WOOD PASTURE Politiche e pratiche tra conservazione e produzione

This PhD thesis investigates the relationship between policies and practices in wood pasture systems, focusing on how grazing in forested environments is understood, regulated, and enacted. Combining policy analysis with a relational and practice-based approach, the research examines how policies construct wood pasture as a collective issue through specific cognitive frames and knowledge-production tools, while practices activate the forest as a resource within livestock systems. The thesis situates wood pasture within ongoing dynamics of abandonment, revaluation, and partial reintroduction, driven by scientific research and European projects and increasingly visible in practices on the ground. The study is structured in two parts. The first analyses the evolution of forest and agricultural policies, together with the EU Habitats Directive, highlighting tensions, gaps in recognition, and emerging categories such as silvopastoral systems and traditional grazing practices. The second part draws on qualitative fieldwork with pastoralists and farmers in Italy to explore how policies and territorial dynamics shape everyday practices, revealing informal arrangements, adaptations, and conflicts. The findings point to persistent misalignments between policy frameworks and practices, raising critical questions about how policies enable—or constrain—their effective reactivation. By making explicit the public problems at stake, uncovering the cognitive frames that shape policies, and adopting a relational reading of practices, the thesis contributes to shifting the debate from a logic of control towards a logic of care, addressing enduring conflicts between forest, agricultural, and conservation policies and wood pasture practices.