Shepherds from Piedmont in Provence : career paths and mobility

Shepherds from Piedmont in Provence : career paths and mobility Guillaume Lebaudy Texte présenté au XVI International Oral History Conference, Prague, Czech Republic « Between Past and Future: Oral Histrory, Memory and Meaning”, july 2010. Publié dans les Actes du colloque. The purpose of this workshop is mainly to compare various oral investigation methods aiming at compiling biographies and career paths. I would like to examine how I tackled the question of the mobility of Italian shepherds from Piedmont through the space of transhumance in South-Eastern France, according to their life stories. Between the Alps and the coastal plains of Provence, the practical experience of transhumance contributed to the formation of a large territory travelled by shepherds and their flocks. Most of these men came from Alpine valleys, more specifically from Piedmont. As early as the Middle Ages when transhumance became common in this area, Provence big landowners started to recruit shepherds from Piedmont because of their know-how. The cultural and linguistic proximity with Provence helped their integration into the local community (Lebaudy, 2006a). Shepherds’ identity is defined by their cultural mobility and a result of their multiple sense of belonging. It is however primarily defined by two factors: being transhumants and mountain folk. Oral memory of shepherds’mobility The migrating tendency came to an end in the seventies although there are still shepherds and sheep-breeders with a Piedmont origin working in Provence, especially in the Rhone delta which is the birthplace of the ovine breed Merinos of Arles (Fabre and Lebaudy, 2004 and 2010) and the main working place for wage-earning shepherds. Thanks to interviews concerning their life stories recorded in the field (both in the plains and on the mountains), we were able to reconstruct an oral memory of the emigration and the pastoral mobility of the shepherds from Piedmont. These pieces of information completed what we had learnt in district and departmental archives as well as in the few autobiographies written by shepherds or in scientific works about pastoralism. At the time, oral history and the collecting of life stories seemed the best way to work on a transnational migrating phenomenon. Yet, a method of investigation still had to be decided upon. I therefore opted to start from the present in order to go back to the past, as in an archaeology of memory or an anthropology based on traces. As a matter of fact, interviews result in fragmented data. These memory fragments become meaningful only in a general context, hence the necessity of gathering a series of interviews that can be compared and become the object of a comprehensive analysis. Tales of transhumance and immigration Constituting this body of oral knowledge aimed at piecing together a collective narrative from different stories relating to the same shared events. All different narratives were focusing on mobility as a vehicle of the shepherd’s sense of identity. Their lives were equally branded by long distance transhumances (as much as 250 kilometres) as by the departure from their valleys, a founding element in their identity and a turning point in their autobiographical narrative. Tales concerning transhumance are often told during collective time such as fairs because they trigger again the feeling of belonging to a group whereas emigration remains a private topic, not easily discussed, probably because it was a way to escape from poverty, as our informants put it. As interviews went by, the poverty hypothesis didn’t stand up to analysis. We discovered that emigration is in fact an active process. Shepherds were sought after and hired for their skills by Provencal employers. Their mobility itself was part of a system based on multi-occupational activities and a strategy to promote their working abilities in order to capitalize on them. It was indeed something else than a mere escape from dire poverty or overpopulation. Interviews also guided us to conclude that emigration was always prepared in advance and supported by a strong network of friends and relatives. Interestingly enough, it was hardly ever felt as a traumatic experience. Thus, we were cautions not to favour one-sided interpretations of migrating phenomena and to look into these elements that are commonly cited as the main causes of Alpine emigration, that is: overpopulation, ownership being split up through inheritance, harsh winters and poverty. They should be taken into account, of course, but only as peripheral elements. From the interviews to the exhibition: the emergence of a collective speech This work has been at the source of the exhibition La Routo, in 2000, and the publishing of its catalogue (Albera and Lebaudy, 2001). It was patronized by the ecomuseum of pastoralism in Pontebernardo, Piedmont. Both the exhibition and the catalogue benefited from the interviews of our informants. By clearly stating my intentions (a research on the history of their professional emigration for an exhibition in an ecomuseum in Piedmont), they turned into some kind of research assistants. Some interviews being based on objects from their private collections or on their photographical records made our partnership even truer. For some of them, this research fulfilled a longing to