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

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Puig de La Bellacasa, Maria (2019) Re-animating soils : transforming human–soil affections through science, culture and community. The Sociological Review, 67 (2). pp. 391-407. doi:10.1177/0038026119830601

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026119830601

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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 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 foster sense of more than human community.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General)
Divisions: Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies
Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Soils -- Sociological aspects
Journal or Publication Title: The Sociological Review
Publisher: Blackwell
ISSN: 0038-0261
Official Date: 1 March 2019
Dates:
DateEvent
1 March 2019Published
28 February 2019Available
14 December 2018Accepted
Volume: 67
Number: 2
Page Range: pp. 391-407
DOI: 10.1177/0038026119830601
Status: Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Published
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): de la, M. P. (2019). Re-animating soils: Transforming human–soil affections through science, culture and community. The Sociological Review, 67(2), 391–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026119830601 Copyright © 2019 The Author. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. Additionally, please provide a link to the appropriate DOI for the published version of the Contribution on the SAGE Journals website (http://journals.sagepub.com).
Access rights to Published version: Restricted or Subscription Access

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