Soils and carbon sinks

Question 1

The social life of soil [?;?]

Answer 1

Kearnes and Rickards 2015
crucial topic for research
connections between soils and social processes e.g. rural livelihoods, food security, climate change
improving carbon sequestration is about practice change more than tech innovation
^ farmers are heterogeneous

Question 2

Making time for soil [?;?]

Answer 2

Puig de la Bellacassa 2015
dismisses productionist approach with focus on output and intensification
technoscientific futurity = a timescale all about progression, productionist, urgency
vs. multiple more-than-human eco-temporalities often in conflict with it
‘living soil’ = multiple species in soil cycling nutrients, energy, carbon
= more than human approach attuned to agency
Soil communities include humans - care role
Care is about embodied, affective relationships

Question 3

Performing carbon forestry offset [?;?]

Answer 3

Lansing 2012
Costa Rica trip with offset NGO
Socio-technical assemblage maintains the commodity - artefacts of calculation, measurement and inscription
Slipperiness between abstraction and materiality - maps have materiality and shape how the area’s understood
Forest has to remain intact = unstable commodity
Indigenous leader’s understanding of land without GPS not relevant to their performance

Question 4

Carbon [?;?]

Answer 4

Twyman et al 2015
Need to understand its situated meaning in local contexts
It’s both a physical substance and a discourse = plural meanings
invisible/visible; tangible/intangible
calls to re-materialise it suggest people can’t engage with abstractions