tell their own story. They sometimes expressed a desire to write a book with it. Actually someone came up with a title: Shepherds, the Forgotten People of the Mountains. This desire to write can be traced to the publishing of a few relatively successful biographies by Alpine and Provencal shepherds available in fairs [1]. Nowadays this desire still prevails. Sometimes the shepherds’ children begin looking for people to help their parents in making a book with the story of their lives, few copies of which will be distributed to family members. The exhibition and the book La Routo were understood as the record of a large pastoral family, larger than the circle of shepherds from Piedmont. Many Alpine and Provencal shepherds recognized themselves in it [2]. For them it was an institutional and a scientific validation conveying individual and collective speech. These achievements enabled them to re-evaluate what they had done, give it a more enhancive meaning and share it with others, especially with their families. Through the exhibition and the catalogue, their voices could be heard. Their mode of being there in the world (their “dasein”) were presented as a valuable cultural inheritance that deserved to be shown and could therefore be recognized as a social progression embedded in history as much as that of other social and professional categories. Keeping away from the clichés of folklore that are so often associated with shepherding, this heritage process, backed up by the ecomuseum of pastoralism in Pontebernardo, is also helping to defend, recognize and make durable the economy and culture of transhumant shepherds (Lebaudy 2009). Fieldwork: in the plains, on the mountain This study comes from a field research of about 6 months in the course of different stays in the Crau-Camargue region (Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence) and in 3 valleys of Western Piedmont (Italy), the Stura, the Grana and the Maira valleys. In order to analyse the migrating trajectories of shepherds from Piedmont in Provence, I could have opted for a stationary point of view and be content with a basic research around the place where they had moved. But I preferred a larger scope: in order to study these mobility phenomena, it was essential to go back to the source, i.e. Piedmont. I had to start from the mountain to consider their development in the circulation space, to make out individual choices and understand how and why the transhumance system gave birth to these types of emigration and settlement in coastal Provence. My work consisted in coming and going between two positions which enabled me to embrace the space of the migrants’ mobility in all its dimensions. Going to the mountains where all the shepherds came from, enabled me to take more distance. It withdrew the attractions of a citycentred point of view, merely considering things from the plains. Taking mobility into account, I was led to consider emigration as a system of relations including starting as well as arrival points. Thus, I could claim to be free from viewing the Mediterranean mountains as “a factory producing human beings for other people’s use” (Braudel, 1966, p.46). Following migratory networks First of all, as in an archaeological probing, I conducted some exploratory interviews with two chosen persons, a sheep breeder’s son and an agricultural engineer. With them, I tried to pinpoint the main themes that would require my attention. Being thus introduced would equally facilitate my first contacts with the shepherds and breeders from Piedmont. Then, I quickly came up with a list of possible informants, all of them based in the CrauCamargue region, a traditional sheep-rearing area which attracted most of the immigration from Piedmont. Next, I carefully followed the networks back to their source so as to clarify the links between the migrants themselves and the ones who “stayed home”. This opening approach in the field also provided me with a list of possible informants in the Stura, the Grana and the Maira valleys. In the Crau plain, I favoured my contact with one informant, Bernardo Cesano, a shepherd from the Maira valley [3]. We held semi-guided interviews as well as non-guided conversations whenever I was following him in his daily routine. I stayed with him when he was looking after the sheep and when he was working in the sheepfold. I was practicing “free-floating” observation as well as taking part in his chores. This gave me an idea of the complexity of the shepherd trade. It made me refine my future questions about the technical aspects of the work. It also helped me to analyse bits and pieces of stories that didn’t make sense before. I began wandering in the Crau plain quite often, from one sheepfold to another, looking for shepherds’ engravings. These engravings constitute an open air record of shepherds’ mobility as well as a collective narrative of migratory routes, working plans and rites of passage. A solitary practice which nevertheless reveals a desire for dialogue and a corporate spirit (Lebaudy, 2002 and 2006) These engravings are also telling stories. The life-stories they hold compose a collective history that can be brought out by questioning shepherds. They were intrigued and amused by my interest in these “commonplace” writings and were very willing to talk about them [4]. The news-bearing anthropologist’s interviews