Soil reading group — mapping soil time
Soil can be seen as a three-dimensional living infrastructure, containing biological, mineral and organic compounds, entangled with life above ground (Salazar et al. 2022, p. 1). Soils are vital for sustaining most of life on earth, and yet they have been colonised and exploited (De la Bellacasa 2022, p. xiv). Largely due to human activities, today's global soil crisis sees a large part of soils degraded, depleted or contaminated, resulting in a "running out of topsoil" (Salazar et al. 2022, p. 3). Despite soil's importance to all life and the spiritual and cultural relations that humans have with it, this matter remains still "un-theorized" (Tironi et al. 2022, p. 19) in the social sciences and the humanities.
It is time again for a reading group meeting on soils - open to everyone from any discipline (its totally ok to only come to one meeting).
We will meet on Friday 25.09.2026 at 13:30 at NORCE in meeting room F403 (building 3, floor 4). NORCE is located in forskningsparken, which you enter through the main entrance. Take up the staircase right opposite the hairdresser.
We will be reading only one text (since we did not have time to discuss it during last meeting) and we will hear Bex Browne, PhD in landscape architecture, shortly present her mappings of a site on Tromsøya.
Readings: Bellacasa, 2017, Soil Times: The Pace of Ecological Care, in Matters of Care — Let me know if you need access to the readings.