Amara e bella, bitter and beautiful: A praxis of care in valuing Sicilian olive oil and landscapes

Abstract

This article discusses how Sicilian oliviculturalists imbue value into their olivicultural landscapes. I combine a political ecology framework, attending to the impact of global political economy on local socioecological systems, with feminist theorizations of care to argue that while participants articulated varied values about place, livelihood, and landscape, participants nonetheless rejected an economistic valuation of their labor, livelihood, and landscapes. Instead, they embraced what I call a praxis of care. In describing this praxis of care, I draw on recent work on global environmental ruination and devastation as a result of capitalist overextraction to illustrate how Sicilian oliviculturalists conceptualize and experience ruined landscapes, specifically in the context of abbandono, “abandonment,” and their positioning in relation to contemporary iterations of the historical Southern Question.