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Seeing copiapósols: anthropogenic soils, strategic unknowing, and emergent taxonomies in northern Chile

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Abstract

In recent decades, anthropogenic soils have become so ubiquitous that for some authors they should be taken as the “golden spike” signaling the start of the Anthropocene. Despite their prominence, leading soil taxonomies have resisted calls to recognize them as a proper kind of soil. Such omission has importantly limited the ways in which soil practitioners can account and deal with the sociopolitical aspects embedded in soil formation. Approaching the issue from a sociomaterial perspective, this paper studies the effects of such omission on the work of soil scientists working in northern Chile. By contrasting their usage of the USDA/NRCS soil typology with the realities found in the field, the work of strategic unknowing that such typologies achieve becomes evident. To challenge such situation, the paper concludes exploring the notion of emergent taxonomies, classifications that are sensitive to local configurations of materials, living beings and power out which soils emerge.

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Notes

  1. Under the label of Anthrosols, defining them as “soils that have been modified profoundly through human activities, such as addition of organic materials or household wastes, irrigation and cultivation” (FAO 2006, p. 71).

  2. Over the last decades, mineral extraction has reached massive proportions again due to the high value of copper in international markets, a reactivation that has also left behind a considerable inheritance of anthropogenic transformations in the local soils, mainly in the form of heavy metals pollution.

  3. As done, for example, by several indigenous categorizations of soil already in existence.

Abbreviations

ICOMANTH:

International Committee on Anthropogenic Soils

USDA:

United States Department of Agriculture

FAO:

Food and Agriculture Organization

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Acknowledgements

The authors are extremely grateful for the thoughtful comments and suggestions provided by Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro on an earlier draft of the paper. They were fundamental for reshaping our paper in its current form.

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Correspondence to Sebastián Ureta.

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Ureta, S., Otaegui, A. Seeing copiapósols: anthropogenic soils, strategic unknowing, and emergent taxonomies in northern Chile. Agric Hum Values 38, 881–892 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10191-4

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