Soil Within Us: An Autopedology of Migrant Family History and Mourning through the Medium of Soil
Keywords:
ethnographic assemblage, migration, soil, death, mourning, resistance
Abstract
Drawing on personal experiences, ethnographic observations, novels, videos on social networking sites, a poem, and a family diary, this essay explores the mourning of deaths in one’s family history and in the migrant community against the backdrop of political events, including the Russia-Ukraine war, and geological occurrences. Paying attention to how soil manifests itself in these events, the author investigates the potential of soil to serve as a medium for experiencing and coming to terms with the world. The study proposes a genre of autopedology in which the ethnographer writes about events through soil and undergoes the process of formation together with the soil. The essay travels a road of six signposts, from the embodied to the ontological, then to the destructive, to the decomposing, to the consumable and consuming, and finally to the mourning soil. It is shown that the soil within us offers the means to express and stand up against unjust deaths. The study is complemented by photography as a means of visualisation of the process of mourning with soil.
References
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Conklin, Beth A. 1995. “Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Was Our Custom: Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society.” American Ethnologist 22(1):75–101.
Docot, Dada. 2019. “Taking the Long Route: Ethnographic Metacommentary as Method in the Anthropological Film Practice.” Current Anthropology 60(6):774–95. doi:10.1086/706348.
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Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. 2011. “Autoethnography: An Overview.” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 36, (4 (138]):273–90.
Etkind, Alexander. 2013. Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
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Mukhina, Varvara. 2023. “Under the Veil of Silence: Group-Based Emotions Experienced by Russian Immigrants in Japan who Disapprove of the Invasion of Ukraine.” Hakusan Review of Antropology 26: 21–44.
Obozrevatel TV. 2022, February 25. “Prishli s voinoi na nashu zemlyu, semyan v karmany polozhite, hot’ kakoi tolk ot vas budet” (“You came with war to our soil, put seeds in your pockets, at least some benefit will come from you”). YouTube video, 00:00:48, February 25, 2022. Retrieved March 15, 2023 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ASqVOqjPc0).
Placek, Caitlyn D. 2017. “Ethnomedical and Sociocultural Factors of Pica Substances in Rural South India,” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 56(3): 238–55. doi:10.1080/03670244.2017.1311255.
Richter, Daniel D. 2019. “Game Changer in Soil Science: The Anthropocene in Soil Science and Pedology.” Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science 1–7. doi:10.1002/jpln.201900320.
Rittichainuwat, Bongkosh, Robert Nelson, and Fitri Rahmafitria. 2018. “Applying the Perceived Probability of Risk and Bias Toward Optimism: Implications for Travel Decisions in the Face of Natural Disasters.” Tourism Management 66: 221–32. doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2017.09.013.
Salazar, Juan Francisco, Celine Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, and Manuel Tironi, eds. 2020. Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Salazar, Juan Francisco, Anna Krzywoszynska, Manuel Tironi, and Matthew Kearnes, “Thinking-with Soils: An Introduction,” Pp. 1–14, in Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, edited by. Juan Francisco Salazar, Celine Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, and Manuel Tironi. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Stewart, Kathleen. 2007. Ordinary Affects. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Strathern, Marilyn. 2018. “Souls in Other Selves, and the Immortality of the Body.” Lecture, presented at the “Foerster Lectures on the Immortality of the Soul.” University of California, Berkley, April 17. YouTube video, 1:24:51, June 2018. Retrieved January 20, 2023 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDdCk8T6r4U).
TBS NEWS DIG. 2022. “Atami dosekiryū ichinen, morichi hōraku wa ‘jin-sai’ ka” (“One Year After the Atami Mudslide: Was the Collapse of Fill a “Man-Made Disaster?”), July 3. Retrieved March 10, 2023 (https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/83876).
The Japan Times. 2022, July 4. “Bereaved Families to Sue Local Governments Over Atami Mudslide.” Retrieved March 1, 2023 (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/07/04/national/crime-legal/atami-mudslide-lawsuit/).
Tironi, Manuel, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, Céline Granjou, and Juan Francisco Salazar. 2020. “Soil Theories: Relational, Decolonial, Inhuman.” Pp. 15–38 in Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, edited by Juan Francisco Salazar, Cline Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, and Manuel Tironi. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Uozumi, Akari, Yuichi Koyama, and Sokichi Kuroda. 2023, February 10. “Atami dosekiryū, saigo no yukue fumeisha wo hakken hatsugen kara ichi-nen nana-kagetsu 'yatto’” (“Last Missing Person from the Atami Mudflow Finally Found 1 Year and 7 Months Later”). Asahi Shimbun Digital. Retrieved March 10, 2023 (https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASR297GN4R29UTPB00N.html).
Woywodt, Alexander and Akos Kiss. 2002. “Geophagia: The History of Earth-Eating,” Journal of Royal Society Medicine 95:143–46. doi: 10.1258/jrsm.95.3.143.
