinequalities (personalised medicine projects).