La vache, l'éleveur et l'investisseur. De la tradition à l'industrialisation: une reconfiguration des campagnes?

• Main Author: Séverine Lagneaux
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Expert Projects 2012-11-01
• Series: Sociologie Românească
• Subjects: dairy breeding; domestication; relationships humans–animals; gospodarie; ethnography
• Online Access: https://arsociologie.ro/revistasociologieromaneasca/sr/article/view/549

On the field of the breeding, whether in Romania or Belgium, the actors are afraid of disappearing. An ethnographic immersion in the heart of three farms of origin and different types (traditional, conventional and industrial) makes it possible to apprehend these fears. In addition to the weight of a strong competition and heavy economic constraints, it is a form of being in the world. Indeed, if they share an activity of domestication, the stockbreeders do not make the same job: their descriptions are different and their relations to livestock are various. The content of breeder’s job is not confined solely to the production. To produce consumer goods is not sufficient to produce meaning. Domestication appears rich of a reciprocity potentially threatened by the development of the cattle industry, where the animals, production units, are compared to a machine. To tend to make disappear the traditional or conventional farms, promote economic profitability is also to support the instrumentalisation of the animal whose impact will not relate only on the landscape of the campaigns but to our way human being.