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Paper Short Abstract:

In this paper, considering relations with sand in European port cities makes possible an inquiry into past ecological lives of the substance as well as the future vitality of sand in sustainable coastal fortification schemes.

Paper Abstract:

Considering sand as dead is both tautological and provocative. It is tautological because, according to science, sand is inanimate matter and not imbued with life. Positing the death of minerals assumes that they might have led or given a life and can be killed. In this paper, considering sand as dead makes possible an inquiry into past ecological lives as well as the future vitality of sand in new geosocial formations. Drawing on ethnographic research among European chemists, physicists, and engineers, I ask how sediment becomes the glue of coastal infrastructure. In Marseille, the company Seacure mobilizes sediment to produce “natural concrete,” a calcareous agglomerate similar to limestone used to repair eroding eddies and docks. It mimics coastal karst – an underwater landscape of sinkholes, ridges, and towers underlain by limestone – that characterizes the shoreline of Marseille and results from the dissolution of huge mollusc colonies formed in the Cretaceous and their incomplete erosion. Like bivalves forming skeletons, natural concrete employs calcium, the building block of aquatic life, to produce a stonelike material. The use of natural concrete in vital urban infrastructure allows to speculate about the place of sand in producing thresholds of life. In Vigo, an EU-funded project suggests transforming ports into lively hotspots of biodiversity by substituting traditional concrete with an ecologically active alternative. Sand here becomes part of a social formula. The paper then is interested in the vitality of shores in that they rearrange and repurpose minerals to support certain forms of life.