Thinking with soil in heritage matters

Abstract

This paper explores what could be learned ‘by thinking with soil’ in heritage matters, and ‘thinking with heritage’ in soil matters. Soil is connected to major sustainability issues as it is life-essential to a wide range of beings. Soil is rarely thought of as heritage, despite becoming a scarce resource over time. It is argued that heritage as ‘landscapes of human perception’ is not enough to meet the challenges at hand, whereas the alternative ‘heritage as phenomena’ allows for discussing the long-term material/immaterial multi-species interrelations that build up in situated soils. It gives better positions to discuss justice and care between generations and convivial re-generation of landscapes. The paper works with a case study from mid-Sweden to show how different ‘agential-cuts’ of soil give rise to stakeholder tensions as different worlds are produced.