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Article ID: CBB874316885

Low-carbon cows: From microbial metabolism to the symbiotic planet (June 2022)

Andreas Folkers (Author)
Sven Opitz (Author)

Social Studies of Science
Volume: 52
Issue: 3
Pages: 330-352

URI: https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127221077987

DOI: 10.1177/03063127221077987

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Agriculture Technoscience; science and technology studies Climate change Microbes Biopolitics Symbiosis Case studies Science and society Engineering, Environmental Greenhouse gases Cattle 21st century Margulis, Lynn

This article focuses on two projects – one at a large chemical company and the other at a small start-up – to intervene in the relations between cows and ruminal microbes to reduce bovine methane emissions. It describes these interventions as ‘symbiotic engineering’: a biopolitical technique targeting holobionts and becoming effective by working on interlaced sets of living things. Based on the analysis of these cases, the article elucidates a planetary symbiopolitics (Helmreich) that connects ‘molecular biopolitics’ (Rose) and ‘microbiopolitics’ (Paxson) to ‘bovine biopolitics’ (Lorimer, Driessen) and the politics of climate change. We critically investigate the spatial imaginaries of symbiotic engineering practices that single out the microbial realm as an Archimedean point to address planetary problems. This technoscientific vision resonates with the notion of the ‘symbiotic planet’ advanced by Lynn Margulis that depicts the Earth System, or Gaia, as a vast set of relations among living things down to the tiniest microbes. Margulis’ concept, as well as the ‘symbiotic view of life’ (Gilbert, Scott, Sapp) has been embraced in recent debates in STS as a way to think of multispecies worldings. The article contributes critically to these debates by showing what happens when the topology of the symbiotic Earth becomes the operating space for symbiotic engineering practices.

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