Contemporary Mediterranean foragers in the Apennine mountain area, central Italy

Abstract

This transdisciplinary thesis is a timely investigation into the fashion of foraging, sweeping across Europe and North America. This appears to be the first study of motivations and relationship to ‘nature’ arising from foraging in a western (European) country. Guided by Heideggerian philosophy and phenomenological anthropology the research delves into a national foraging movement, that is creating a Slow movement with an experience economy born from a relationship with non-domestic plants. This social movement, called the Case Delle Erbe (CDE), revolves around non-domestic plants and has 130 houses, or centres across Italy. Yet within the theoretical framework of phenomenological anthropology, the aim is not a description of all CDEs in Italy, but instead focuses on three years of participating with a group of CDEs and their participants located in the Central Apennines. Comprehending how the CDE’s textural fabric is formed from non-domestic plants, which in turn directly births a rejection of control and production, leads to analysis of the potency of mature capitalistic societies, where reduced productivity (particularly in post-productive rural setting) liberates an opportunity, perhaps for the first time since the industrial revolution, for spontaneous biocentric values. The present study’s transdisciplinary contributions include reconciling aspects of the nature/culture divide in the quotidian, understood in relation to the CDE’s location in a Territory of Grace (Horden & Purcell 2000), reconceptualised as Territory of Grazie/Thanks. As well as defining the characteristics of a Territory of Grazie/Thanks, these abodes are discovered to be pivotal for spontaneously inspiring thanks, which prominently mediates propensity for honouring nature, and is a precursor for ‘appointments with love’. Therein the confluence of dying and living, as mutually enriching, and only possible within a Slow lifestyle, augments the importance of Slow and the experience of existence. A noteworthy aspect of the research is how CDE participants seemingly move through similar evolutions due to integrating with non-domestic plants, and therefore group control is not needed nor desired. The agricultural world is the extreme opposite (echoing acute shortcomings of the Slow Food movement). Inherent in the Territory of Grazie/Thanks, the research also explicates the origins of the Slow pleasure imperative springing from this soil. Slow movements today take imitative forms in different countries within the experience economy, and the research provides recommendations for Slow practitioners within challenging discourses surrounding identity, transformation, well-being and commodification. A contribution is also made to the penchant for existential authenticity in tourism studies, offering a more holistic approach to Heidegger’s thinking via ‘fieldwork in philosophy.’ This experiential approach demonstrates how dwelling and working serve a purpose in Heideggerian thought, but are not ultimately where Being is encountered. The research explores Europeans interacting with ‘nature’ in a relationship with sentient beings, with far reaching repercussions for intersubjectivity. The work concludes offering a weakontology and an onto-narrative, a tool to stimulate learning and public well-being; it will be a welcomed point of discussion for Slow practitioners, and beneficially integrates Heidegger’s less discussed - yet central concept - of death with Slow discourse.