Ecological Belongings. Transforming soil cultures through science, activism and art.

Soils are easy to neglect as we walk upon them, yet they are a vital infrastructure on which most life on earth depends. Today, a global soil crisis due to our abuse of soils as a "resource" is bringing new attention to this hidden element of landscapes. In this context human-soil relations are changing.

This research focuses on the cultural aspects of these transformations in an industrialised society, the UK, as a case study for understanding how new ecological cultures are shaping in response to a crisis of relations with non-human nature. Traditionally, the dependency on soils for agricultural subsistence situates them culturally as emblematic of human belonging to place, land, territory and nation.

These strong cultural associations have been weakened by industrialisation, urbanisation, and globalisation. In contrast, this project focuses on emerging cultural significations of soils in technoscientific societies that are indicative of increasing social and cultural concerns for human participation and dependency on the ecological functioning of the natural world.

The project will seek to understand to what extent soil cultures developing in scientific, activist and artistic practices generate new forms of material, affective and aesthetic belonging to nature that rely on environmental considerations and are making cultures ecological.

In a first phase, research will explore soil cultures empirically and conceptually by investigating material, affective and aesthetic dimensions of current narratives around the soil. The methodology will consist of fieldwork, interviews and collection of textual and visual materials in three fields of practice that are leading change in human-soil relations: soil science, soil-care activist education, and soil art. These methods will be deployed in these three fields along three research questions:

1. What is the material significance of soil? This question explores how material properties attributed to the soil translate culturally for instance by looking at how scientists use of metaphor to translate science to publics, how soil activist educators promote best soil care practices in grower communities, and how artists represent soil's material qualities.

2. What is the affective significance of soils? This question focuses on exploring relations with soils as a focus of emotions and sentiments of scientists, activists and artists in order to understand new forms of attachment to soils in emergent ecological cultures.

3. What is the aesthetic significance of soils? This question explores the sensorial perception and appreciation of soils in order to understand how representations of soils are changing. It focuses on the influence of dominance of visual culture, in particular new scientific imaging of soils, and new representations that go beyond soil's aesthetic identification with farming and rural landscape.

In a second phase the project will develop interventions aimed at creating a transdisciplinary network of researchers, activists and artists dedicated to improve human-soil relations through new social and cultural understandings. This will include a mix of para-academic gatherings, knowledge exchange and public engagement-oriented activities actively developing connections between the fields studied and non-academic publics.

An original outcome of these activities will be to collectively and creatively generate new narratives in the form of stories and visual illustrations accounting of new ecological relations with the soil and para-academic publishing of fanzines for inexpensive public dissemination.

In sum, the research will result in: a new cultural understanding of contemporary relations with soil that brings new insights into the study of emerging ecological cultures, the establishment of a field of transdisciplinary study and advocacy of human-soil relations, and new narratives to improve public awareness of soil's cultural and ecological significance.