Pastoral Communities in the Sardinian Highlands (Italy): A View on Social Mobility

Abstract

For several decades the socio-economic and political organization of rural communities in the northern Mediterranean has been a central topic of ethnographic and modern historical research. Although the concept of (rural) class has generally been avoided, a scholarly picture has often been maintained of a sharp social stratification in local contexts. In this framework the notions of peasantry and patronage have frequently been applied. This article argues that on occasion rural communities in southern Europe showed a rather flexible social stratification and high amounts of social mobility in particular among shepherd groups. The case study is of the agro-pastoral community of Fonni in the central mountains of Sardinia (Italy), which has been characterized predominantly by a pastoral economy based on sheep and goat herding during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Wild Food Thistle Gathering and Pastoralism: An Inextricable Link in the Biocultural Landscape of Barbagia, Central Sardinia (Italy)

“…Many ethnobotanical studies, mainly focusing on medicinal plants, have been conducted over the past 30 years in several areas of Sardinia [13][14][15][16][17]. However, there is no available literature on ethnobotany in the area of Barbagia di Ollolai, and there are only a few publications regarding pastoralism in Barbagia [18][19][20], which mainly address historical and ethnographic aspects. Nevertheless, the relationship between pastoralism and wild food has been little investigated and mainly in the Asian and African contexts.…”

Pastoralists and peasants: perspectives on agrarian change

“…European pastoral regions have seen a process of massive de-population over several decades in everywhere from the Scottish highlands to the Pyrenees to the Alps to the Balkans to Greece and the island systems of Sardinia or Corsica. 10 Traditional pastoral See the collection on European pastoralism edited by Kerven and Behnke (2011) covering many countries; also for Corsica and Sardinia, see: Mientjes (2010) and Giordano (2003). transhumance or common grazing in hilly and mountainous areas persists, documented so well for the Swiss Alps by Netting (1981), but has much declined (Liechti and Biber 2016;Biber 2010;Collantes 2009) or been transformed (Jurt, Häberli, and Rossier 2015), despite European Common Agricultural Policy support recognising the value of traditional pastoral land-uses for marginal areas (Nori and Gemini 2011).…”

The shared boundary: Sicilian mafia and antimafia land

“…The work that goes into "bounding" can divide village and pastoral life (Mientjes 2010). Indeed, bounding has been associated to the difference between the village space (amenable to circular history) from the linear history of the national ambience (Stacul 2005).…”

“…The work that goes into "bounding" can divide village and pastoral life (Mientjes 2010), or can indeed historically differentiate the lived village space of circular history from the linearity of its national ambience (Stacul 2005). Such current work in Anthropology reminds us of how the public sphere formulates over a collective identity sense suggested by the past (Sorge 2015b;cf Kertzer 1974).…”