Paper short abstract:

Istria, Croatia’s agrotourism revival offers an opportunity to explore themes of rural identity and the marketization of traditional agricultural products in the context of EU accession. Issues including local bureaucracy, EU food legislation, and the maintenance of traditional life will be discussed.

Paper long abstract:

Croatia's coastal region Istria has experienced a revival of agrotourisms in recent years, reflecting a renewed interest in rural areas in traditional farming practices and the marketization of regional agricultural products including indigenous wine and olive oils, special liquors, cured meats, and cheeses. Though in synergy with European trends of returning to ecological, seasonal culinary practices, the motivations in Istria are very different. With high unemployment in the elderly population, subsistence farming is increasingly important. Agrotourisms offer a way to connect inland rural agricultural areas with the successful coastal tourism sector, drawing on local heritage and identity issues.

As Croatia has just joined the European Union, the country is still adjusting to legislative reforms. Rural business people are not informed on changing laws, creating fear about an unfamiliar system and questions about how to navigate a new and opaque bureaucracy. Agrotourisms inhabit a peculiar business nexus of agriculture, restaurant, alcohol, and food processing, causing ambiguity in rules governing the sector at the municipal level. This creates tensions between agrotourism owners and local government as well as within the agrotourism community, as every agrotourism has unique characteristics that they believe are essential qualities of agrotourisms in general.

This paper will unpack the tensions and contradictions emerging in Istria's agrotourism community, explore the varied motivations behind the agrotourism revival, and present the interesting bureaucratic issues that Europeanization has brought to Istria's rural businesses in general. Interactions with inspectors and implications for the illegalization of traditional rural agricultural practices will also be discussed.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the ways pastoral households in Fundata manage to cope with post-socialist de-industrialization and the breakdown of pastoral market by a creative and flexible usage of land property and insertion in an emerging “economy of experience” (Pine and Gilmore, 1999)

Paper long abstract:

After the fall of communism, dramatic de-industrialization, and high return migration, rural households tried to cope with new market conditions by reconsidering their scarce resources - mainly land ownership. The paper is an ethnography of emerging strategies of household diffuse economy in a pastoral county of Romania, still preserving some forms of traditional communal land property.

After de-industrialization of the near by town, return to the pre-socialist family land, its diminishing productive value but growing real estate price, most households in Fundata started to creatively play with their land assets and liabilities. Marin's household is a typical case. They sold to a rich city based family a large parcel of their land, while keeping the right to mow it. Having a part time job in a communal institution, Marin has not enough time to mow, so that he usually has to hire poor Roma neighbors whose subsistence depend on such seasonal work. The hay is used to raise cattle. Their milk and meat are turned to "traditional products", a small part of which is returned as gift to the new landowners, the rest being sold to other city-based neighbors and tourists or taken over by a small local entrepreneur who is selling them on the city market.

The village gained in time the reputation of "traditional landscape" and "authentic life style", attracting more tourists and thus enhancing agrotourism. This flourishing industry is now competing with local household diffuse economy, both making use of and undermining it in order to better sell local "authenticity".

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork among a social movement of Sardinian sheep herders this paper explores their discourses and practices of ‘animal welfare’ and more generally the way they experience and imagine the shepherd-animal relation, including ideas about animal care, animal sensitivity, animal desires...

Paper long abstract:

Sheepherding, a time-honored work in Sardinia often romanticized and increasingly commoditized is dramatically changing in recent years also due to the pressure of policies and regulations enforced by regional, national and supra-national institutions such as the EU. The most authoritative legal framework at European level, the common agricultural policy (CAP) has notably adopted a number of measures in order to implement the 'best practices' in specific sectors, including 'animal welfare'. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among a social movement of sheep herders mobilizing in order to affirm their political agency, this paper explores their discourses and practices of 'animal welfare' and more generally the way the shepherd-animal relationship is currently experienced and imagined by the shepherds themselves, including their ideas about animal care, animal sensitivity, animal desires etc. The paper will notably focus on two aspects: the actual functioning of the 'animal welfare' courses organized by Sardinia regional research agencies and institutions, and the public debate over recent scandals provoked by the compulsory injection of the vaccine against the Bluetongue, a viral disease of ruminants affecting Sardinian sheep. The purpose of the paper is twofold: on the one hand it will highlight the controversy between the shepherds' practical 'traditional' knowledge and the knowledge produced by the expert subjects imposing the adoption of scientific protocols; on the other hand it will suggest how the shepherds themselves are subtly (self-)included within the hegemonic developmentalist discourse of bureaucratic neoliberal rationality.

