Wolves, Farmers, & Capitalism: A More-Than-Human Political Ecology of Human-Wolf Relations in Italy

This doctoral thesis builds on and further develops a more-than-human political ecology, exploring the imbrication of non-human agencies with (capitalist) political economies in the coproduction of human-wildlife relations. Through a multispecies ethnography and other mixed methods, including a historical literature analysis, this work investigates the following research questions, in the context of human-wolf coexistence in Tuscany and Italy: (Q1) how are wolves affected by and responsive to human practices linked to particular political economies, in ways that influence broader human-wolf relations? (Q2) How are wolves a more-than-human force of socioecological change, including agrarian change, shaping human-wolf relations in turn? (Q3) How may caring human-wolf relations unfold, as situated within particular political-economic contexts? These questions are investigated through four empirical chapters. The first chapter, addressing especially Q1 and Q2, (re)traces the historical decline and comeback of wolves in Italy, politicising and nuancing current narratives. The second and third chapters further explore, in the more contemporary settings of rural Tuscany, the focus of Q1 and Q2, respectively. Specifically, the second chapter looks at the intersection of wolves’ mobilities with agrarian change, highlighting how wolves are changing (genetically, behaviourally, and ecologically) by dwelling in shifting agricultural contexts, and how this is affecting local wolf impacts and human-wolf relations. The third chapter explores how, within this agrarian context, wolves are an agent of change, reproducing and undercutting processes of agricultural modernisation. The fourth chapter takes a closer look at Q3, emphasising local ethical propensities for coexisting with wolves based on ‘affirmative biopolitics of living with’, which recognise wolves as subjects rather than as means to an end, but whose actualisation is in part constrained by socioeconomic hardships in the agricultural sector. The emerging picture is one in which wolves are cogent, political actors, conditioning people into implementing particular measures and policies through their affective capacities, presence, and impacts. Wolves are described as entangled in reciprocal and mutually constitutive relations with humans, (asymmetrically) co-shaping the course of socioecological change. In this process, wolf agency is conceived either as becoming channelled into the reproduction of capitalist dynamics, or as a subversive force of change that undermines the status quo and provides opportunities for the production of alternative (co)existences. Through shedding light on these aspects, this research emphasises the value and radical potential of a more-than-human political ecology, which goes beyond dualist frames without losing track of the uneven power relations pervading more-than-human societies.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Donfrancesco, Valerio

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sandbrook, Christopher

• Italy
• more-than-human geography
• peasants
• political ecology
• Tuscany
• wolves

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/b0d61722-d43d-4258-afb2-e7193c101c29/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

Author Identifier

0000-0001-9539-0715

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/374338