With Noemi Ujhazy, University of Nottingham.
Part of the Cultural and Historical Seminar Series.
Abstract
The agency of microbes that shape the world we inhabit is coming increasingly into the spotlight of hybrid geographies of nature and culture. This paper reflects on how the seemingly apolitical mission embodied in the expansion of knowledge about microbial life in soils is embedded in the project of state-building and transnational networks of science and politics.
Using a political ecology framework, my goal is to explore the intersections of microbial ecology, soil science and forest management policy in 20th century Hungary (1920-1960). After WWI, territorial losses of the Hungarian Kingdom led to the need for both the intensification of forestry and the expansion of forested areas in the semi-arid Great Hungarian Plain region. The newly formed soil biology laboratory headed by Dániel Fehér provided novel scientific information on soil microbes and forests, and beyond this, soil mapping programmes and phytosociological studies were conducted in sandy and alkaline areas to explore the frontiers of forest cultivation in the country. As the travelogue by Dániel Fehér about the first soil microbial ecology expedition across the Sahara in French Algeria shows, Hungarian nationalistic discourses on pedology were closely interrelated with similar colonial knowledge production practices.
After WWII and the communist takeover in the country, transnational connections of science and politics were also transformed. However, afforestation programmes, now in the name of the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature, became quite important again. With this, the “labour” of microbes has been recognized in the transformation of landscapes and the building of the communist state. Mapping the relations of microbes, soil processes, ecology and politics in 20th century Hungary highlights how the production of knowledge on soil ecology was a part of the unchallenged mission of an internal colonization of nature, pushing the frontiers of cultivation within borders of the country.