Caring for soil life in the Anthropocene: The role of attentiveness in more‐than‐human ethics

Abstract

This paper considers the work that attentiveness can and can't do in generating more ethical relations with non-humans. How to build better relations with nonhumans has been a central debate in geography and cognate disciplines. These concerns include ethical relations with non-humans who both pervade and create liveable environments, such as soil biota. Scholars have specifically identified attentiveness as key in generating more-than-human ethics. However, how attentiveness may arise, and what work attentiveness may be able to do in generating ethical relations, has not been sufficiently explored. Additionally, soils as relational materialities remain underexplored in social sciences. In this paper, I address these two important gaps in scholarship. Investigating the rising concern with soil biota in conventional English farming, I propose the care network as a way of conceptualising and investigating the ethical potential of attentiveness. As concerns grow about soil degradation, and the dangers this is posing to food production and to human survival, land managers are attending to soil ecosystems as part of caring for their farm businesses. While this attentiveness is producing some transformative effects, its potential is limited by the configuration of the soil care network. As long as soil care is configured primarily as farmers' concern, the potential of attentiveness in generating ethical regard to the needs of soil biota will be limited. In the Conclusions, I suggest ways of expanding attentiveness to soils and of building a wider and practical relational ethic of soil care. I also argue we need more attention in geographic research to attentiveness and care as systemic, unequally distributed, and operating at multiple scales. K E Y W O R D Scare, England, farming, microbes, more-than-human ethics, soil

Introduction to symposium ‘Reimagining land: materiality, affect and the uneven trajectories of land transformation’

“…The rise of landscape studies was predominantly confined to the Global North, with a strong focus on the UK and the US.5 For exceptions see the anthropological study byPeace (2005), which specifically focuses on land and landscape, and the studies by Puig de la Bellacasa (2015) andKrzywoszynska (2019).6 Most of the early studies on the land rush (including, admittedly, by one of the authors, Visser and Spoor 2011) focussed primarily on mapping the unprecedented number, scale, and speed of global land acquisitions (e.g Borras et al 2011;Cotula 2012),. subsequently raising debate about methodologies, measurements and 'messy hectares'(Edelman 2013).…”

Making insects tick: Responsibility, attentiveness and care in edible insect farming

“…If, as Pitt (2018: 260), argues, attentiveness involves 'knowing what another needs' (p. 260), how might care emerge when needs are far from clear (cf Pali-Schöll et al, 2019: on the uncertainties around the welfare requirements of insects)? Her arguments are developed by Krzywoszynska (2019), who contrasts the pervading marginalisation of soil in Western agriculture in favour of a focus on chemical additives as producers of fertility with an emerging rediscovery of soil biota and processes. There, 'a dialogue around what may count as "needs" of soils, and how to adapt human practices to those needs, is only starting to take shape' (p. 671) Attentiveness might direct concern to identifying needs, but such identifications could be contradictory.…”

Hocus pocus? Spirituality and soil care in biodynamic agriculture

“…This is not to say that CSA and biodynamics are incompatible -indeed, they often go hand in hand, complementary in their shared (but differently orientated) endeavours to improve the health and well-being of society (Koepf, 1989). This returns us to the idea that a soil care network requires different perspectives and practices, working together (Krzywoszynska, 2019). However, one could question to what extent this is possible when some forms of soil care are rendered more visible than others.…”

“…During my time spent with Cae Tan, I have learned to appreciate how a spiritual practice (biodynamics) can engender an attentiveness to soil as something that is agental, energetic and alive -a critical zone imbued with earthy politics, rather than an inert substrate subjected to human politics. It is possible to see how spirituality might enable more expansive modes of attentiveness and care than have been observed in conventional agricultural practices, particularly in the ways that it can get beyond some of the anthropocentric limitations of the soil care network (Krzywoszynska, 2019). For example, while relational ethics scholars have pointed to the ways in which attentiveness gives rise (through affective moments such as enchantment, curiosity or disgust) to relational ethics and a responseability towards non-humans (e.g.…”