Queen Rearing in Sardinia. A Visual Ethnography of Beekeeping

Abstract

Drawing on an ethnography of beekeeping in Sardinia, Italy, this paper examines the challenges of conducting visual ethnography with non-humans. Inspired by silent books – a genre of wordless illustrated children’s literature – the author explores how a multispecies approach can inform visual ethnographic methods, proposing the concept of visualizing non-humans through a silent ethnography. By exploring the theories that shaped the series of drawings depicting the chaîne opératoire of queen bee rearing in Sardinia, the paper interrogates the possibility of crafting a visual ethnography without verbal language. Rather than adopting the conventions of a graphic novel, these drawings seek to render the intimate relationships between humans and non-humans, resisting the hegemony of written text. Finally, the contribution proposes that drawing can be a fruitful learning process to see non-humans in anthropology.