Night Soil
Origins, Discontinuities, and Opportunities for Bridging the Metabolic Rift
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6144536 |
|---|---|
| Authors | N C Kawa (0000-0002-0246-4445, The Ohio State University), Yang Ding (0009-0004-0375-995X, The Ohio State University), Jo Kingsbury (The Ohio State University), Kori Goldberg (The Ohio State University), Forbes Lipschitz (The Ohio State University), Mitchell Scherer (The Ohio State University), Fatuma Bonkiye (The Ohio State University) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 40-49 |
| Publication date | 2019-07-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnobiology Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2159-8126 • E-ISSN: 2159-8126 |
| Publisher | Society of Ethnobiology (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.14237/ebl.10.1.2019.1351 |
| OpenAlex | W2964293000 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 20 |
For millennia, people have relied on human excrement or “night soil” as a source of agricultural fertilization. Following industrialization, however, the use of this resource became considerably limited. In this article, we provide a brief overview of the historical use of human excreta for agricultural application at varying scales of management, from early Amazonian farming middens to regional networks of night soil trade in imperial China. We then draw attention to the factors that led to the discontinuation of night soil usage during industrialization, placing focus on the “culture of flushing” that developed along with the adoption of the hydraulic sanitation system. To conclude, we consider how improved management of human excreta in the contemporary world can have important consequences for agricultural production, despite the ongoing challenges posed by what Marxian scholars refer to as the metabolic rift—the disruption of the earth’s socio-ecological cycles brought on by industrial capitalism
Agriculture · Archaeology · Economics · Geography · Green Revolution · Industrialisation · Natural resource economics · Political science · Sanitation · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory · Environmental Science · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology
From fork to farm, locally
Farmland to sea
Historicising sanitation work
Ethnobiology and Degrowth
Late Classic Climate Change and Societal Response in the Maya Lowlands
Making sense of sewage sludge as a renewable resource in the urban U.S
The messy ethics of household biogas in Tanzania
Prelude to a Grid
Digestions fertiles
Activating dark earths
Making soil in the Plantationocene
The Amazonian Formative
Historical and Socio-cultural Origins of Amazonian Dark Earth
Acceptance of Human Feces-based Fertilizers in Fecophobic Ghana
Treasure Nightsoil As If It Were Gold
Nightsoil and the ‘Great Divergence’
Rethinking urban metabolism
Creating space for sustainable food systems
Poo wars as matter out of place
Farmers of Forty Centuries; or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan
Enriching the Earth
Faeces deposition on Amazonian Anthrosols as assessed from 5β-stanols
Citizenshit
Toilets, Bodies, Selves
The night-soil collector
Urban Sanitation in Preindustrial Japan
O determinismo agrícola na arqueologia amazônica
Akan Shit
Public things, excremental politics, and the infrastructure of bare life in Ghana's city of Tema
Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift
Transcending the metabolic rift
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,83 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |