| Title | Unit 3: Soil as Health |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Emily Brownell(author) |
| Tamar Novick (author) | |
| Lulu Tessua (author) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.63308/63897247289532.unit3 |
| Landing page | https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2025/11/05/graspingsoil/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Emily Brownell, Tamar Novick and Lulu Tessua |
| Publisher | The White Horse Press |
| Published on | 2026-03-01 |
| Long abstract | What is a healthy soil? Across time and cultures, soil health has often been used as a barometer for societal health. The now predictable argument is that if civilisations do not tend to the health and fertility of their own soil, they will eventually fall. The geologist David Montgomery’s book, Dirt: The Ero- sion of Civilizations, tracks this argument from Mesopotamia to the present while also providing a history of how scientists have come to understand the importance of soil as the ‘skin of the earth’. And yet, the question remains: what is a healthy soil, who gets to decide such things in any given place and time and what measures of coercion or freedom are taken to cultivate ‘healthy’ soil? We might look back and in retrospect see that what was considered healthy was actually harming. Thus, health is a historically and culturally constructed judgement of soil that is never without debate. This unit aims to construct a more nuanced conversation about how human health and soil health have been intertwined at different historical moments. We argue that societies have defined and intervened in soil health in a variety of ways and that we are now living out the legacies of these various definitions. The unit starts by considering how we evaluate soil, building on some of the readings and exercises from Unit 1. We then look at how humans intervene to change soil health, and how soil health changes human health. The final day considers how soil is often seen as a reflection not just of individual bodies, but of the body politic, mirroring some of the topics discussed in the fourth and final unit on soil and belonging. |
| Page range | pp. 47–58 |
| Print length | 12 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Media | 5 illustrations |
Emily Brownell is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental History at the University of Edinburgh. Her current project, Stories from the Substrate, considers twentieth-century East African history through a variety of interventions with, and extractions from, the soil.
Tamar Novick is Assistant Professor of the History of Technology at the Technical University of Munich. Her research lies at the intersection of the history of technology, environmental history and Middle East studies. She is the author of Milk and Honey: Technologies of Plenty in the Making of a Holy Land (MIT Press, 2023), and her current research focuses on meanings and uses of bodily waste.
Lulu Tessua is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at the University of Nairobi. Her current research is on the afterlives of Ndungu Agricultural Project in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, with a major focus on pesticide use and its effects on health and environment.