Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HealthXCross (Remaking Health in a Microbial Planet by Crossing Space, Time, Species and Epistemic Cultures)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-09-01 bis 2023-02-28
HealthXCross is a multi-sited ethnographic study that aspires to offer timely insights into the interplay between knowledge making and changing health practices in times of profound ecological, socio-technical and economic transition and to advance anthropological understandings of the contradictory but constitutive aspects of living together and being in relation.
HealthXCross will explore how microbiome research is reconfiguring concepts and practices of health, analyzing how scientists innovate through open-data platforms. These platforms collect, compare and aggregate - through advanced AI technology - microbial data with other kinds of data (medical, environmental, social etc.) in the attempt of reconfiguring concepts and practices of health for intervening in both environmental and human health.
The microbiome is the ecological community of bacteria and viruses that live in, on and around us humans. Microbes affect human health by connecting humans with their environment. In fact, the composition and activity of the microbiome are central to human processes such as metabolism, weight regulation, immune system structure and function, allergic reactions, and even personality and mood. Human activities such as diet, birth, antibiotic use, and interactions with other humans and animals shape and change the microbiome, just as these microbial communities shape and change their human hosts. Health, therefore, can be seen as a property emerging from an ecosystem, so dislocating the anthropocentric view.
The microbiome science provides information on how environments, humans and microbes are inextricably entangled in ongoing processes of life and permits a symbiotic understanding of health and ecology. In fact, the study of the microbiome offers an entry point to the understanding of different ecosystems and issues such as human nutrition and chronic diseases, plants’ nutrient acquisition and stress tolerance, soil and aquatic environments’ stability, regional ecological disruptions, reductions in agricultural productivity, the degradation of waste matter, poor soil health, global climate processes, or the conversion of natural materials into renewable sources of biofuels or energy.
The project will focus on three analytical tensions delineated with the following objectives:
1) DIVERSITY
To understand how biological diversity is constructed through technology by aggregating.
2) SPACETIMES OF INNOVATION
To examine how national scientific spacetimes contribute to and stay in tension with the overall objective of creating innovation.
3) HEALTH
To analyse healthcare practices in light of post-human perspectives based on aggregating human and non-human data.
The project is committed to create symbiotic processes of research collaboration in the frame of open-data platforms with the scope to generate new knowledge in the experimental process across space, time, species and disciplines. In particular, the project will examine the following aspects of the research open data platforms:
• remake notions of biological diversity through technology by crossing conventional categorizations (space, time, species) and epistemic cultures;
• create and emerge from the diverse spacetimes of innovations across the global North and the global South;
• shape new trends in healthcare and health governance.
HealthXCross will explore how microbiome research is reconfiguring concepts and practices of health, analyzing how scientists innovate through open-data platforms. These platforms collect, compare and aggregate - through advanced AI technology - microbial data with other kinds of data (medical, environmental, social etc.) in the attempt of reconfiguring concepts and practices of health for intervening in both environmental and human health.
The microbiome is the ecological community of bacteria and viruses that live in, on and around us humans. Microbes affect human health by connecting humans with their environment. In fact, the composition and activity of the microbiome are central to human processes such as metabolism, weight regulation, immune system structure and function, allergic reactions, and even personality and mood. Human activities such as diet, birth, antibiotic use, and interactions with other humans and animals shape and change the microbiome, just as these microbial communities shape and change their human hosts. Health, therefore, can be seen as a property emerging from an ecosystem, so dislocating the anthropocentric view.
The microbiome science provides information on how environments, humans and microbes are inextricably entangled in ongoing processes of life and permits a symbiotic understanding of health and ecology. In fact, the study of the microbiome offers an entry point to the understanding of different ecosystems and issues such as human nutrition and chronic diseases, plants’ nutrient acquisition and stress tolerance, soil and aquatic environments’ stability, regional ecological disruptions, reductions in agricultural productivity, the degradation of waste matter, poor soil health, global climate processes, or the conversion of natural materials into renewable sources of biofuels or energy.
The project will focus on three analytical tensions delineated with the following objectives:
1) DIVERSITY
To understand how biological diversity is constructed through technology by aggregating.
2) SPACETIMES OF INNOVATION
To examine how national scientific spacetimes contribute to and stay in tension with the overall objective of creating innovation.
3) HEALTH
To analyse healthcare practices in light of post-human perspectives based on aggregating human and non-human data.
The project is committed to create symbiotic processes of research collaboration in the frame of open-data platforms with the scope to generate new knowledge in the experimental process across space, time, species and disciplines. In particular, the project will examine the following aspects of the research open data platforms:
• remake notions of biological diversity through technology by crossing conventional categorizations (space, time, species) and epistemic cultures;
• create and emerge from the diverse spacetimes of innovations across the global North and the global South;
• shape new trends in healthcare and health governance.
Fieldwork access in 5 different labs (2 in US, 1 in the Pacific, 1 in North Africa, 1 in Europe); Recruting and compositon of the team; start of PI fieldwork
Progress beyond state of the art: Establishment of a framework for collective work in anthropology; Collaborations between anthropologists and life scientists
Expected results: understanding of how the microbiome connects biosocial factors across scales and disciplines
Expected results: understanding of how the microbiome connects biosocial factors across scales and disciplines