Caring for olive oil : cultivating flows, crafts & traditions

Olive oil is a food, but more than that, it is a social relation, cultural phenomenon, local practice, global industry, emplaced tradition, valued rhythm, embodied care-work, multigenerational flow, kindred ecology, and cultivated craft. Based on over one and a half years of fieldwork with oliviculturalists in the region of Puglia, the heel of Italy, in this thesis I contextualize why they cared for olive oil and how they cultivated the patrimonial heritage of making it, generation after generation. Through sensory and multimodal methods of collecting and representing material, creative ethnography is used as a frame of critical analysis. An aim is to curiously explore how olive oil occurs practiced and lived from the perspective of practitioners, but also to take the bodies and work of beyond-human agencies into account, thus 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. This is a doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, Sweden 2024