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The Sheep from the Future is an interdisciplinary research and film initiated by anthropologist Dr. Sylvain Perdigon in 2019 at the American University of Beirut. Through detailed observations of multispecies interactions and interviews with shepherds, the film foregrounds the interconnectedness common to all socio-ecological systems and explores world-building in micro and macro scales.
Factory farming is a major global contributor to GHG emissions (14.5%), while Lebanon depends—tragically—on imports for 80 percent of its food consumption, making national food security and climate pressures an overbearing risk.
Against the popular perception of contemporary pastoralism as an anachronism, The Sheep from the Future highlights its socio-ecological aptitude in the face of climate change projections for the MENA region—including decreases in water supply, temperature increases, desertification, and increased bouts of flood and drought—as shepherds salvage freely available resources (pasture and water) in semi-arid regions unsuitable for agriculture, cutting the cost of imported fodder while keeping a low ecological footprint. Pastoralism today bears witness to the resilience of historical symbioses between humans, land, and animals, making it a fitting strategy for planetary survival.
Between 2019 and 2021, our interdisciplinary team of four (ecosystem management, media, and anthropology) accompanied semi-nomadic shepherds through their daily routines at their highland grazing site (Oyoun el Simane mountain range), where families set up tents for the summer. We were struck by how shepherds’ labor is built around (rather than against) its ecology, as it migrates with the seasons, and relies on multispecies cooperation: the young men herd the sheep; women milk the sheep; children feed and train them; and the sheep, in turn, feed the family. This mutual dependence scales all the way to the subsistence of a country in collapse—pressures on this socio-ecological system can have dire consequences.
Namely, shepherds face manifold difficulties: from armed middlemen who force excessive 'rental' fees, to conservation lobbies imposing 'reforestation' initiatives that close off large swathes of the rangeland. During our fieldwork, neighboring municipal authorities had forcibly removed shepherds that had set up their tents ‘too close’ to a barbed wire-fenced reforestation site; and more recently, two young shepherds were shot by and killed for crossing ‘boundaries’ by the ‘landowners’ of the commons. To top it off: the economic crisis, acute food and fodder inflation, and the absence of state support have reduced shepherds to a subsistence-based life; meanwhile, customers seek out their products to more economically produce their own dairy and preserved foods (mouneh), demonstrating the urgency to preserve this mode of production.
Project lead/PI: Sylvain Perdigon
Videographers/Co-PIs: Josh Carney & Aya Jamaleddine
Abu Ali, a goat shepherd in Mount Lebanon, describes his relationship to his flock.
As the rangelands dry out at the end of the season, shepherds purchase feeds to supplement the herd’s diet.
An action-packed experimental short set to the soundtrack of George Antheil’s The Mechanical Ballet (1924).