Inspired by the fertility and climate change-mitigation properties of the so-called Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs), soil science has devised a technoscientific replica, a soil amendment known as biochar, intended to improve agricultural sustainability and carbon storage in the biosphere. Drawing on fieldwork with Afroindigenous horticulturalists, this article shows, however, that the activation of these soils’ vibrant ecology responds to looping, carbonic, and socially mediated forms of human and other-than-human corporeal interplay. With an ethnography of swidden horticulture in Amazonia, I propose the notion of ‘somatosoils’ to consider that the fertility and other metabolic properties of ADEs might be located not in the soil, but in the relations between the earth's bodies and the specific human gestures that stimulate these soils’ inner life.

中文翻译：

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激活暗土：亚马逊生态系统的体质土壤和碳环

受所谓的亚马逊暗地球 (ADEs) 的肥力和减缓气候变化特性的启发，土壤科学设计了一种技术科学复制品，一种称为 biochar 的土壤改良剂，旨在提高农业可持续性和生物圈中的碳储存。然而，通过与非洲土著园艺家的实地考察，本文表明，这些土壤充满活力的生态系统的激活是对人类和非人类物质相互作用的循环、碳和社会介导形式的反应。借助亚马逊流域园艺的民族志，我提出“生长土壤”的概念，以考虑 ADE 的肥力和其他代谢特性可能不在土壤中，而是在关系中。在地球的身体和刺激这些土壤内在生命的特定人类姿态之间。