Composting mathematics: cascading processes of composition and decomposition in an era of climate crisis

Abstract This autoethnographic assemblage traces composting as a site of mathematical and socio-ecological sensemaking. I proceed from the conviction that understanding mathematics as practice is inseparable from the project of living. If I want to understand whether and when mathematics is formatting separability or enabling multispecies flourishing, I must first examine my own mathematical practices. Three questions guide this project: Where does emergent mathematical sensemaking support a commitment to living well—in a body, with a community, on the planet? When do rigorous commitments to precision and abstraction fall short of or subsume other ways of knowing? What role does mathematics play in socio-ecological sensemaking at scale? Sustainable futures grow from our habits of attention, action, and relation. The socio-ecological turn entails a reexamination of the ways of knowing and doing which structure mathematics and our relationships with the living world. Enactivism provides an overarching framework for understanding how patterns of action format ways of knowing. My central contribution is a sequence of explorations in and through composting. Drawing on ethnomathematics, metabolic literacies, and radical artifactualism, I position the compost box as a tool which instantiates a cascading process of coming to know. Finally, I explore an abstraction of these enacted practices through an agent-based model built to simulate socio-ecological relationships scaled across place and time. I call for a mathematics education rooted in sustained participation in practices that matter. This text is part of the article collection entitled “Mathematics Education for Sustainable Futures” (available at https://link.springer.com/collections/acebaagbha ).