Send message to Author

Short abstract:

This paper explores how Shetland sheep shape and are shaped by hill landscapes as they graze without human shepherding. Moving beyond pervasive views of sheep as habitat destroyers, I utilize ethnographic research with farmers and sheep to understand the complexities of their presence on the hill.

Long abstract:

In Shetland, two sheep populations inhabit two distinct landscapes: the free-roaming Shetland sheep on rough hills, and cross-breeds in managed fenced fields. The diverging management for and by the sheep creates two distinct landscapes. I focus on hill sheep since, unlike their closely tended counterparts, these sheep graze extensive areas, with human handling limited to two days in summer and autumn.

Hill sheep have become the focus of British environmentalists’ campaigns, framing sheep as destructive to bird habitats and the restoration of peatlands for carbon capture. Alongside sheep’s role in the nineteenth-century clearances, their role as a destructive actor, and creators of monotone landscapes, seems set in stone.

Working alongside those that still ‘put sheep to the hill’ in Shetland, sheep emerge as complex actors, shaping landscapes in more than habitat-destroying ways. They are hefted, grazing the area where they were born and raised, as the boundaries of their grazing patch are passed on from ewes to their lambs. Furthermore, sheep’s bodies transform the landscape not merely through eating, but also through walking, as they create and follow paths indented in the shrub. These paths in the landscape facilitate navigation for humans and sheep when traversing their hills.

In light of the theme of making and doing transformations, I ask what it means to ‘put sheep to the hill’ in Shetland in the face of current tensions? And how can arts of noticing landscapes allow us to read sheep’s complex presence in the hills beyond narratives of destruction?

Send message to Author

Short abstract:

In 2012 the Namibian Karakul was renamed as Swakara, a sheep breed endemic to Namibia. Through a combination of breeding science and narrative practices the new breed, Swakara, was defined as belonging in the Namibian landscape, both destabilising and affirming the category of a native breed.

Long abstract:

In 2012, the Namibian Karakul sheep was re-named Swakara by government proclamation and in the categorization system of the Namibian stud book association. The name Swakara was previously used to market the pelts of Namibian Karakul sheep. It demonstrates how marketing logics; settler identities and colonial histories can become entangled with practices of zoological categorisations.

Brought to Namibia in 1907 as a colonial project, Karakul pelts became an important export products from Namibia in the 1960s-1980s. In the 2010s Karakul was rebranded as Swakara: a national resource, a sheep breed, and a type of sheep farming endemic to Namibia. This was a strategic act of marketing, attempting to distance Swakara from Karakul farming in Afghanistan, which was targeted by animal rights campaigns. Swakara was defined as a separate breed through genetic analysis, but this analysis was only conducted and only became meaningful through its presence in the Namibian landscape and as a way of farming, a way of life, specific to this sheep breed.

Using approaches from material semiotics, this paper traces how the Swakara breed was enacted through the institutional and personal efforts of actors in the Swakara industry. In line with the conference theme making and doing transformations, it investigates how Swakara was performed in strategic enactments in the changing political, economic, and ecological landscape of southern Namibia. The case of Swakara blurs and redraws the categories of native and invasive breeds and species. These tensions are negotiated by different actors through performances of purity, authenticity and belonging.

Send message to Author

Short abstract:

Sheep bodies in the Ethiopian highlands, carry contradictory valuations of sheep as (more than) meat. Sheep bodies here become a site from which to understand agricultural transformations (of which the urban is an integral part), and the politics of valuing sheep multiply.

