Re-animating soils: Transforming human–soil affections through science, culture and community

Abstract

‘In a sense we are unique moist packages of animated soil’. These are the alluring words of Francis D. Hole, a professor of soil science renowned for encouraging love for the soil and understanding of its vital importance. Affirming humans as being soil entangles them in substantial commonness. This article explores how altering the imaginaries of soils as inert matter subjected to human use and re-animating the life within them is transforming contemporary human–soil affections by developing a sense of shared aliveness. Presenting research on current practices, material involvements and stories emerging from scientific accounts, community involvements and artistic manifestations, I propose five emerging motifs of renewed imaginaries of soil’s aliveness that feed into each other to affirm intimate entanglements of human–soil matter. I argue that while a vision of anthropocenic soils invokes yet another objectified natural resource brought to exhaustion by a deadly human-centred productionist ethos, as soils are re-animated and enlivened, a sense of human–soil entangled and intimate interdependency is intensified. These new involvements with soil’s aliveness open up a sense of earthy connectedness that animates and re-affects material worlds and a sense of more than human community in those involved.

Resetting urban human‐microbial relations in pandemic times

“…One of the easiest environmental microbiomes to contemplate is the soil microbiome with its granular materiality making it more readily ‘visible’. But there is, of course, much more to soil that is not so readily visible; as Puig de la Bellacasa writes, ‘a billion bacteria, thousands of fungi, protozoa and nematodes live in a teaspoon of rich soil’ (2019, p. 394). As well as this, urban soils can be laced with ‘rubbish, decay [and]… toxic residues’ (Robertson, 2020, p. 319).…”

“…Taking note of this imbalance, invisible lifeforms and elements of various kinds have been receiving growing consideration from geographers examining finer scales of more‐than‐human and multispecies assemblages, including those working with Indigenous ontologies (e.g., Barker, 2010; Bawaka Country et al., 2015; Krzywoszynska, 2019; Lorimer, 2020; Robertson, 2020; Tynan, 2021), and when such relations become pathogenic (e.g., Graham, 2015; Greenhough, 2012; Hinchliffe, 2015; Hinchliffe et al., 2013; Lorimer, 2017). In terms of affirmative microbiopolitics, the work of Puig de la Bellacasa (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, 2019) on soils has also been influential in drawing attention to working at different, generally smaller, scales. As she explains ‘what soils are conceived to be, visions and concepts of soil, will affect the ways they are cared for’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2019, p. 393).…”

Visceral Ecologies in the Borderland: Soils and Care from Olive Trees’ Hecatomb in Salento

“…Now the care-matter includes the understanding of relationships with beings other than human, and how humans care for the environment -how they conceive of their actions. The trajectory of Puig de la Bellacasa's work intercepts the special interests of this paper: she has studied both human-soil relations and soil sciences (Puig de la Bellacasa 2013Bellacasa , 2015Bellacasa , 2019.…”

Activating dark earths: somatosoils and the carbonic loops of Amazonian ecologies

“…In this article, I depart from the fetishization of the sheer physiochemical or carbonic properties of ADEs. Social sciences have framed agricultural soils not as objectified receptacles of human productive actions, but as living agents that engage humans in complexly nuanced historical, political, affective, and even ethical terms (Gupta 1998; Pandian 2009; Puig de la Bellacasa 2017; 2019; Vasavi 1994). Ethnographic accounts of agricultural relationalities beyond technoscience have disclosed alternative forms of human‐soil relation, showing how different practices of cultivation exist in conjunction with specific historical processes and social contexts (Galvin 2014; 2018; Krzywoszynska 2019; Lyons 2016; 2020; Münster 2018).…”