Microbiome Research and Race in the ‘Local South’

In today's biosciences the use of racial classifications is still contested. While ‘race’ is usually denied a biological reality, it still figures in human diversity and health research. Recently, the concept of race has become central in the rapidly growing field of human microbiome research, where it is widely use to highlight health problems (e.g., obesity, type-2 diabetes) suffered by socio-economically disadvantaged groups. Here, ‘race’ is not primarily genetic but refers to different microbial compositions (e.g., in the gut) of human groups in certain environments. This is why, despite its health-related promises, microbiome research faces two crucial problems: it might again lead to discrimination against research populations (e.g., non-white groups from the Global South). In addition, while microbiome research endorses populations’ local specificity, it still applies allegedly globally applicable, US-centric racial classifications. Thus, it lacks a conceptual framework to study human diversity in local contexts. This project solves these conceptual problems through an integrated (i) historical, (ii) philosophical, and (iii) participatory approach in collaboration with and interdisciplinary and international network with collaborators based in Latin America, South Africa, Germany and the UK.

The project is carried out in various stages, highlighting both the historical and philosophical aspects related to microbiome research to answer an overarching research question: How can scientists in human microbiome ecology adopt epistemically fruitful, non-discriminatory, and locally relevant classification criteria of human diversity and race?

In today's biosciences the use of racial classifications is still contested. While ‘race’ is usually denied a biological reality, it still figures in human diversity and health research. Recently, the concept of race has become central in the rapidly growing field of human microbiome research, where it is widely used to highlight health problems (e.g., obesity, type-2 diabetes) suffered by socio-economically disadvantaged groups. Here, ‘race’ is not primarily genetic but refers to different microbial compositions (e.g., in the gut) of human groups in certain environments. This shift from genes to microbes proceeds from ‘global to local’. Rather than globally distributed genetic ancestry, local factors like diet and lifestyles now serve as a basis for racial classification and to explain different disease susceptibility between groups.

Despite its health-related promises, microbiome research faces two crucial problems: it might again lead to discrimination against research populations (e.g., non-white groups from the Global South). In addition, while microbiome research endorses populations’ local specificity, it still applies allegedly globally applicable, US-centric racial classifications. Thus, it lacks a conceptual framework to study human diversity in local contexts. This project solves these conceptual problems through an integrated (i) historical, (ii) philosophical, and (iii) participatory approach.

By building on multisite collaboration with Latin American and South African human microbiome ecologists, it (i) reconstructs recent shifts in human diversity classification practices, and (ii) demonstrates when and why global and local racial categories are used, and what their epistemic virtues and limitations are. This allows creating a conceptual framework that integrates local into predominant global views of human diversity, without distorting the former or entailing discrimination. Finally, this project (iii) generates guidelines for scientists’ decision-making concerning usage or replacement of racial categories. This new classification tool will contribute to better identifying groups in the ‘Local South’ for microbial health interventions.