Long abstract:

Wool sheep, introduced into the Ethiopian highlands in the 60’s, did not material-semiotically “become-well” within landscapes and lives, and thus slowly disappeared, in contrast to the so-called 'habesha' sheep, valued for their localness, authenticity and their abilities to survive-with. However, what is categorized local differs depending on where it is approached from. Today, sheep in the Ethiopian highlands are changing, their bodies mirroring national agricultural transformations. Arguing that industrialization of agricultural landscapes is happening through industrialization of human-animal relations and livestock bodies, this paper connects threads from urban markets and places of slaughter, with places where sheep are raised, cared for and bred. These relations reveal the shifting grounds of relatedness, of which sheep are a part of and co-produce. Sheep are valued for their abilities to produce ‘more meat’ yet simultaneously for their relational qualities, making them ‘more than meat’. Sheep meat is seen as a resource within domestic and export markets, and thus – however contested – new meat breeds are a promise of prosperity. Although wool sheep failed to last, agricultural offices are now introducing new meat breeds all over the country. Such breeds often produce precarious gaps in landscapes, only bridged through constant input of care and resources; they need re-relatings and they change practices around them. They also have unintended effects, like (paradoxically) on local wool production. Overall, this paper approaches agricultural transformations through the plasticity of sheep bodies and sheep relate-abilities, considering how they juxtapose imaginations of how to live together.

Send message to Author

Short abstract:

Using sheep as tools to transform landscapes, regenerative agriculture (RA) converts bare land into healthy ecosystems in South African Karoo. A palimpsest of multiscalar socio-political shifts underlie transitions to RA, influenced by family legacies, carbon credits, and human sensitivity to sheep.

Long abstract:

A core goal of regenerative agriculture (RA) is to transform landscapes. Using sheep as a tool for transformation, RA farmers attempt to convert degraded land into functioning ecosystems with healthy soil. Regenerative agriculture has gained popularity in the fashion industry for sustainable wool production, in resistance to the harm caused by fast fashion.

This paper presents research that explores motivators behind transitions towards regenerative sheep farming in the South African Karoo, a historically prosperous area of wool production. It builds on semi-structured interviews with people involved in the wool value chain, as well as participant observation during the Karoo Winter Wool Festival 2023.

Findings show a diversity of meaning of RA to participants, and varied motivations and deterrents for using RA. Transitions to RA were driven by factors such as carbon credits, greenwashing, family legacies, and human sensitivities to sheep. Findings further highlight uneven distributions of power, benefits, and burdens throughout the value chain. The landscape of the Karoo has been significantly altered in response to political and social shifts over the past 200 years, with the legacy of colonisation and apartheid still imprinted on it and its inhabitants. A palimpsest of these multiscalar shifts was unveiled through exploration of the present transformations towards RA. Regenerative wool farming can be used as a lens to explore issues of land reform, colonial and apartheid legacies, and uneven global power dynamics. This research responds to the lack of RA research considering fibre production, the full value chain, and the South African Karoo.

Send message to Author

Short abstract:

Transhumance sheepherding in the Western United States is a story about global migration. As the sheep traveled, the sheepherders left their marks on the trails, tree carvings called arborglyphs, creating a historical record literally carved onto the landscape.

Long abstract:

Arborglyphs, or tree carvings, document the demographics, interests, and culture of underrepresented groups of immigrants, many of whom were Basque, Peruvians, Chileans, Scottish, and Irish. The thousands of trees with carvings cannot be cut down and preserved in archives or museums; therefore, the landscape itself is a museum. Aspens have a relatively short life span and are succumbing to the natural elements of large wildfires and other environmental dangers, as well as human elements of housing development and loss of wilderness designations. The sheep and sheepherders carved paths that changed the environmental landscape, and so today, those paths are being erased because of nature and man.

Along these paths is a traceable history of sheep’s grazing patterns and the herders who guided them. What can also be traced is the global aspect of immigration. From these paths, one can see a landscape where there were records of farming, home, politics, and love. Without having to tend sheep, arborglyphs wouldn’t exist, and this landscape museum would not continue to be created.

By visiting the aspen groves spread out across the Western U.S., the landscape can be approached to look at sheep and ranching, sheepherders' experiences, and inner dialogs.

From cattle-sheep disputes to herder’s aspen art, dramatic changes to the landscape take center stage via challenges between land practices, economic vitality, and Western identity. Transhumance sheepherding transformed landscapes in the American West; sheepherders, through their tree carvings, did as well.