Abstract
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For over half a century, wolves in France were extinct. In the absence of predators, the shepherds became accustomed to leaving the sheep roaming freely in the mountains in relative safety. However, at the end of the 1980s, wolves returned, resulting in many victims, conflicts, and a stark division between those either for or against the wolf or otherwise sometimes framed as those against or for the survival of the mountain pastoralism tradition. This text looks at the caring relationships humans, such as shepherds, villagers, and others, have towards sheep, wolves, and the landscape in the Roya Valley in the Maritime Alps. It also discusses what discourses about boundaries sustain and reproduce these relationships and invites to look for spaces of connection and overlap. Via an ethnography of connection, the text looks at what care means to whom, what it reflects of the carers, and what consequences it has on those subject to care. Showing the ambiguity of care practices by shepherds, hunters, écolos, and the state, this text invites to reevaluate what we care for and whom we connect to open for new relationalities.
Recommended Citation
Pupkevičiūtė, Daina. "Shepherding in France: The Ambiguities of Caring for Nonhuman Animals in the Roya Valley, France." Journal of Ecological Anthropology 26, no. 1 (2025): .
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/jea/vol26/iss1/1
