Presentation short abstract

We examine soil’s ontological politics in Oceania through clam harvesting in Solomon Islands mangroves and compost co-production in Aotearoa. Through political ecology and Indigenous materialist approaches, we show soil’s affective, relational agency and its role in decolonizing agri-food relations.

Presentation long abstract

Soil within agri-food systems is often considered substrate, a backdrop to the agri-food landscapes it sustains. Or it is positioned with technical sciences of nutrient, carbon or toxin mapping, that which absorbs or holds imagined foreign substrates. What is made opaque in these instrumental constructions is that there are many ways of (re)storying which take seriously a restoring of liveliness of soil (Krzywosynska 2019). In this presentation, we theorize soil’s ontological politics within agri-food systems in Oceania, drawing from empirical data of: harvesting mangrove clams from muddy flats in the Solomon Islands, and, co-producing compost with soil microbes for Indigenous and community gardens in Aotearoa New Zealand. In these very different contexts we theoretically position soil through the lenses of political ecology of the body (Hayes-Conroy & Hayes-Conroy 2015) and Indigenous materialist theories (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo 2001), which captures both the affective and relational agency of soil and the political edge of socially-differentiated experiences of these relatings/relationality. Such decolonizing work, with and in these specific soil agri-food relations, are and become affective and visceral knowings of land, relations and accountability.

Gegeo, D. W., & Watson-Gegeo, K. A. (2001). “How we know”: Kwara’ae rural villagers doing indigenous epistemology.” The Contemporary Pacific, 13(1), 55–88.

Hayes-Conroy, A., & Hayes-Conroy, J. (2015). “Political ecology of the body: A visceral approach.” In The international handbook of political ecology.

Krzywoszynska, A. (2019). “Caring for Soil Life in the Anthropocene: The Role of Attentiveness in More-Than-Human Ethics.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44 (4): 661–675.