Presentation short abstract

The paper examines what shepherdesses and women livestock managers in the Pyrenees say (discourse), feel (intimate experience), and do (practice) when facing climate change. It adopts an emotional political ecology approach to highlight the subjective and embodied processes that shape vulnerability.

Presentation long abstract

Situated within the current of feminist political ecology and emotional political ecology, this work reveals the subjective, embodied, and emotional processes underlying the concept of vulnerability. The empirical study, realised through life histories, explores the multiple and differential perceptions of factors of pressures as well as the underlying causes of intersectional sensitivity and capacity of adaptation of shepherdesses and women livestock managers in the Pyrenees. Moreover, the focus on various subjectivities reflects an epistemological stance that conceives the body and emotions as the very first place affected by socio-environmental transformations. Given the urgency imposed by today’s crises, the analysis must be relocated to bodies and emotions rather than treated as a study detached from everyday experience. The presentation of the bodily and emotional dimensions explored during the study will be organized into three parts: the intimate dimension, the collective dimension (in relation to social categories), and the relational dimension (in relation to animals, the environment, landscapes, etc.). Acknowledging these realities is nevertheless essential when considering possible avenues for adaptation, particularly in a sector such as pastoralism, where the engagement of human and non-human bodies and the relationship to space are fundamental features of the activity.