Caring for Olive Oil: Cultivating Flows, Crafts & Traditions
2024 (English)Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
Olive oil is a food, but more than that, it is a social relation, cultural phenomenon, local practice, global industry, emplaced tradition, valued concern, cyclical rhythm, embodied care-work, multigenerational flow, kindred ecology, and cultivated craft. This is the case in the region of Puglia, the heel of Italy, where over half a million ancient olive trees and an entire landscape of olive groves bear witness to its heritage of making. This thesis builds on more than one and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork with Pugliese oliviculturalists. It uses sensory and multimodal methods for collecting and representing material, and takes creative ethnography as its frame for critical analysis. Through the concepts of flow and artful care, it advances the spatiotemporal dynamics of the making of Pugliese olive oil. It frames the work of research participants as situated craft and brings attention to embodied features of knowing and doing. It curiously explores how olive oil occurs practiced and lived from the perspective of practitioners, thus making the bodies and work of beyond-human agencies into account, making claims to the broad-scope ecology of life inherent in olivicoltura (olive culture). A major finding is that Pugliese oliviculturalists live landscape and work in rhythm with the atmospheric dynamics influencing it. Another is that traditions flow together with modern developments, growing local practices of craftsmanship while creating commodities in line with global market structures. The concepts of care and value are fundamental to the thesis. They are paramount to to the lived (hi)stories of Pugliese oliviculturalists, hence to the narrations and analyses of this thesis.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm: Socialantropologiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet , 2024. , p. 162
Keywords [en]
olive oil, flow, care, craftsmanship, sensory ethnography, multimodal methodology
National Category
Social Anthropology
Research subject
Social Anthropology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-232338ISBN: 978-91-8014-893-1 (print)ISBN: 978-91-8014-894-8 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-232338DiVA, id: diva2:1890707
Public defence
2024-11-12, Hörsal 4, hus B, Universitetsvägen 10B, Stockholm, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
2024-10-182024-08-202024-09-10Bibliographically approved