Megan MacGregor

Genomic methods of understanding microbes as ecosystems have generated the concept of the microbiome, a term that refers to the combined microorganisms and/or microbial genomes within a given environment—often the human body. Increasingly, microbiome scientists use “dysbiosis” to characterize microbial ecosystems that are out of balance, potentially resulting in a range of metabolic, developmental, and immune disorders associated with “Westernization” or “industrialization.” This study investigates how the emerging field of microbiome science understands, maps, and diagnoses problematic or “dysbiotic” microbiomes. It examines claims about how modern human environments affect health, the ideas about modernity upon which these claims draw, and attendant shifts in therapeutic logics. This project asks: (i) How is the development of microbial therapeutics changing contemporary understandings of health? (ii) How are human microbiomes designated healthy or unhealthy? (iii) How is the emerging arena of microbial therapeutics changing the pharmaceutical landscape in the United States and Mexico? As microbiome science is increasingly associated with both interdisciplinarity and global projects, it becomes a key site for understanding how science contributes to broader conceptions of the relationships between unstable modern environments and human health.