Ovejas, tierra y mercado: dependencia de los mercados internacionales y cambios en la relación entre pastores y naturaleza

In this article, we present a historical analysis on how Sardinian pastoralism has become an integrated activity in global capitalism, oriented to the production of cheap milk, through the extraction of ecological surplus from the exploitation of nature and labour. Pastoralism has often been looked at as a marginal and traditional activity. On the contrary, our objective is to stress the central role played by pastoralism in the capitalist world-ecology. Since there is currently little work analysing the historical development of pastoralism in a concrete agro-ecological setting from a world-ecology perspective, we want to contribute to the development of the literature by analysing the concrete case of Sardinian pastoralism.