Paper short abstract:

We discuss the process by which upper mountain areas in Northern Spain are redefining themselves within the new postindustrial order. Our case study allows us to examine how macroeconomic changes affecting rural communities redefine the ways in which these areas engage with larger economic frameworks.

Paper long abstract:

In this article we discuss the process by which the upper areas of the Alt Urgell, in Northern Spain, are redefining themselves in order to survive in the new postindustrial order. During the last century the small mountainous villages of the Alt Urgell district have experienced several drastic socioeconomic changes as a result of their adaptation to the extreme transformations of Spanish society in particular and Western Europe in general. These communities, during the twentieth century, witnessed a steady demographic and economic collapse that resulted in a progressive decline of agricultural activities and the abandonment of mid-mountain villages. In the sixties, the area deepened its milk production specialization that offered, for a while, a path towards economic sustainability via connections to national networks of consumption. This solution was severed by the entry of Spain into the European Union. The new European regulations obliterated the industrial production of milk and disconnected the area, once again, from national markets. The early nineties saw these valleys fully engage in a postindustrial economy based on leisure and heritage. This case study allows us to examine how macroeconomic changes that affect rural communities in the Western world redefine the ways in which rural areas engage with larger economic frameworks that, at the end of the day, redefine their identities even as they ensure their viability.

Paper short abstract:

I will present an ethnographic study on Spain’s “caravans of women”, meetings arranged in rural areas between men and women. We were interested about: 1) depopulation, rural masculinisation and bachelorhood; 2) female migration; 3) traditional courtship models; and, 4) social inequalities.

Paper long abstract:

I will present the data from an ethnographic study on Spain's "caravans of women". These unusual events have been taking place in recent years in territories with disparate geographies, varied historical, economic and social development, and also varied demographic compositions; however they all share two common aspects: 1) they are small, relatively remote villages, and 2) they have high rates of ageing populations and single men. The events consist of meetings arranged between the men and women, both of whom are actively seeking partners. We were interested in this type of dating because it also tells us, among other things, about: 1) depopulation, rural masculinisation and bachelorhood; 2) rural areas as contexts offering an opportunity to migrant women and the impact their presence generates; 3) the coexistence of more traditional courtship models; and, 4) finally, the existence and evidence of social inequalities that arise from the condition of the men and women in a space that is questioned and judged for displaying the active search for a partner. These elements are indicative not only of a crisis of production but also in a serious crisis of social reproduction (due to the difficulties of combining the transformations in their socioeconomic development with changes in cultural models) in which the "caravans" help make visible a reproduction of the system undertaken in a different way in accordance with the inequalities of access to material and social resources in certain historical and cultural contexts.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I argue that the economic crisis is adding further complexity to the study of the neorural phenomenon and its impact in natural protected areas in Europe as new forms of neoliberal environmentality, public policies and migrations transform the social life of these protected locations.

Paper long abstract:

The economic crisis experienced in Europe in the last few years is deeply transforming neorural movements and their influence in rural settings. This is particularly evident in conservation-targeted areas like natural protected areas. Utopian and amenity migrations have historically played a key role in the introduction of conservation policies in these locations as well as in the production of geographical idylls wherein to enact a new, 'natural' life. Such neorural actions have usually encountered opposition from other local groups with dissimilar interests and lifestyles. These disagreements often make protected areas to be contested spaces in which different habitus, environmentalities and hierarchies of value collide.

In this paper I suggest that the economic crisis incorporates new elements to the conflictive social life of these locations. New forms of neoliberal environmentality, brought about by new public policies as well as new migrations to protected areas that are direct outcomes of the economic crisis, are adding further complexity to the analysis of the neorural phenomenon. I will explore this in relation to particular cases in Andalusia, southern Spain. Among the issues to be taken into account are the disputes and alliances between: neorurals who moved to protected areas in a pre-crisis context in search of a natural idyll; neorurals who have moved to these locations in a post-crisis context looking for a job in the growing green economy; and those local communities who make a living in these areas through farming, fishing and other extractive activities.

Paper short abstract:

By exploring the tensions that arise between visitors and local people in Southwest China, this paper explores the conflicts between the desire to experience a lost rural utopia and the local people's struggle to maintain their subsistence as they come into contact with China's national economic system.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers an ethnography of the conflicts between Han Chinese rural visions of utopia and the pressures of neoliberalism facing subsistence farmers in rural Southwest China. Eya Naxi Ethnic Township is located in the southern foothills of the Tibetan Plateau in Sichuan Province. Until 2010 the area was only accessible via foot or horse and today the area continues to maintain an economy of subsistence farming supplemented by long distance trade in a few agricultural products. Since Eya first became accessible by vehicle, Han Chinese travelers have begun visiting the township's villages searching to experience their vision of a simpler past uncomplicated by the rat-race of China's contemporary market economy. Many of these visitors have subsequently written online blog posts about their adventures describing a village cut off from the passage of time, characterized by a primitive lifestyle and strange customs. This paper will describe the tensions between a visiting group of photographers seeking to document the local custom of fraternal polyandry (i.e. two or more brothers sharing a wife) and the local people they interacted with. Specifically, this ethnography will focus on exploring conflicting perceptions of what constitutes a gift and what should and should not be commodified.

