Creative Practices of Care: The Subjectivity, Agency, and Affective Labor of Preparing Seeds for Long-term Banking Xan Sarah Chacko Abstract Laying aside the question of whether saving seeds in freezers is the most promising long-term solution to prevent the loss of plant biodiversity and secure our access to food in a troubled future climate, this article draws attention to the conditions of possibility that scaffold the seed bank world. Oft relegated to “tech” work that is unworthy of observation, this article focuses on the labor practices of seed curators as they prepare the seeds for their ultimate storage at the largest seed bank of wild plants—the Millennium Seed Bank Part- nership in West Sussex, England. Contributing to the growing scholarship on care in technoscientific practice, I investigate how scientists summon their bodies, imagina- tions, and feelings to clean, screen, and count seeds, all the while producing knowledge that renders the seeds legible in the bank. By following the seeds through the experimental care practices espoused by scientists involved from the moment seeds arrive at the bank until they are ready for stor- age, I study how seemingly mundane tasks radically influence how “life” is being prepared for the future. [seed banking, gene banking, Millennium Seed Bank Partner- ship, care practice, laboratory studies, affective labor]. Introduction The history of seed banking as a global conserva- tion practice has recently captured the attention of scholars who are creating a rich tapestry of knowledge to better understand its emergence and implications (Curry 2017; Fenzi and Bonneuil 2016; Harrison 2017). Little attention has been paid, however, to the immense labor that is involved in the maintenance of life in per- petuity. In this article, I focus on the creativity, subjectivity, and embodied knowledge produced by plant scientists and volunteers working for the Millen- nium Seed Bank Partnership as they make seed ready for long-term storage in freezers. In doing so, I pair one of the earliest genres in science studies—laboratory studies—with a newer mode of thinking about “care” in scientific labor (Hartigan 2017; Puig de la Bellacasa 2011, 2015; Yates-Doerr 2014). Ethnographic studies of laboratory spaces have highlighted the ways that tacit knowledge, gender, and politics have motivated the creation and maintenance of scientific knowledge and stability (Latour 1987; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Traweek 1988). Simultane- ously, studies from the sociology of labor and anthropology of science and medicine have shown that theories of care are essential to understand human–hu- man relations of support (Claassen 2011; Hochschild 2003; Kittay 2011; Tronto 1993; Yates-Doerr 2012) as well as human–nonhuman relations (Friese 2013; Mar- tin, Myers, and Viseu 2015; Mol, Moser, and Pols 2015; Schuurman and Pratt 2002; Viseu 2015). From these studies, we learn that care is never morally neutral, that it overwhelmingly produces unequal distributions of power, and that it is co-produced by the cared-for and the carer. Recent studies in STS have added to this scholarship and provided a framework that takes seri- ously how caring for the objects under investigation changes the nature of the scientific inquiry, the objects themselves, and also the scientists doing the inquiring (Atkinson-Graham et al. 2015; Hayward 2010; Mol 2008; Murphy 2015; Schrader 2015). More than “concern” or “moral value,” care signals a deeply personal investment on the part of the human that has material and evaluative consequences to the seeds. People who care are attuned to the needs and are affectively entangled with the objects of inquiry (Despret 2004; Sedgwick 2003). My intervention in this rich and varied landscape of “care studies” focuses attention on how seemingly mundane, repetitive, and unobtrusive acts of scientific practice are also imbued with subjectivity and value judgments (Mol 2011; Xan Sarah Chacko is with the University of Queensland, TC Beirne School of Law, St Lucia, QLD, Australia. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment Vol. 41, Issue 2 pp. 97–106, ISSN 2153-9553, eISSN 2153-9561. © 2019 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/cuag.12237