Soil and organization studies: unearthing a ‘more-than-relational’ ethics towards non-humans

Soil is being refigured across academia and society at large as a significant and lively yet fragile actor. Caring closely for soil appears increasingly vital to organizing sustainable and equitable economies, food systems, and urban development. Soil is becoming a touchstone for a relational ethics of careful organizing with Earth’s non-human inhabitants, also encompassing animals, oceans and atmospheres. In this essay-style article I think with soil to problematize this wider relational ethics. My critique starts by explaining how soil has become central to this relational ethics and then recognizes that soil often does not fit within human narratives of attentive care. I read such soil refusals as an earthly invitation to explore forms of soil organizing that develop moral arguments for profound detachments and exclusions from non-humans. Exploring two such examples – Indigenous farming and proposals for soilless food production – I elaborate an alternative ‘more-than-relational’ ethics. This is an approach to non-human ethics where sometimes non-humans, like soil, are never known at all or become known only to then be ignored. Such a more-than-relational ethics acknowledges that while attentive care is preferable to ethical approaches that exploit non-humans it is not sufficient to organize a more sustainable, prosperous and equitable planet. Thinking with a more-than-relational ethics instead acknowledges the moral case for profound exclusions and detachments of non-humans that do not serve attentive care but can help multi-species flourishing in a time of planetary ecological crises. This novel approach to ethics contributes to organizational theory by radically problematizing prevailing scholarship valorising ever closer knowledge of non-humans and their practices of organizing. Instead, scholars should also explore knowledges and practices, including Indigenous ones, that can help us detach from and ignore some non-humans.