Paper short abstract:

In many rural areas local administrations engaged lately in building an autochthonous discourse regarding the spiritual and material values of the villagers. Heritage, local traditions, nature and food are being rediscovered and assembled into tourism development strategies under neoliberal pressures.

Paper long abstract:

Both European and national rural development programs, especially those concerned with tourism development seem doomed to fail due to a scaled incoherence between all levels involved and due to the failing resources they try to commodify. Although a generalized rush for EU funds for heritage tourism in which local rural administration gets involved is highly visible, most of the eligible projects do not consider local problems as deprivation, unemployment and lack of production or selling facilities of local food for villagers. The governmental investments granted by EU are targeted exclusively in producing a traditionalistic discourse about community's rediscovered local identities while neoliberal processes such as forest grabbing, financiarization of land and standardized food production give access to new economic actors in rural areas. Dâmbovicioara, the village where all these processes meet, has been known for decades for its natural beauties, caves, gorges, and picturesque landscapes but the revenues from tourism were always insignificant. However, in the last few years the local administration struggles to rebrand the village by advertising their unique legends, their relevance in the most important historical events, their unaltered traditions and architecture and their pure arcadian building utopian representation of rural spaces. Although lots of money were spend on advertising local heritage, both material and immaterial, natural and cultural, or on big events such as festivals, the number of tourists did not increased as expected and the daily life of the locals seems worse than ever before.

Paper short abstract:

With the destruction of the traditional agrarian model, rural collection initiatives are emerging as a strategy of cultural survival; they reveal the social desire for permanence, in the symbolic aspect, for values associated with a culture overwhelmed by modernity.

Paper long abstract:

Collection initiatives in a rural area of Catalonia (Spain), where old yards, wine-cellars, stables and entire communities are transformed into "reservoirs of memories", are emerging as localised strategies of "cultural survival". With heritage as a tool for cultural resistance, they are being developed in response to the changes dictated by an urban, industrial and technified socio-economic model.

Starting from the privacy of the home, a complex investigation of this phenomenon not only shows that the initiatives are not limited to the private sphere, it also ties them to the transfer processes of memories that are part of the community's mechanisms of creative continuity.

Within the neoliberal context, the initiatives demonstrate the need for continuity, in memory, of a culture in extinction. With the destruction of the traditional agrarian model, they reveal the social desire for permanence, in the symbolic aspect, of those values associated with a culture overwhelmed by modernity.

Furthermore, collecting raises the issue of what we name "personal expressions of heritage", a standpoint from which we produce an intersubjective interpretation of the processes of constructing heritage that is removed from holism and objectification. The broadening of the concept of cultural heritage allows us to refer to a living and plural heritage and from these initiatives we reflect on the role of the custody of heritage when people and collectives appropriate what has always been theirs: the ability to decide their own future.

Paper short abstract:

Poreche is a rural region in Macedonia. Since the collapse of Yugoslavia people have encountered economic difficulties and have felt marginalized by political institutions. Along with narratives about everyday problems go idyllic imaginaries of the beauty of the region and its "Macedonianess".

Paper long abstract:

Poreche is a mountainous rural region in the Republic of Macedonia. In 1930s a Polish anthropologist Jozef Obrebski, a student of Bronislaw Malinowski, found his "Slavic Trobriands" there - in remote villages with "isolated" traidtional culture. Nowadays, Poreche is one of the most popular place of local ethnographic and folkloristic explorations for those who look for natural beauty and traditional customs, costumes, songs and legends. Poreche is also perceived as a "pure" Macedonian region, thus is seen as an ideal "ethnographic laboratory". At the same time the region faces important changes connected to the new neoliberal economic order, as well as political and ethnic tensions in the country.

The utopian/ romantic/ idyllic vision of the region -which is also reproduced by the inhabitants themselves - goes hand in hand with narratives of everyday economic problems and political marginalization.

This paper analyses findings from an ethnographic revisit (Burawoy 2003) in Poreche, 80 years after Jozef Obrebski's research in the context of imaginaries, narratives, and perceptions of this region.