Soils: A new frontier for environmental knowledge and policies

Abstract

Despite its vital importance for ecosystems and societies, the social sciences continue to understand soil largely as an inert base, a backdrop for the biological and social life that exists at its surface. This special issue looks at the dynamics of production, circulation and mobilisation of knowledge about soils in order to explore how soils shift the lines and boundaries of our ways of perceiving, knowing and managing the environment, nature and living things. This introduction begins by examining soil’s trajectory in the human and social sciences, from a peripheral and invisible object to a set of groundbreaking considerations for thinking the political and ethical issues of the non-human. It then identifies three areas of transformation in terms of soil knowledge: first, reworkings of the concepts and tools of soil sciences; second, the growing consideration for soils in planning projects and in the development of new collective practices for returning organic waste to the ground; and finally, issues around burying industrial waste and how the agency of soils and subsoils at times subverts the expectation that these act as a long-term dumping ground. We end by introducing the contributions to this special issue.

Keywords

• waste
• soil
• microbes
• soil science
• city
• industrial waste