Watery Flows
Movements, flows, correspondences, transformations, and modes of being all constitute core curiosities of mine. They do so practically and analytically, with regards to life in general and to my current fieldwork in particular. And so, thinking about and engaging the world we live as one of correspondences (Ingold 2021) and as one of multiscalar relations (Palsson and Swanson 2016; Strathern 1995), I attend to the becoming of things correlationally. I do so with inspiration from ‘the arts of noticing’ such as gathered by Tsing (2015). But also with an emphasis on ontogeny along the lines of Ingold (2021) and with the sympoetic thinking of Haraway (2016). While I do not find this the place to delve analytically on the theories and intellectual discussions that these writers and myself position ourselves — I leave such fun for my thesis — I find it a place for reflection. That noted, I will for the purpose of this post engage some matters of watery flows. Aquatic matters namely make up for important features of olive cultivation and olive oil production. They are dynamically vital at once in glocal and scaled terms, fundamentally active (Latour 2005) in the becoming of most, if not all, olive and olive oil related things that my research concerns. Some ethnographic examples regarding aquatic matters becomes considered below. But to start, let us take a look at the image to the left. It features a global phenomenon, namely that of rain, falling very locally this past Tuesday. Astonished by the vivid effects of the pinkish figure motioned in the air between the sky and the landscape, somewhere under the clouds and over the canopies, making appreciable otherwise insensible connections, I followed its movement. I did so carefully and somewhat perplexed, wondering about the forces inherent its occurrence and about what particular effects it may carry with it as it happened right there and then (such as in terms of next-day workings in the rain stained orchards and with regards to the growths prompted by the drops).
Watery flows, I have learnt — such as from participating in cultivation practices and processing of olives into oils, from instructional conversations and curiously engaged readings, from paying close attention and being attuned to the surroundings and movements of the various settings in which olive growings and olive oil productions take place — constitute vital forces in the context. They do so on smaller and larger scales, more or less directly, and ought likewise become accounted for. Importantly, present as they are in the entangled nature of olive growing and olive oil productions, watery flows deserve righteous acknowledgement. This post act sort of an aspirational move towards this end.
The first set of images above depict watery flows occurring within the different stages and practices of turning olives into olive oils. Matter of fact, water occur vital within many operations of the processing of the solid into the liquid. Its presence is for example vital in cleaning the raw material, but also in triggering the molecular transformation of the highly valued polyphenols that provide a given sensory quality to the food to become thereof (cf. Peri 2014: 71-73). Water occur vital also in terms of the circular practices by which waste water from the mills, the so-called l’acqua vegetazione, later becomes spread in the orchards. There, it acts a sort of irrigation, albeit its effect on the quality of the olives grown is debated (considering the high concentration of various compounds and chemicals present in such water, which in some cases may act fertilizer for soils and toxicants in others). On that note, let us make a move, just like the images above, from the settings of the mills to the settings of the orchards, where plentiful and multitude aquatic matters occur. Watery flows within the orchards, such as related to irrigation practices and rainfall, both of which represent major aspects with regards to certain agricultural och biodiverse dynamics taking place, correspond at once to temporal and spatial aspects of human and beyond human forces. By way of example, to ensure apt irrigation through rainfall, and by means of not having to depend on humanly enforced watering, the ancient plantation configurations by which most secular olive plants occur planted in this landscape epitomizes a highly engineered account of the formation of grounds. Furthermore, while water is wanted during specific times and in balanced amounts throughout the year, it occurs problematic if falling in abundant volumes and for longer periods. As I have noted in previous posts, rain during harvest occur troublesome as the waterlogged soil act for a much difficult working environment and many times preclude harvest from taking place. Such rain also sets forth lushy growths, which, if occurring within the cleared circle around the trunks, make harvest more difficult as the olives get wrapped up in the lushiness. So do the once-drenched-now-dry-and-dirt-wrapped olives that become as the water soaks. This occurrence leave the olives stuck into the ground, and the harvest of them require quite forceful raking. Moreover, heavy rains during autumn runs the risk of damaging the olives, even causing them to prematurely fall to the ground. In turn, lower quantitative and qualitative oils become made that given year. Along similar lines, while some rains are wished for during the heat of July and August, such as to secure proper growth of olives, too moist of an environment at this time of the year propagates the presence of olive flies; which in multitude turns impact the potential of olives being turned into qualitative oils (such as according to standards and regulations, tastes and aspirations).
The collages below visually exemplifies some watery flows that I as part of my ethnography of the becoming of pugliese olive oil explores. Within them, one may take part of, at once imagine how, practices and processes of for instance irrigation, rainfall, and olive flies impact growths and temporalities, forms and transformations, encounters and entanglements, beings and correspondences. The last image, the one featuring some buckled shapes on a trunk, showcases how particular water flows, or as in this case, water reservoirs, occur in olive plants. The two images to the left, comparatively as they are presented here, feature two sides of one and the same olive plant; they concurrently exemplify the biennial growth of olive plants and how particular watery flows came to influence such dynamics.
Continuing the story of that which I just mentioned — such as by way of tracing modes and movements of aquatic matters inherent to my research, and to exemplify at once the vital forces of watery flows and my ethnographic attunement to their occurences — let us consider when I noticed the pattern that all olive plants in three juxtaposing orchards featured plentiful olives on one side while none on the other. Late during the harvest season as this discovery took place, just the other week actually, my first thought was that the olives on the one side of the plants, namely that with most sunlight, had matured more rapidly, consequently already fallen to the ground. However, soon was I advised to rethink at once the element causing this phenomenon as well as the timeframe for its occurrence. For as I, curious to understand what I had discovered, asked a much experienced olive grower to explain his understanding of the pattern, he made known to me that the blooming period of May 2019 occured tremendously foggy. A question mark as he must have witnessed in front of him, me not apprehending the correlation right away, he continued explaining that the fog came from the seaside and that it, in its movement through the landscape upward towards the hills, caused a boost to the flowering process on the parts facing the seaside, for which reason the flowering, correspondingly also the fruiting and the subsequent growing pattern, was influenced. Yet to experience the blooming period myself, let alone, to realize vast-ranging spatiotemporal correspondences inherent to it, this awareness of his would never have crossed my mind tracing the pattern. After having made his emplaced knowledge mine, perhaps that which I take deliberate note of this upcoming May will come to spur yet other such insightful conversations.
References
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ingold, Tim. 2021. Correspondences. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marcus, George E. 1995. Ethnography in/ff the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95-117.
Palsson, Gíli and Swanson, Heather A. 2016. Down to Earth: Geosocialities and Geopolitics. Environmental Humanities 8 (2): 149-171.
Peri, Claudio (ed.). 2014. The Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Handbook. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Strathern, Marilyn. 1995. The Relation: Issues in Complexity and Scale. Cambridge: Prickly Pear Press.
Tsing, Anna L. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
