Anthropogenic Soils: Recuperating Human-Soil Relationships on a Troubled Planet
Informations
- Funding country
Norway- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 1/1/2022
- End date
- 12/31/2028
- Budget
- 1,537,500 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FRIHUMSAM - Independent Projects humaniora and social sciences | Grant | - | - | 1,537,500 EUR |
Abstract
Human survival depends on the invisible and largely unknown world below our feet. Yet, planet Earth has reached “peak soil”, the point at which we are destroying soils faster than they can recover naturally. The project Anthropogenic Soils responds to a global crisis of soils with an innovative focus on possibilities of repairing and recuperating soils. While fertile soil disappears from our planet at alarming rates, our multidisciplinary team – led by the environmental humanities – studies the ways people in different parts of the world have invented, practiced, and imagined ways of restoring soil health. Our project conceptualizes soil not as a natural resource to be exploited, but as “anthropogenic” – as lively and dynamic natural-cultural composition responsive to human care and healing. We have three objectives: 1. Develop knowledge about technologies and practices of soil repair in landscapes damaged by industrial agriculture, or radioactive and toxic substances 2. Explore the role of emerging soil imaginaries in technoscience, agriculture, literature, and the arts for building more sustainable futures 3. Create awareness of soils as living multispecies ecologies responsive to human care, both within academia and in the public sphere Understanding soils as anthropogenic nature-culture requires radical multidisciplinary. We aim to integrate perspectives from environmental humanities, medical anthropology, science and technology studies, science fiction studies, and microbiology, with knowledge produced by practitioners, artists, writers, and citizen scientists. The project’s empirical studies include experiments of repairing contaminated, toxic, and depleted soils in different parts of the globe – from South Asia to Norway and the Arctic –a well ways in which Indigenous writers and artists offer alternative modes of relating to soils, and for building possible futures of earthly survival.