After this first practical investigation in Provence, exploring the most recent events in the trajectory of my shepherd-informants, I was led to Piedmont in an attempt to trace back the origins of shepherds’ emigration. It seemed most important to root my analysis of pastoral mobility in the initial society and consider departure as a founding component of the identity of transhumant shepherds. In conjunction with archives study, I kept on conducting interviews, especially with former migrants who had come back to a life in Piedmont. My stay enabled me to realize how deep the relations between the Eastern valleys of Piedmont and Provence were. Doing research in Italy after Provence put me in an unexpected position yet made contacts easier. My own movements within the circulation space won me the status of news-bearer. Trust, once established, interviews were more detailed. I became aware that the territory of pastoral mobility was also determined by a bidirectional channel of information that could be useful on both ends, in order for example to develop working strategies. It is feeding migratory networks and delivering news about the growth of grass, the state of mountain passes, the leasing of mountain pastures, new techniques and so on and so forth… When I came back in my field in Southern Provence, I played the same news-bearer part, reactivating old friendships, reporting news. I was even asked to work as an intermediary to buy livestock from a Provencal sheep breeder and send it back to Piedmont some time before Easter. On the whole, I interviewed about 30 (thirty) informants, 17 (seventeen) of which come from the Stura valley, 11 (eleven) from the Maira valley, 1 (one) from the Grana valley and 1 (one) who was born in Provence but originally from Piedmont. Half of them are still working. Basing my work on these private experiences was a way to reach the collective. Questioning a person doesn’t mean to isolate him/her from his/her context. On the contrary, the interviews were aiming at exploring family stories and expose relation networks. A circulation space for people, animals and information The life trajectories I made out (using a few individuals as a starting point to reconstruct networks) clearly show the importance of migratory chains and the part played by the interplay of knowledge. Individuals who are elements of these migratory chains interact with one another as soon as need be, helping a relative, a friend or a local shepherd. Paths often cross, in France or in Italy. Strong ties are kept with the initial community; they delineate and structure a circulating space for people, animals and information. Through these life paths, the different responses of the emigrants from Piedmont to the new country are made apparent: some settle down in a more or less permanent way, others root themselves deeply, whereas some retain a pendulum-like movement between Piedmont and Provence, dictated by seasonal work. We clearly see what kind of relationships are being activated within the family around the question of emigration: brothers leave for France together, a nephew meets up with an uncle who found him a job … Ties are maintained: emigration never means breaking off relationships. Moreover, we could see in the life of the Giavelli family from the village of Ferriere how emigration had been triggered by family solidarity and the desire to perpetuate their inheritance. Theirs was a rather long period of emigration - 25 years -, during which they periodically came back to their village because of transhumance until, finally, they came back for good. There is no break up with the original community but a bipolar swing over a territory consisting in two superimposed spaces of mobility: that of transhumance and that of emigration. Work connections and recruitment When time came for the migrant to go, he packed a few things including the certainty to find a job and a place to sleep. Before they set out, most migrants know where they can stay, who they can talk to about a job or even for whom they are going to work. Existing networks encourage people to set out for France, helping out to get jobs. Emigration is framed by a network of friends and relatives. Migratory chains are being developed, acting as links to families and the initial community. They operate as guides and convey information about the job market in the host country. Support networks are being activated both in Provence and back home. The recent migrant is not left alone. If members of the family have already emigrated finding work in the same field, his integration in Provence will be much easier. A few well established sheep breeders from Piedmont, who had long emigrated, owned big flocks in Provence. They proved themselves efficient recruiters. They hired numerous young men from their village or its neighbourhood, mostly when they came back to visit their families or during summer pasture time. There was indeed a clear preference in hiring kinsfolk, locals from Piedmont or sometimes from further Alpine regions because of the common language, working habits and the sharing of the same skills (yet, some sheep breeders also employed people from Southern Italy, Sardinia, Spain or Portugal). This form of solidarity, together with parental support, friends helping out and the sharing of information wove an intricate network that enabled migrants