Reveals the complexities of environmenral stewardship by examining local resistance in the small Sardinian upland town of Orgosolo to the creation of Gennargentu National Park in an area used by many generations as pastureland. --Tracey Heatherington is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Tracey Heatherington is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Wild Sardinia: Indigeneity and the Global Dreamtimes of Environmentalism (University of Washington Press, 2010).

Shared concern for nature can be a way of transcending national, ethnic, religious, and cultural boundaries, yet conservation efforts often pit the interests of historically rooted or indigenous peoples against the state and international environmental organizations, eroding local autonomy while saving rural land for animals and tourists. Wild Sardinia's examination of the cultural politics around nature conservation and the traditional Commons on an Italian island illustrates the complexities of environmental stewardship. Long known as the home of fiercely independent shepherds (often typecast as rustics, bandits, or eco-vandals), as well as wild mouflon sheep, magnificent eagles, and rare old oak forests, the town of Orgosolo has for several decades received notoriety through local opposition to Gennargentu National Park.

Interweaving rich ethnographic description of highland central Sardinia with analysis grounded in political ecology and reflexive cultural critique, Wild Sardinia illuminates the ambivalent and open-ended meanings of many Sardinians' acts and memories of resistance to environmental projects. This groundbreaking case study of the tension between living cultural landscapes and the emerging ecological imaginaries envisioned through policy discourses and new media -- the global dreamtimes of environmentalism -- has relevance far beyond its Mediterranean locale.

Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan Preface and Acknowledgments

Part One: BeginningsIntroduction 1. Ecology, Alterity, and Resistance

Part Two: Ecology2. Envisioning the Supramonte3. Intimate Landscapes

Part Three: Alterity4. Dark Frontier5. Seeing Like a State, Seeing Like an ENGO

Part Four: Resistance6. Walking in Via Gramsci 7. Sin, Shame, and Sheep

Part Five: Post-Environmentalisms8. Beyond Ethnographic Refusal9. Hope and Mischief in the Global Dreamtimes

Appendix: List of Acronyms NotesGlossary of Italian and Sardinian Words References Index