Presentation short abstract:

Sicilian oliviculturalists regularly refer to “living the land” (vivere la terra) blurring the lines of separation between so-called human and wild nature. As such, Sicilian oliviculture is an example of relational world-making projects that troubles easy definitions of wild and domesticated.

Presentation long abstract:

This lightning talk, based on sensorial ethnographic fieldwork, presents the case of Sicilian oliviculture in considering more-than-human communal relations. Sicilian oliviculturalists regularly refer to “living the land” (vivere la terra) blurring the lines of separation between so-called human and wild nature. Not living on or with or by the land, ways something similar might be phrased in English, but simply living the land. This phrasing illustrates and underscores a directness or immediacy of engagement, and a daily and prolonged intimacy—participants gave examples like checking on their olive trees every day; giving them food to eat and water to drink; and monitoring their branches for blossoms, new growth, and signs of pest and disease; year in and year out.

A political ecological approach requires paying attention to the local impacts of global systems of economic and political power, and at the same time paying attention to the ecology of the living systems under study. Olive trees themselves blur the lines between wild and domesticated, since oftentimes domestic varieties of olive are grafted onto wild rootstock; or wild olives are used as hedgerows to assist domesticated varieties in successful pollination. I consider the relationships of organisms to one another and to their surroundings, following Tim Ingold (2002, 2005), in prioritizing relationality, and Anna Tsing in emphasizing world-making projects (2015). Thinking in terms of living landscapes draws on the concept of socionature—that the human and the non- and more-than human are inextricably related and bound together—wild, domesticated, or both/neither.