TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 85
even say that the new social media function to a large extent by
infection, as the recent use of a term like "viral marketing" once again
corroborates. In addition, and this is a further important point for a
cultural-critical use, the term possesses a strong temporal index: it is
spreadingfast,insnowballingfashion.
Intervention, invasion and proliferation take us to the second term
involved here, its dialectical counterpart,ecology. Like all forms of
organic life, human life, too, is involved in a never-ending process of
interaction with other life forms and with the physical conditions at a
given location. Together these processes make up that location's
ecology,thesumtotaloftherelationsoforganiclife—includinghuman
life—with its physical surroundings (Lincoln et al., s.v. "ecology"). In
this perspective, ecologies can usefully be understood as systemic
biological configurations which by their real or presumed impact on
humanlifeanchorfeaturesofthesocialandculturalinnaturalspace.As
the work of Lefèbvre or David Harvey has shown, this grounding is
neverunambiguousoruncontested.^35 Itisespeciallycontroversial,when
significant components of ecologies are made up of biologically active,
pathogenic materials, such as bacteria, microbes, or viruses. Ecologies
then become disease ecologies, sites that are dangerous to human well-
being and make people scramble for other, saferspaces.Such ecologies
are at the center of a new field of environmental science research.
According to the definition given by the United States National
ResearchCouncil:
The challenge is to understand ecological and evolutionary aspects of
infectious diseases; develop an understanding of the interactions among
pathogens, hosts/receptors, and the environment; and thus to make it
possibletopreventchangesintheinfectivityandvirulenceoforganisms
that threaten plant, animal, and human health at the population level.
(Gr andChallenges36)From a cultural critical point of view one may want to insert here a
reminder that what Marx famously called "the metabolism between
[man] and nature" (Capital283), must then not be understood as a
(^35) Cf.Kunow,"'Roots''"195-228.