Wormy Collaborations in Practices of Soil Construction

Abstract

This paper studies the capture of organisms and materials in soil construction – a branch of ecological engineering dedicated to making soil in order to compensate for soil degradation. This approach takes all organisms to be ‘ecosystem engineers’, and often refers to earthworms as ‘collaborators’ in making soil. I examine the claim that such a convocation of worms amounts to a redistribution of agency and the underlying assumption that form-taking is the shaping of raw matter according to pre-existing forms. Drawing on processual anthropology, I question the distinction between living and material components of soils, and between growing and making. I elaborate on soil scientists’ description of soil growth as pedogenesis in order to propose a view in which soil materials, along with organisms, participate in soil’s transformative and generative fluxes. I envisage the process as a concrescence, an experimentation that brings humans, worms, and soil materials together in new ways.

Multivocal Critical Qualitative Inquiry as an Avenue for Public Policy

“…In research conducted by Meulemans (2020), an MCQI project is conceptualized regarding the sympoetic relationship between earthworms and human beings. Teams of ecological engineers collaborate to implement public policies that compensate for the degradation of productive soils.…”

Critical Geoarchaeology: From Depositional Processes to the Sociopolitics of Earthen Life

“…Thus, beyond concerns for recognizing ecological resilience and sustainability in the past (e.g., Beach et al 2015, Buscardo et al 2021, French et al 2017, geoarchaeology is well positioned to embrace more critical calls for a "political geology" (Bobbette & Donovan 2018) and to problematize discussions of conservation policies and discourses of natural heritage (cf. Meskell 2011). Indeed, geoarchaeological and archaeological research set within interdisciplinary ecological frameworks has been critical in demonstrating the legacies of past human land use on contemporary environments (e.g., Alizadeh et al 2004, Casana 2008, Crumley et al 2015, French et al 2017, Rosen et al 2015, Wilkinson 2003, including those that have been (mis)characterized as natural (e.g., Bauer 2018a, Walter & Merritts 2008 potentially shifts the terms of conservation policy debates away from an emphasis on what is natural and toward a more explicit concern for which historical and socioenvironmental assemblages are desirable to particular people in particular places (e.g., Bauer & Bhan 2018, p. 111).…”

“…Indeed, geoarchaeological and archaeological research set within interdisciplinary ecological frameworks has been critical in demonstrating the legacies of past human land use on contemporary environments (e.g., Alizadeh et al 2004, Casana 2008, Crumley et al 2015, French et al 2017, Rosen et al 2015, Wilkinson 2003, including those that have been (mis)characterized as natural (e.g., Bauer 2018a, Walter & Merritts 2008 potentially shifts the terms of conservation policy debates away from an emphasis on what is natural and toward a more explicit concern for which historical and socioenvironmental assemblages are desirable to particular people in particular places (e.g., Bauer & Bhan 2018, p. 111). In this way, geoarchaeological research could productively align with environmental movements and practices that might be more effective "without Nature" (sensu Morton 2013, p. 105) and that recognize the social, political, and environmental implications of defining natural conditions (e.g., Meskell 2011, Neumann 2004.…”