Kathryn Yusoff sparked a culture war with her latest book, suggesting slavery and white supremacy informed the work of geology’s founding fathers. Here, she and other experts suggest that attitudes have changed little sinceIt was at the London Library at St James’s Square, surrounded by the shiny offices of geological extraction companies including BP and Rio Tinto, that Kathryn Yusoff discovered a deep link between geology and racism. It was 2017, and the professor of inhuman geography from Queen Mary University of London was doing research for a book about the history of geology. Little did she know that her niche, archival discoveries, which led to a 600-page tome on race and geoscience seven years later, would put her on the very faultline of a culture war.The academic book, called Geologic Life, was published in 2024. It soon attracted the attention of the conservative higher education publication the College Fix, which said that Yusoff’s writing “suggests even rocks have been ...
Kathryn Yusoff's research reveals a historical link between geology and racism, alleging that geologists created and perpetuated narratives of prejudice during colonialism. This involved a hierarchical view of time linked to racial stereotypes, exemplified by the treatment of Saartjie Baartman. While some experts acknowledge geology's benefit from colonialism and the racism of many geologists at the time, others are skeptical about a direct causal link between geological sequencing and sociological ideas. The legacy of colonial practices persists in modern geology, such as "parachute science." There are discussions about repatriation of geological collections, and hopes that this work will help shift the debate about racism.