Paper Short Abstract:

“Guardians of the land” is the epithet by which peasants and farmers represent themselves and are represented in Abruzzo, Italy, within various institutional and socioeconomic contexts. This ethnography-based contribution studies the rhetorical and anthropological ambivalence of such appellation.

Paper Abstract:

During my ethnographic fieldwork on agroecological experiences in depopulated mountain areas of Abruzzo (Italy), I came across a singular figure by which peasants and farmers are represented, especially within sustainable food production and marketing projects funded by local institutions as a response to the climatic and socioeconomic crisis. “Guardians of the land” was an epithet used initially in 2004 for the local farmers involved in the “Cultivating diversity” project promoted by the Majella National Park and dedicated to the “recovery, conservation, and enhancement of native agricultural genetic resources”. Later, other networks and consortia, established both within the three National Parks and outside (still funded by the Region), took the same name and involved also retailers, restaurant owners, entrepreneurs. In 2023 the Region created the registry of “guardians of the land” farmers and peasants in compliance with the local implementation of the European Common Agriculture Policy fostering biodiversity strategies related to the European Green Deal, which funds projects for agricultural development in disadvantaged areas in Abruzzo. My ethnography-based contribution aims to question such model of the “guardian” as (self-)representation of peasants: is it an effective metaphor for that reaction to the neoliberal empire named “repeasantization” by Van der Ploeg (2008)? Or else is it to be read as an actual oxymoron ambiguously shaping both nature as an inert object to be protected but also as an apocalyptical agent, and peasants as the survival of a premodern world but also as reassuring promoters of neoliberal sustainability and victims of a rhetorical marginalization?