ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses three concerns: how the microbiome is produced as an experimental object in the context of genomic knowledge, what social science approaches to microbiome science have emerged, and how knowledge about microbiota is crucially bound to the highly specific technologies used to sequence microbial genomes. The study of microbiomes pivots on the union of these new metagenomic technologies with gnotobiotics, scientific practice of creating and using "germ-free" experimental animals. Social studies of microbiomes respond to the call to account for the political and social lives of nonhumans found in multispecies ethnography. For John Hartigan, cultural analyses of microbiomics are not just about how humans think about nonhumans—they allow us to think bioculturally. As human microbial ecologists stand on precipice of defining human health through relationships with our co-evolved microbiota, work also emerges for scholars in social sciences, public health, and bioethics, investigating the proprietary ownership of microbes and new necessities of biomolecular privacy required.
