Anthropology

Shared concern for nature can be a way of transcending national, ethnic, religious, and cultural boundaries, yet conservation efforts often pit the interests of historically rooted or indigenous peoples against the state and international environmental organizations, eroding local autonomy while "saving" rural land for animals and tourists. Wild Sardinia's examination of the cultural politics around nature conservation and the traditional Commons on an Italian island illustrates the complexities of environmental stewardship.

Monte San Giovanni is one of the most celebrated peaks of central Sardinia (Italy). On a clear day, they told me in Orgosolo, from its height of 1,316 m, you can see clear across' from Arbatax to Oristano', the Mediterranean coasts on both ...

In 2001, a collaboration between Edinburgh scientists and a research team in Teramo, Italy, made the first surviving clone of an endangered mammal: a wild sheep species called the mouflon, indigenous to the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia, Corsica and Cyprus. Amidst fierce debates on the ethics of cloning, this application of biotechnology to wildlife conservation appeared relatively felicitous. Will cloning techniques bring redemption for the immanent loss of genetic resources? How would this alter the very nature and culture of biodiversity protection? On an island of notorious shepherds, wilderness and wildlife are increasingly valued over the objects of traditional pastoral work. Set against the background of ongoing tensions over the creation of a new national park in Sardinia, the story of the cloned mouflon signified the power of new science to redefine the politics of biodiversity, undermining the cultural authority of shepherd towns over human-animal relations.

Narratives of Catholicism, gender, and criminality are entangled with social constructions of ‘resistance’ to a new Gennargentu National Park on areas of traditional common lands in central Sardinia, Italy. Embodied identities are strategically implicated in moral discourses of grassroots opposition to a park. The notion of Sardinian resistance as a form of cultural authenticity is rooted in a local sphere of social practices and expectations that are not shared by the wider Italian or European public. Ethnography in the town of Orgosolo demonstrates that a ‘politics of the weak’ can reframe relations of authority in local spheres and work to empower cultural recognition and control over common lands. Transgressive acts of violence, however, highlight embedded tensions, ambiguities, and disruptions in local identity practices. The gendered construction of cultural discourses in Orgosolo points to the paradox of a politics that seeks to affirm the authority of embodied traditions yet actually perpetuates ambivalent stereotypes based on cultural essentialism.

Schemes for biodiversity protection were instrumental to building thelegitimacy of post-national cooperation during the early phases of European integration. Today, Europe’s regime of environmental security suggests new dimensions of territoriality manifest in the adoption of information and communication technologies. This paper explores some changing paradigms for eco-development in Sardinia, Italy and the European Union to consider the political stakes and human dimensions inherent in the creation of databases such as the European Information and Observation Network. It critically expands the concept of “environmentality” in light of insights recognizing the multiscalar dimensions of governance in the global, digital age.

This essay reflects on paradigm shifts in environmental conservation, to examine elements of the ‘fortress conservation' model that still persist in the context of more participatory approaches. Presenting a case study on Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea, it considers how existing practices for the protection of natural landscapes and biodiversity are ambivalently shaped by both institutional mandates and informal collaborations. Exploring how these are further reconfigured by the implementation of new information and communication systems, it questions implications for autochthonous visions of landscape. It argues that an engaged anthropology of the environment should critically assess how emerging strategies for generating potent expert knowledge about nature also generate issues of inclusion and exclusion.