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Paper short abstract

An anthropological rereading of transhumance in Andalusia amid demographic crisis and shifting agropastoral values. As over 60% of shepherds near retirement, new generations renegotiate pastoral functions and imaginaries—sustainability, territorial care, animal welfare—producing new ruralities.

Paper long abstract

This paper proposes an anthropological re-reading of transhumance in Andalusia as a rural practice in transformation, situated between demographic crisis and the reconfiguration of the value of agropastoral labour. In Andalusia, more than 60% of current shepherds are expected to retire within the next ten years, making the intergenerational transmission of knowledge related to extensive and transhumant livestock farming an urgent and deeply political issue.

Drawing on the first results of the ethnographic research developed within the project “Trashumancia de saberes: Procesos de transmisión y aprendizaje intergeneracional de conocimientos relativos a la ganadería extensiva y trashumante en Andalucía”, this contribution reflects on some of the ways in which new generations of shepherds reinterpret transhumance with a future-oriented perspective. Our main hypothesis is that these actors renegotiate the functions, values, and imaginaries of pastoral practice by articulating them with discourses on sustainability, territorial care, animal welfare, and labour autonomy, thereby producing new ruralities.