Yanagawa, Youichi, Kei Jitsuiki, Hiroki Nagasawa, Hiromichi Ohsaka, and Kouhei Ishikawa. 2022. “Questions Regarding the Initial Request for the Dispatch of Disaster Medical Assistance Teams for a Landslide after Torrential Rain at Izuyama in Atami, Japan.” Journal of Emergencies, Trauma, and Shock 15(1): 71–2. doi: 10.4103/jets.jets_123_21.
Alexievich, Svetlana. 2019. Chernobylskaya molitva: khronika budushchego (Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of Future). Moscow: Vremya.
Allison, Anne. 2013. Precarious Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Anell, Bengt and Sture Lagercrantz. 1958. “Geophagical Customs.” Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia 17.
Atay, Ġnci Meltem. 2014. “A Pica Case Associated with Suicide-Bereavement.” Alpha Psychiatry 15(S1): S39-S42. doi: 10.5455/apd.149941.
BBC News Russian. 2011. “‘Russkiy Buker Desyatiletiya’ prisuzhdyon postmertno” (“‘Russian Booker of the Decade’ awarded posthumously”). December 1. Retrieved March 20, 2023 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/society/2011/12/111201_chudakov_booker_prize.shtml).
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Brisini, Travis. 2023. “Modern-Day Neanderthal: Genetic Life Writing, Interspecies Romance, and the Promise of Multispecies Autoethnography.” Journal of Autoethnography 4(1): 10–24. doi: 10.1525/joae.2023.4.1.10.
Callahan, Gerald N. 2003. “Eating Dirt.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 9(8):1016–21. doi:10.3201/eid0908.030033.
Chudakov, Aleksandr. 2018. Lozhitsya mgla na starye stupeni (Gloom Descends Upon the Old Steps) Moscow: Eksmo.
Conklin, Beth A. 1995. “Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Was Our Custom: Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society.” American Ethnologist 22(1):75–101.
Docot, Dada. 2019. “Taking the Long Route: Ethnographic Metacommentary as Method in the Anthropological Film Practice.” Current Anthropology 60(6):774–95. doi:10.1086/706348.
Dokuchaev, Vasilii V. 1892. Nashi stepi prezhde i teper (Our Steppes Before and Now). Saint Petersburg: Typography of Evdokimov.
Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. 2011. “Autoethnography: An Overview.” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 36, (4 (138]):273–90.
Etkind, Alexander. 2013. Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Harrison, Aimee. 2014. “Autoorthography: Identity Poetics with Poetry.” Master’s thesis, School of Interdisciplinary Arts&Sciences, University of Washington, Bothell, WA.
Henry, Jacques M. and F. Daniel Cring. 2013. “Geophagy: An Anthropological Perspective.” Pp. 179–98 in Soils and Human Health, edited by Eric C. Brevik and Lynn C. Burgess. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Retrieved March 1, 2023. doi: 10.1201/b13683.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 2010. Cultivating Questions for a Sociology of Gardens. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 39(5):498–516. doi: 10.1177/0891241610376069
Human Rights Watch. 2022. “Russia: New Restrictions for ‘Foreign Agents.’ Foreign Influence Would Now Suffice for Toxic Designation,” December 1. Retrieved February 15, 2023 (https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/01/russia-new-restrictions-foreign-agents).
Ingold, Tim. 2001. “Beyond Art and Technology: The Anthropology of Skill.” Pp. 17–31 in Anthropological Perspectives on Technology, edited by Michael Brian Schiffer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Ingold, Tim. 2020. “Creatures of the Soil, Reborn.” Lecture, presented at “The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish—The Understory of the Understory” festival, Serpentine Galleries, December 5-6. YouTube video, 37:33:00, December 10, 2020. Retrieved February 10, 2023 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvVxhIquYoo).
Jangbar, Sakina. 2023. “Forgiving Family Members: An Indirect Route.” Journal of Autoethnography 4(1): 87–101. doi: 10.1525/joae.2023.4.1.87.
Kimura, Katsumi. 2021. “Atami shi no Aizomegawa dosekiryū saigai no chikei, chishitsuteki haikei” (“The topographical and geological background of the debris flow disaster on July 3, 2021 in the Aizome River, Atami city, Shizuoka Pref.”). Fukada Geological Institute Annual Report 22: 185–202.
Krzywoszynska, Anna. 2019. “Caring for Soil Life in the Anthropocene: The Role of Attentiveness in More-than-human Ethics,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44(4): 661–75. doi: 10.1111/tran.12293.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Lyons, Kristina. 2016. “Decomposition as Life Politics: Soils, Selva, and Small Farmers under the Gun of the U.S.-Colombian War on Drugs.” Cultural Anthropology 31(1): 56–81. doi: 10.14506/ca31.1.04.
Marder, Michael. 2022. “Vegetal Redemption: A Ukrainian Woman and Russian soldiers.” The Philosophical Salon, February 26. Retrieved March 1, 2023 (https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/vegetal-redemption-a-ukrainian-woman-and-russian-soldiers/).
