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Short abstract:

The collective project we use for thinking soils is related with one of a tiny forest that includes participants as students, teachers, researchers, employees and residents of the neighborhood. Can a small piece of land in a educational campus help the “research thinking with, from, and for soils”?

Long abstract:

Intermediary objects became a classical in science studies – a conceptual and analytical tool describing the social-technical connection and ‘‘represent[ing] the network, by being both visible and standing for it, and translat(ing) it in time and space’’(1). Vinck et al. (2) describe intermediary objects as those allowing communication and exchange between professionals and users, improving the understanding of a problem, enabling the expression of different viewpoints and knowledges and compromising on collective action. We make the hypothesis that this concept can contribute to investigate critically the role of soil in eco-social transformation.

We present the collective creation of a tiny forest at the campus of Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Portugal, whose processes relate soil, land, forest but also communities, social links and values. The tiny forest aims at both social and ecological regeneration and is the result of participatory learning and creation, including the Miyawaki method, preparing the land, creating and marking the design, planting and caring the soil. The Miyawaki method consists of densely planting native species of all strata of the forest. Because they benefit from rich soil and water in the early years, these species compete only for sunlight, stimulating growth and mutual protection. While seeing the tiny forest as an intermediary object illustrates the webs it is embedded in, its complex action by doing soil, community, and knowledges, invites us to go beyond the technicality and materiality of soil and answer an urgent call to discover a new understanding of soils and humans (3).