Stories from the Substrate: A 20th Century History of East Africa from the Soil

来自底层的故事：从土壤看东非的20世纪历史

• 批准号: AH/W007568/1
• 负责人: Emily Brownell
• 金额: $ 21万
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FW007568%2F1
• 关键词: Stories; Substrate; 20th; Century; History

The soil that makes up the earth's substrate is an ever-changing assemblage of organic matter, minerals, organisms, gases, and liquids. Plants, animals, and humans in a host of ways mine this substrate to make life possible and use it as a container for things both precious and toxic. In this central function of earthly survival, soil's composition is both an archive of past life as well as the planet's largest carbon sink, capturing within it emissions from centuries ago. It is, in its very essence, a historical record that shapes our collective future. "Stories from the Substrate" reflects on the historical composition of soil by using it as a medium for engaging with and narrating East African history and as a point of view for considering the epoch of the Anthropocene. This project begins with both archival and fieldwork in East Africa (Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya) that will form the basis of a collaborative, interactive soil map website and scholarly monograph that highlights how East Africans have relied on and shaped soil with the help of plants and animals. Previous scholarship on soil in East Africa has focused almost exclusively on colonial development projects and campaigns against erosion, this project takes a multispecies approach and centres East African epistemologies of soil to view it as not just a medium of agriculture, but as a building material, a source for mining mineral salts, the haven of "good" and "bad" microbial life, a sink for pollutants, a metaphor of home and belonging, and a valuable commodity of both local and global trade. Chronicling a history of the region from the soil seeks to set aside the prevailing themes of extant regional histories that narrate from political events and the ethnic and colonial logics of the archive. By considering the region through its substrate, this project hews close to the everyday and the often unseen or overlooked ways that people, animals, and their environments make one another and shape history. While each case study takes a particular place as its starting point, several themes will run throughout, assembling a picture of landscape, ecology, human health and labor in the region. In bringing together a variety of attachments to the soil in East Africa, this project aims to contribute to Black Ecologies, an interdisciplinary field seeking to examine the relationship between Black people and their environments. This work highlights the harm and toxicity that comprise many of these environments due to centuries of oppression and dispossession, but it also examines modes of knowing and being with nature that have gone under-explored. From this initial research, the project then shifts to collaborate with a wider research community to "Think with the Substrate". Bringing together scholars who work on histories of substrate materials, we will consider how humans have variably remade and relied on this middle layer between the subterranean and terrestrial. This inter-disciplinary project, in the spirit of other work on the Anthropocene such as the recent Plantationocene project, aims to engage with an unwieldy chunk of human history through a unifying object of inquiry. While the Anthropocene has been defined as the epoch when human impact has been the most consequential force shaping the earth, many scholars have critiqued the totalizing concept for eliding the fact that all societies have not had equal impact. To think about the Anthropocene "with the substrate" is not to assemble a list of different uses and interventions into the ground. It is a project of using historical engagements with substrate matter to reveal variable social relations, conceptions of nature, and engagements with nonhuman animals. These stories will no doubt chronicle the rise of global capitalism, but it will also capture the many alternative ontological and epistemological worlds that are sometimes forgotten and overshadowed in blunt narratives of capitalism and the Anthropocene.

构成地球底物的土壤是有机物，矿物，生物，气体和液体的不断变化的组合。植物，动物和人类以多种方式挖掘这种基材，使生活成为可能，并将其用作珍贵和有毒物品的容器。在尘世生存的这一中心功能中，土壤的构成既是前世的档案，又是地球上最大的碳汇，从几个世纪前捕获了它的排放。从本质上讲，这是历史记录塑造了我们的集体未来。 “底物的故事”通过将土壤作为与东非历史的媒介和叙述的媒介，并作为考虑人类世的时代的一种观点来反映土壤的历史构成。该项目始于东非（坦桑尼亚，乌干达和肯尼亚）的档案和实地调查，该项目将构成一个协作，互动的土壤图网站和学术专着的基础，并强调了东非人如何在动植物的帮助下依赖和塑造土壤。 Previous scholarship on soil in East Africa has focused almost exclusively on colonial development projects and campaigns against erosion, this project takes a multispecies approach and centres East African epistemologies of soil to view it as not just a medium of agriculture, but as a building material, a source for mining mineral salts, the haven of "good" and "bad" microbial life, a sink for pollutants, a metaphor of home and belonging, and a地方和全球贸易的宝贵商品。从土壤中记录了该地区的历史，试图抛弃从政治事件以及档案的种族和殖民逻辑中讲述的现存地区历史的主题。通过通过其基材考虑该地区，该项目靠近日常活动，而人们，动物和环境彼此之间经常看不见或被忽视的方式相互构成历史。虽然每个案例研究都将特定的位置作为起点，但整个主题都会在整个主题中运行，并在该地区汇集了景观，生态，人类健康和劳动的图片。该项目旨在汇集到东非土壤的各种依恋，旨在为黑人生态做出贡献，这是一个跨学科的领域，旨在研究黑人及其环境之间的关系。这项工作突出了由于几个世纪的压迫和剥夺而构成了许多此类环境的危害和毒性，但它还研究了尚未探索的自然的认识和存在模式。从这项最初的研究中，该项目随后转向与更广泛的研究社区合作，以“与基板进行思考”。我们将汇集研究底物材料历史的学者，我们将考虑人类如何在地下和陆地之间进行多样化的重塑和依赖。这个跨学科的项目本着诸如最近的Plantationeoene项目的其他工作的精神，旨在通过统一的询问对象与笨拙的人类历史融合。尽管人类影响是塑造地球的最后果的力量时，人类世被定义为时代，但许多学者批评了总体概念，即所有社会都没有产生平等的影响。考虑一下“与底物”的人类世，不是要组装出不同的用途和干预措施的清单。这是一个将历史参与与底物物质揭示可变的社会关系，自然观念以及与非人类动物的交往的项目。这些故事无疑将记载全球资本主义的兴起，但它还将捕捉许多替代的本体论和认识论世界，这些世界有时被遗忘和掩盖了资本主义和人类世的直率叙事。