Meulemans, Germain, Marine Legrand, Anaïs Tondeur, Yesenia Thibault-Picazo, and Alan Vergnes. 2017. “Soil Fictions: Addressing Urban Soils between Art, Soil Ecology, and Anthropology.” Collaborative Anthropologies 10(1-2): 20–44. doi: 10.1353/cla.2017.0001.
Mirto, Giorgia, Simon Robins, Karina Horsti, Pamela J. Prickett, Deborah Ruiz Verduzco, and Victor Toom. 2020. “Mourning Missing Migrants: Ambiguous Loss and the Grief of Strangers.” Pp. 103–16 in Border Deaths: Causes, Dynamics and Consequences of Migration-related Mortality, edited by Paolo Cuttitta and Tamara Last. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Mukhina, Varvara. 2023. “Under the Veil of Silence: Group-Based Emotions Experienced by Russian Immigrants in Japan who Disapprove of the Invasion of Ukraine.” Hakusan Review of Antropology 26: 21–44.
Obozrevatel TV. 2022, February 25. “Prishli s voinoi na nashu zemlyu, semyan v karmany polozhite, hot’ kakoi tolk ot vas budet” (“You came with war to our soil, put seeds in your pockets, at least some benefit will come from you”). YouTube video, 00:00:48, February 25, 2022. Retrieved March 15, 2023 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ASqVOqjPc0).
Placek, Caitlyn D. 2017. “Ethnomedical and Sociocultural Factors of Pica Substances in Rural South India,” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 56(3): 238–55. doi:10.1080/03670244.2017.1311255.
Richter, Daniel D. 2019. “Game Changer in Soil Science: The Anthropocene in Soil Science and Pedology.” Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science 1–7. doi:10.1002/jpln.201900320.
Rittichainuwat, Bongkosh, Robert Nelson, and Fitri Rahmafitria. 2018. “Applying the Perceived Probability of Risk and Bias Toward Optimism: Implications for Travel Decisions in the Face of Natural Disasters.” Tourism Management 66: 221–32. doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2017.09.013.
Salazar, Juan Francisco, Celine Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, and Manuel Tironi, eds. 2020. Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Salazar, Juan Francisco, Anna Krzywoszynska, Manuel Tironi, and Matthew Kearnes, “Thinking-with Soils: An Introduction,” Pp. 1–14, in Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, edited by. Juan Francisco Salazar, Celine Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, and Manuel Tironi. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Stewart, Kathleen. 2007. Ordinary Affects. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Strathern, Marilyn. 2018. “Souls in Other Selves, and the Immortality of the Body.” Lecture, presented at the “Foerster Lectures on the Immortality of the Soul.” University of California, Berkley, April 17. YouTube video, 1:24:51, June 2018. Retrieved January 20, 2023 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDdCk8T6r4U).
TBS NEWS DIG. 2022. “Atami dosekiryū ichinen, morichi hōraku wa ‘jin-sai’ ka” (“One Year After the Atami Mudslide: Was the Collapse of Fill a “Man-Made Disaster?”), July 3. Retrieved March 10, 2023 (https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/83876).
The Japan Times. 2022, July 4. “Bereaved Families to Sue Local Governments Over Atami Mudslide.” Retrieved March 1, 2023 (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/07/04/national/crime-legal/atami-mudslide-lawsuit/).
Tironi, Manuel, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, Céline Granjou, and Juan Francisco Salazar. 2020. “Soil Theories: Relational, Decolonial, Inhuman.” Pp. 15–38 in Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, edited by Juan Francisco Salazar, Cline Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, and Manuel Tironi. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Uozumi, Akari, Yuichi Koyama, and Sokichi Kuroda. 2023, February 10. “Atami dosekiryū, saigo no yukue fumeisha wo hakken hatsugen kara ichi-nen nana-kagetsu 'yatto’” (“Last Missing Person from the Atami Mudflow Finally Found 1 Year and 7 Months Later”). Asahi Shimbun Digital. Retrieved March 10, 2023 (https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASR297GN4R29UTPB00N.html).
Woywodt, Alexander and Akos Kiss. 2002. “Geophagia: The History of Earth-Eating,” Journal of Royal Society Medicine 95:143–46. doi: 10.1258/jrsm.95.3.143.
Yanagawa, Youichi, Kei Jitsuiki, Hiroki Nagasawa, Hiromichi Ohsaka, and Kouhei Ishikawa. 2022. “Questions Regarding the Initial Request for the Dispatch of Disaster Medical Assistance Teams for a Landslide after Torrential Rain at Izuyama in Atami, Japan.” Journal of Emergencies, Trauma, and Shock 15(1): 71–2. doi: 10.4103/jets.jets_123_21.
Published
2023-11-29
How to Cite
Golovina, K. (2023). Soil Within Us: An Autopedology of Migrant Family History and Mourning through the Medium of Soil. Ethnographic Edge, 6(2), 63-81. https://doi.org/10.24135/ee.v6i2.265
Section
Articles
Copyright (c) 2023 Golovina Ksenia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
