On this week’s episode, For The Wild delves into the many threads of Dr. Suzanne Pierre’s work as a soil scientist and purveyor of Critical Ecology. Dr. Pierre reminds us that the current exclusionary and hierarchal scientific field within the academy must be repurposed into something meaningful, just, and responsible. Critical Ecology asks us to explore how access to the stars, land, soil, and water act as a social filter to the world of knowledge production. What are the ramifications of this “exclusion by design” when it comes to climate research, national policy, and justice? Dr. Pierre beautifully balances between the soil as scientific matter and soil as an intimate part of our Earthly experience, while offering a critique that is deeply rooted in love and reverence for community and Earth.

Dr. Suzanne Pierre (she/her) is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. She is trained as a global change ecologist and biogeochemist and researches the ways that climate change is altering the elemental exchanges between plants, soils and microorganisms in different habitats. She started writing about marginalized people’s relationships to nature and science in 2013 when she began pursuing a Ph.D. in ecology at Cornell. She’s now interested in the ways that human interactions with nature, mediated by science, labor, and freedom, have influenced local and global exchanges of the elements, energy, and social/economic power. Suzanne organizes these ideas under the umbrella of Critical Ecology– a conceptual thoroughfare she is building across the earth and climate sciences, histories of science, and sociology of the environment. You can read some of Dr. Pierre’s work on this on Instagram @critical_ecology.

This conversation begins by honoring soil, something that Dr. Pierre describes as “silent, but teeming with life.” By trade, Dr. Pierre focuses on carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial environments and soil at the molecular level. This week’s conversation oscillates between the importance of nitrogen, building the knowledge commons, the many new entry points that climate change necessitates, and the ways in which we can root ourselves in frameworks inspired by Earth.

♫ Music by Aisha Badru, Handmade Moments, & The Pit-Yak Aiodo

Episode References

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan

Black Speculation, Black Freedom by Petal Samuel https://www.publicbooks.org/black-speculation-black-freedom/

Belowground Activity by Dr. Suzanne Pierre https://loamlove.com/engage/belowgroundactivity?rq=suzanne%20pierre

Environmental Experiences Have Racial Roots by Dr. Suzanne Pierre https://freerads.org/2017/06/15/environmental-experiences-have-racial-roots