Learning Dialectics to Grow Better Soils Knowledge, not Bigger Crops: A Materialist Dialectics and Relationality for Soil Science

Specifically materialist variants of dialectics, as advanced mainly within Marxist intellectual currents, have rarely touched on the biophysical sciences, where dialectical approaches made little impact. The focus of this work is to start developing a materialist dialectical approach appropriate to the study of soils. By considering whether and how soils can be studied dialectically, conclusions can also be drawn relative to broader debates over the scope of dialectics, aside from assessing the potential for a dialectical soil science. In view of objections to notions of a dialectics intrinsic to nature, and given the nature of soils and soil dynamics, a dialectical approach needs to be modified to account for the impossibility of soils' praxis. Consequently, a materialist relationality is proposed that is reflexive as regards selected units and scales of analysis, especially with respect to their social origins and repercussions.