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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ‘heritagization’ of local cheeses in Kars, Northeastern Turkey. I focus on the ways in which small dairy farmers built alliances to enact sensory and scientific practices of “pasturing” dairy craft in their attempts to sustain rural livelihoods.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the ways in which small dairy farmers attempt to sustain rural livelihoods by certifying local cheeses as authentic products of intangible heritage in Kars, Northeastern Turkey. Territorial state politics of national security and “microbiopolitics” of food safety have shaped everyday practices of dairy farming and cheesemaking in this border province. Together with the foundation of a cheese ecomuseum in the Boğatepe village in 2010, farmers have built alliance with social and dairy scientists, government officials and activists in the certification of gravyer cheese as a Slow Food Presidium and kaşar cheese as a Geographical Indication in 2015. Dairy farmers’ involvement in the certification processes led the ‘pasture-milk’ to be recognized as a necessary ingredient of cheese. This did not only affect the dairy scientific research agenda on Kars cheeses in order to establish the link between the pastures, local-traditional techniques and the taste of pastures in the cheeses. It also made possible to sense everyday practices of agro-pastoralism in the cheese – contributing to the formation of a pasture-cheese sensorium. Based on my 18-month ethnographic research, I call this process "pasturing" and argue that it challenges the "pasteurization" of milk, places, grasslands, and dairy farming. Hence this paper analyzes the heritagization of local cheeses in Kars through practices of pasturing dairy craft. I suggest that small farmer participation in promoting food heritage enabled them to sustain agro-pastoral livelihoods and its more-than-human assemblages.