MARTOR no. 29 / year 2024
The Making of Modern Sheep. The New Pastoral Regime and Its Discontents
DOI: www.doi.org/10.57225/martor.2024.29.05
AUTHORS:
Răzvan Papasima
National University of Political and Administrative Studies, Romania
ORCID: 0000-0002-8339-3457
Alexandru Iorga
Constantin Brăiloiu Institute of Ethnography and Folklore & University of Bucharest, Department of Sociology, Romania
ORCID: 0000-0001-5340-6272
PAGES: 68-85
KEYWORDS: Shepherding; ear tags; assetization; New Pastoral Regime; improvementality.
ABSTRACT:
Although pastoralism has a special place in Romanian history and national mythology, shepherds “occupy a complicated position” (O’Brien and Crețan 2019) in contemporary technoscientific capitalism (Birch and Muniesa 2020). As their age-old shepherding routes shrink (Săgeată et al. 2022), new devices need to be adopted and associated with traditional shepherding methods to meet the new market challenges and industrialised model of sheep farming. Opting for an approach that combines science and technology studies (STS) and anthropology, our paper examines how a New Pastoral Regime (NPR) was assembled with the help of a small piece of technology: the ear tag. EU norms, market imperatives, scientific innovation, financial subsidies, political interests, and technical devices become entangled in a political and scientific network of governing nature and the future that produces different kinds of sheep as techno-natural entities. By opening the black box of ear tagging technology our paper reveals what was left out, what was included, and with what consequences.
HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE:
Papasima, Răzvan, and Alexandru Iorga. 2024. “The Making of Modern Sheep. The New Pastoral Regime and Its Discontents.” Martor 29, 68-85. [DOI: 10.57225/martor.2024.05]
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