Transhumant mobilities: a rhythmanalysis of herding practices in rural Spain

ABSTRACT

Transhumance, from Latin trans (across) and humus (ground), is a term used for the seasonal voyage that herders undertake with a herd, as available affordances grow and diminish over time, following seasonal, climatological and hydrological rhythms. In this paper I seek to explore the rhythmic nature of eventful long-distance transhumant voyaging through rural Spain. While this practice may well provide substantial ecological benefits for the environment and wellbeing of herd animals and herders, walked transhumance is carried out mainly because of the marginal position that cattle owners find themselves in. Instead of the more expensive option of transporting sheep and cows twice a year by truck (day journeys), some choose to enact a four-week-long journey by foot over centurial, legally protected drove ways. Transhumant herding involves a wide range of practices: from camping to way-finding, and from guarding to curing herd animals. To approach these ancient, yet extraordinary happenings, I engaged ethnographically with a herding community. This allowed me to develop a rhythmanalysis in which organic eurhythmia of interrelated seasonal, daily, and communal rhythms define transhumant mobilities, while arrhythmia occur less frequently, and isorhythmia are mostly absent. By way of dressage, which takes place at the micro-scale, herders develop corporeal capacities for sensing herding happenings (including upcoming danger, weather changes, animal behaviour, etc.). Long-distance transhumance can be considered a paradigm case for rethinking relationships between mobility, work, and landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobilities
• transhumance
• rhythm
• journeying
• landscape

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the reviewers for the fair, helpful, and constructive feedback given on an initial version of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this article I do not discuss the meaning of the contested term “everyday”. In what follows I use the term to indicate that transhumant happening or rhythms can mostly be referred to as “everyday”, if they take place day-after-day.

2. It should also be noted that there is a range of animals that do not belong to the herding community itself but are interacted with: cows belonging to other owners are avoided or scared away, and wild animals such as rabbits or birds might be hunted for (on the Royal Drove Road itself).