On the Contesting Conceptualisation of the Human Body: Between ‘Homo-Microbis’ and ‘Homo-Algorithmicus’

Abstract

Microbiome science has highlighted human and microbial interdependency, offering a radical epistemic shift from the individualistic view of the human body and self. Research has accordingly offered to see humans as ‘homo-microbis’ – complex biomolecular networks composed of humans and their associated microbes. While social scientists have begun to address microbiome science, the proliferation and commodification of the homo-microbial episteme have largely been overlooked. Based on an ethnographic account of a research project that offered microbiome-based personalised nutrition and the successful start-up that emerged from it, this article examines the emergence, proliferation, and commodification of the homo-microbial body. We show that this episteme necessarily depends on opaque machine learning algorithms; that the microbiome is paradoxically seen as a data-driven individuating marker; and that homo-microbis is, in fact, also a homo-algorithmicus – a being that can only access its non-human sub-parts by blindly following opaque algorithmic recommendations in an app.