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Paper short abstract

How can different soil accounts coexist? If accounting makes realities visible and actionable, soil data—beyond quantification—matters. Drawing on carbon farming in Finland, we show how negotiating responsibilities for climate, soil health, and farm viability can sustain plural soil accounts/data.

Paper long abstract

How can different accounts of soils coexist, complementing and productively challenging one another? This question becomes increasingly relevant when accounting is understood broadly as practices that “make realities visible, intelligible and actionable” (i.e., giving an account), rather than merely as tools for allocating responsibility (i.e., accounting for) (Russell et al. 2017). In this sense, accounting practices shape which natures are conserved, exploited, or left alone. Soil data, understood beyond quantitative representation, becomes central to enabling multiple accounts of soils and, by extension, multiple soil futures.

Our starting assumption is that no particular way of giving an account is inherently responsible for overshadowing others, motivating a search for the coexistence of plural accounts. Empirical studies show that globally abstract, calculative accounts often marginalize place-based and experiential ones (Krzywoszynska 2024, Galina & La Fleur 2023). However, framing these accounts as inherently oppositional risks overlooking what potentially enables the coexistence of different accounts/data, even if only temporarily.

Drawing on Stengers’ (2020) views on abstraction being fundamental to all forms of perceiving/representing, we argue that the key analytical task is to identify the conditions under which attention to multiple manifestations of what is abstracted can be sustained. We explore these conditions through a case study of contested knowledge-making and governance practices around carbon farming in Finland. Here, negotiations over multiple ways of accounting for soils, or allocating responsibilities, in relation to climate mitigation, soil health, and farm viability, emerge as a critical site with a potential for enabling the coexistence of plural soil accounts.