Dairy Struggles: Milk, Microbes and the Politics of Time

Principal Investigator: Matthäus Rest

Since 2024

Building on five years of collaborative ethnography embedded in a group of biomolecular archaeologists, my work on ancient and contemporary aims to problematize diverse politics of time. How do archaeological scientists utilize novel methods in ancient DNA research for the detection of prehistoric milk microbes to make claims about human history and human-animal-microbes coevolution? How did people talk about fermentation before the discovery of microbes? How is milk’s perishability overdetermining the weak bargaining position of modern dairy farmers vis-a-vis dairies? What are the consequences of rising levels of antibiotic contamination and antimicrobial resistances for the future of lactic acid bacteria and the multispecies fermentation collectives they are part of? My conceptual goal for this project is to contribute to novel forms of social theory through a critique of recent attempts to establish a “more-than-human” anthropology or go “against,” “beyond” or “after” the Human. Instead, in conversation with indigenous and feminist onto-epistemologies I will propose an anthropology “before” and “less than” the Enlightenment Human.