to quickly find a job and improve their situation. As a matter of fact, emigration to Provence was a collective action although people didn’t all emigrate at the same time. Those who went first paved the way for the others. Each case was unique, yet immigrating was framed by the community from its very beginnings, during the preparatory stage and afterwards. Once there, the migrant meets with relatives or friends who share their experience with him. They act as an extension of the migrant before and after his departure: they are focused on the same goal and carry a potential of information for those who are in France in addition to those who are still at home. Oral history: in (re)search of a larger audience… Collecting life-stories offer various possibilities from pure research to their introduction to the general public. My investigation on the mobility of the shepherds from Piedmont was used as a basis for different projects: the temporary exhibition La Routo, the permanent exhibition of the ecomuseum of pastoralism in Pontebernardo, a catalogue (Albera and Lebaudy, 2001), a website [5] and scientific articles (Lebaudy, 2000, 2006a). In 2002, a series of interviews with sheep breeders about the life of transhumants provided new scientific material. It was used to document a corpus of black and white photographs taken by Marcel Coen [6], a photographer from Marseille, about one of the last walking transhumances. In 1951, a Provencal herd of sheep transhumed between the Crau plain and the Tinée valley (Southern French Alps). Thanks to Marcel Coen whom I interviewed several times, I was able to piece together his life story. My aim was to understand what aroused his interest in the transhumance of Provence. Later I compared his tale with those of transhumants. This research gave birth to an exhibition: 1951, Transhumance, Sur la route des alpages (“Transhumance, On the Road to Summer Pastures”) [7]. A catalogue was published (Fabre and Lebaudy, 2002) featuring a scientific article based on a collection of interviews ; a long piece of writing by a journalist friend of Marcel Coen, Maurice Moyal [8], about their common life experiences of transhumance ; a piece about today’s transhuming shepherds in Upper-Tinée and close to a hundred photographs by Marcel Coen. Recordings done during fieldwork were used for a CD (Iung, 2002): the photographer’s and sheep breeders’ words were woven into sound and music. This “sonography” enhanced the scenography of the exhibition, restoring parts of the collected accounts. The CD was on sale to complement the exhibition catalogue. In 2008, I reconstructed the life of Bartolomeo Marino, a shepherd from the Stura valley in Piedmont for the Ecomuseum of pastoralism of Pontebernardo. This work fitted into the logic of my research on the mobility of the shepherds from Piedmont. Using different methods of enquiry, my effort mainly consisted in interviewing the shepherd’s descendants - his great-grand children about some of their memories, photos, personal objects and records kept by the family. I mainly focused on Bartolemeo’s travel journal which he wrote on his way back to Italy in 1904 after 7 years in California where he had worked as a transhumant shepherd. This research was promoted by an exhibition in the Fort of Vinadio (valley of Stura) during the large ovine fair held on All Saints’Day [9] in November 2009. This work also served as the basis of an article in L’Alpe, the magazine of the cultural heritage of Alpine Europe (Guillaume Lebaudy, 2009a). Oral enquiries can also be processed by the film industry. We tried to explore the different themes I tackled during my research in a 26 minute film, Gens de Moutons (“Sheep People”) (Auzolat and Lebaudy, 2009). It is articulated around excerpts from interviews. It recounts the life of a family of sheep breeders who has been working on an agro-pastoral farm in Mens, Isère, for three generations. Constant Plançon, the grand-father (81 years old) knew the time of the great walking transhumance between Provence and the Alps. His father, Joseph, had a flock of “Mérinos of Arles” sheep. His son, Laurent, and his grandson, Sylvain, have recently gone into partnership to succeed to him, fuelled by the passion and the skills that Constant was able to pass on to them. Following the seasons, the film questions passion, domestication, transmission, constraints on the breeders, adaptability, evolution of pastoral skills, social position and recruitment of wage-earning shepherds etc… In order to draw some comparisons, Gens de Moutons visits our Italian neighbours in Piedmont, in the Stura valley where another pastoral culture is perpetuated, another breed of sheep, the Sambucana, other skills and people who “were also born with a sheep in their stomach”. From the Alps (Trièves, Chartreuse…) to Provence (Crau, Camargue) and Piedmont, we travel a large territory in which the landscape has been modeled by the “sheep people”. These various examples of works around the shepherds’ life stories (books, articles, films etc…) illustrate all the possibilities contained in the biographical approach. Research work can be the fruit of social studies and social science but it can also be a unique source of information for the general public. Notes [1] Since the seventies, several Alpine and Provençal shepherds wrote down their life stories. These narratives