Who Let the Wolves Out? Narratives, rumors and social representations of the wolf in Greece

Abstract

As a way of coping with uncertainty and threats to their livelihoods following wolf reintroduction, livestock breeders in Greece deploy incriminating rumors about the wolf and the premises and actors around its reintroduction. In this paper, we identify the social representations with which livestock breeders make sense of and constitute the wolf as a social object. Through Moscovici’s social representations framework, we show how enduring and contemporary (corresponding to core and peripheral) attributions formalize into coherent narratives and become designated as rumors by their unverified, third-party nature. To this end, the two rumors that dominate in Greece as well as the rest of Europe are that of wolves being secretly released by NGOs and wolves as genetically impure hybrids. These become counter-narratives to the dominant truth and function as the currency of the voiceless in wolf conservation. The paper situates these rumors in a global context of contemporary conspiracy theories on the wolf currently reproduced by disenfranchised hunters, breeders and rural residents. It suggests the affinities across these rumors point to generalizable drivers to rumor creation, including the perception of inaccessible official channels for communication.

Published in

Environmental Sociology
2016, volume: 2, number: 1, pages: 29-40

SLU Authors

• Theodorakea, Ilektra Theodora

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• von Essen, Erica

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Sociology (excluding Social work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Political Science (Excluding Peace and Conflict Studies)

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2015.1119349

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/72369