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Paper short abstract:

This paper develops a critical take on the notion of the Anthropocene as one, drawing on fieldwork on woollen sheep as human-non-human place making agents.

Paper long abstract:

This paper develops a bottom-up and critical approach to the notion of Anthropocene as one whole, focusing on the ways that local knowledges and global imaginaries become intertwined and multiplied within connections among place making of the Global South. It is based on fieldwork which engages sheep farmers, indigenous elderly, laboratory technicians and ambulant sheep shearers on two major southern grasslands - Patagonia and Australia. In telling and showing their version of global wool, analysing their own position within wool networks, and discussing how they understand place making activities of the other site, respectively, the purpose is to investigate anthropologically and geographically, the tensions that arise within a transnational industry, like wool, which remains relentlessly tied to the particularities of places and ecologies. Woollen sheep have played a significant part in human livelihood for millennia, and the distribution of sheep to the grasslands of the Global South was part of European colonial efforts, later intensifying with industrialisation. Today wool production is a global industry which, at a closer look, contains a key paradox: large-scale wool production cannot be divorced from place-specific ecologies and social relations. Wool is an organic sustainable fibre, yet woollen sheep - as they 'naturally' melt into the landscape, have a generative, relational and place making presence which echo southern histories of colonial place-making, including violent confrontations concerning landownership as well as the powerful and devastating effects of volcano eruptions and fierce fires.