Rethinking the history of microbiology: new actors, geographies, places of knowledge, and ecologies

TL;DR

This paper explores new ways to study the history of microbiology by focusing on diverse geographies, actors, and ecological relationships beyond traditional narratives.

Contribution

The paper proposes three novel approaches to expand the historiography of microbiology with a more global and inclusive perspective.

Findings

Current microbiology historiography often centers on the Pasteur Institute and its followers.

New research suggests focusing on non-Pasteurian geographies and actors to broaden historical understanding.

The study of knowledge places beyond laboratories and complex microbial ecologies is encouraged.

Abstract

In this introduction, we first paint a panorama of the historiography of microbiology from the end of the nineteenth century until today, spanning from Pasteurian hagiographies, institutional histories, STS-informed analyses to critical research on the emergence of microbiology in an age of global empires. We then suggest three possibilities for historians and anthropologists to rethink the past and present of microbiology: (1) by centralizing the focus of their analyses on geographies and actors outside of the realm of the Pasteur Institute and of the Pasteurians; (2) by studying places of knowledge beyond the laboratory and their interactions with the laboratory; and (3) by researching the past and present of complex ecologies that go beyond sole interactions between humans and pathogenic microbes. These three ways of recentralizing the history of microbiology are not unprecedented nor were they firstly enacted in this collection. On the contrary, this collection builds on a growing stream of innovative research and widens current avenues of research, helping thus to rethink the history of microbiology in a more global and inclusive way.