are precious testimonies concerning the evolution of the shepherd trade and its representations. Some were published, among them: Blaise Hoffman, 2007, Estive, Carouges-Genève, Zoé; Pierre Mélet, 1979 (1ère édition 1947), Le galvaudeux. Vie toute simple, toute nue, d’un berger, Antonaves, chez l’auteur; Marcel Scipion, 1978, Le clos du roi. Mémoires d’un berger des Alpes de Haute-Provence, Paris, Seghers; Julien Ventre, 1998, L’étoile du pastre. Paroles d’un berger de Provence, Le Coudray-Macouard, Cheminements; Pascal Wick, 2009, Journal d’un berger nomade, Paris, Seuil; L'Uiard by Jean-Marie Lamblard (1987, Mussidan, Fédérop), an anthropological novel about the life of Jantou Majoral, a shepherd, who was looking after his flock in Crau plain in the middle of the 19th century. [2] They also recognized themselves in the exhibition Davalarem, pastres d’estive en Cévennes at the ecomuseum of pastoralism in Pontebernardo, which dealt with the transhumance of shepherds from the Cévennes mountains (Mascaux and Pégaz-Fiornet, 2006). [3] Bernardo Cesano had also worked as a breeder and sheep-shearer. His father and uncles had also worked as shepherds and breeders in southern Provence. This manifold career together with his migrant and shepherd lineage guided our choice to select him as our chief informant. [4] See also Roches confidentes (2005, Marseille, éd. Images en Manoeuvres) the work of anthropologist Nathalie Magnardi concerning rock engravings done by the shepherds of the Roya valley, Alpes Maritimes, France. [5] See the website of the Mediterranean anthropology Association (ADAM, Aix-en-Provence): http://adam.mmsh.univ-aix.fr/exposition/La-Routo/Pages/default.aspx [6] They are part of a collection of hundreds of photos by Marcel Coen, Archives Municipales de Marseille. [7] This exhibition was created in 2002 at the city archives of Marseille and was presented in a dozen of places including the Musée Dauphinois (Grenoble) from March to July 2003. [8] I translated this Maurice Moyal’s book, On the road to pastures new, published in London (1956). [9] Bartolemeo Marino, pastore in America, ecomuseum of pastoralism, Forte Albertino, Vinadio, 24-25 October 2009. Thanks to my friend Delia Curro (translator) for her help and her bright kindness, thanks for being there; thanks to my friends Professor Anne-Marie Brisebarre and Professor Pablo Vidal. Bibliography: - Dionigi Albera and Guillaume Lebaudy, 2001, La routo. Sur les chemins de la transhumance entre les Alpes et la mer, Pontebernardo, Ed. Primalpe / Ecomuseo della Pastorizia. -Fernand Braudel, 1966 (1ère édition 1949), La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II, Paris, Armand Colin, tome 1. -Patrick Fabre and Guillaume Lebaudy (dir.), 2010, Le mérinos d’Arles. Passion de bergers, Marseille, Ed. Images en Manœuvres. -Fabre P. & Lebaudy G., 2004. « La mémoire longue d’un métissage : la « métisse » ou la race ovine mérinos d’Arles », Anthropozoologica, n° 39 (1), MNHN, Paris, p.107-122 (n° spécial Domestications animales, aspects sociaux et symboliques), www.mnhn.fr/museum/front/medias/publication/10611 fabre.pdf -Patrick Fabre and Guillaume Lebaudy (dir.), 2002, 1951. Transhumance. Sur la route des alpages, Marseille, Images en Manœuvres. -Guillaume Lebaudy, 2009a, Carnets d’un Piémontais chez les cow-boys, L’ALPE : Alpins des Amériques, n°46, p. 44-51. -Guillaume Lebaudy, 2009b, « L’écomusée du pastoralisme de Pontebernardo (Piémont, Italie) : un exemple de patrimonialisation intégrée », in Anne-Marie Brisebarre, Patrick Fabre, Guillaume Lebaudy (dir.), Sciences sociales, regards sur le pastoralisme contemporain en France, Pastum (hors-série), Actes du séminaire de l'Association Française de Pastoralisme (13 novembre 2008), Ed. La Cardère, p.95-100. -Guillaume Lebaudy, 2006a, « Des gens de moutons. Sur les traces des bergers piémontais dans l'espace de la grande transhumance provençale-alpine » in Pierre-Yves Laffont (dir.), Transhumances et estivages en occident, des origines aux enjeux actuels, Actes des journées d'histoire de Flaran, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail, p. 107-122. -Guillaume Lebaudy, 2006b, « Gravures et graffiti dans l'expression des pasteurs alpins et provençaux », in Colette Jourdain-Annequin et Jean-Claude Duclos (dir.), Aux origines de la transhumance (Les Alpes et la vie pastorale d'hier à aujourd'hui), Paris, éditions Picard, p. 25-37. -Guillaume Lebaudy, 2002, Marquer notre passage : les graffiti pastoraux de la plaine de la Crau (Bouches du Rhône). Inventaire analytique, Rapport Mission du Patrimoine Ethnologique (Ministère de la Culture), sous la direction de Georges Ravis-Giordani., Musée d’ethnologie départementale de Haute-Provence, Salagon, Mission du patrimoine ethnologique, Paris. -Guillaume Lebaudy, 2000, « Dans les pas des bergers piémontais en Provence. Traces, parcours, appartenances », in Le Monde Alpin et Rhodanien : Migrances, 3e-4e trimestres, p. 151-174. -Jean Mascaux and Audrey Pégaz-Fiornet, 2006, Davalarem, Pontebernardo, ed. Ecomuseo della pastorizia. -Maurice Moyal, 1956, On the road to pastures new, London, Phoenix house. Filmography: -Georges Auzolat and Guillaume Lebaudy, 2009, Gens de moutons, 26’, Grenoble, Histoires d’Images. CD: -Philippe-Marcel Iung and Guillaume Lebaudy, 2002, 1951. Transhumance. Sur la route des alpages, 42’36, Marseille, Images en Manœuvres.