Led by Susanne Bauer, with PhD, Marianne E. Lien, visiting fellows Jeanne Féaux de la Croix & Tatiana Kasperski.
This work package focuses on decontamination of soils severely affected by past or ongoing pollution, toxic legacies, mining or smelting operations. Through in-depth empirical case studies and a multispecies inventory as research device, we examine modes of multispecies engineering that mobilize plants, fungi, or microorganisms to decompose and remediate pollutants, such as heavy metals and radionuclides.
Aim
This work package aims to rethink soil pollution beyond damage science. We focus on decontamination of soils severely affected by past or ongoing pollution, toxic legacies, mining or smelting operations.
We investigate these processes as metabolic work across naturecultures to understand both how these multispecies practices are doing soil, as well as the human-soil relations that emerge from these practices. Focusing on metabolic processes and (bio)chemical relations within these environmental technologies, we explore the futuring capacities of technoscience, its visions and imaginaries. We examine bioremediation techniques as possible pathways to reimagine soil being “done” otherwise, responsive to human care and manipulation.
Questions
We take questions regarding soil pollutants as a starting point to conceptualize the impact of environmental and climate change on soils. How can soil in a permanently polluted world be known and lived with, taking on a more-than-human approach? What understandings and knowledges of soil ecologies emerge with technoscientific multispecies engineering?
Which practices of bioremediation are used at sites contaminated by radionuclides and heavy metals? What other visions and futures emerge once soils are imagined as responsive to human care and soil recuperation and clean-up is “done” through multispecies methods?
Methods
Based on multi-sited ethnography, interviews and archival work, this work package will map the range of bioremediation technologies and microbial organisms that collaborate with humans on decontamination. We will inventory of bioremediation technologies addressing pollution due to chemical emissions, toxic waste or radionuclides from spills or fallout; this will include microorganisms that metabolize anthropogenic pollutants, extremophiles able to thrive in contaminated or poor soils.
It will develop a taxonomy of organisms that collaborate with humans on soil decontamination, using document analysis and expert interviews. It will then select 3–4 case studies, using the taxonomy and inventory, for ethnographies of soil decontamination practices. It will conduct in-depth site-based observations for each case study and develop detailed praxiographies (Mol 2003).