Digging into deep reality

Emerging literature on humans’ ethical relations with soils is theoretically well-situated to describe human–soil relations, yet its flat ontological presuppositions are analytically disadvantaged in explaining their conditioning. By exploring farmers’ soil management in Jæren and Østfold, Norway, this article seeks to enrich the growing literature in arguing that it is necessary to analytically explain how soil care is structurally conditioned (through, for example, political economic and epistemic mechanisms) and suggests that a critical realist approach is a fruitful fundament. Attention to conditions can unlock the analytical and political potential for investigating and encouraging alternative forms of soil care that seek to deal with soil degradation through its transformation.