THERE IS NO FUTURE WITHOUT SOIL: climate collapse, urban soils, and the politics of survival

Abstract

The deepening of climate change has highlighted the ecological, political, and epistemological limits of contemporary urban societies, especially in territories marked by structural socio-environmental inequalities. This article develops a theoretical-analytical analysis of urban soil as a sociological operator of climate collapse, examining how its materiality allows for the articulation of the social production of risk, the territorialization of inequalities, and the political disputes that structure contemporary cities. It argues that soil condenses historical processes of environmental injustice, political decisions oriented towards the survival of power and situated practices of life permanence in contexts of socio-ecological degradation. In dialogue with the sociology of risk, the theory of political survival, the anthropology of ruins, and recent contributions from soil science under climate change, it is argued that the climate crisis reveals a structural tension between the survival of socio-political regimes and the survival of life. It is argued that there is no future without soil because it is on urban soil that the central conflicts of the peripheral Anthropocene materialize, requiring a politics of permanence anchored in situated knowledge, educational practices, and ethics of care for the Earth.