Il giardiniere inconsapevole. Pastori sardi, retoriche ambientaliste e strategie di riconversione

Drawing on fieldwork conducted within ‘Movimento Pastori Sardi’, a social movement of sheep herders mobilizing to affirm their political agency, this paper explores the rhetoric and economic strategies sheep herders adopt in order to face the challenges disclosed under neoliberal globalization. The paper originates from the image of the “unaware landscaper” (il giardiniere inconsapevole) a notion elaborated by Felice Floris, the leader of the shepherds social movement, in order to redefine shepherds’ identity and social role. In fact, this notion refers to the widespread idea that beyond the simple production of milk, sheep herders are also producers of environmental values and act as custodians of the countryside. Following van der Ploeg’s idea of “repeasantization” (2009) the paper suggests that a similar process of “repastoralization” concerns a growing number of Sardinian milk farms and producers. Different individual and collective strategies of reconversion are considered and analyzed. Focusing on several ethnographic cases the paper theoretically aims to articulate the relations of structural domination of the agro-pastoral economic field (Bourdieu, 2000) with insights into the “social poetics” of the shepherds themselves (Herzfeld, 2003)