For this dissertation, I designed and conducted qualitative research adhering to an ethnographic approach that builds on the notion of culture as narrative. This study will contribute to the growing literature addressing how visual data can be applied in narrative inquiry. One of the challenges for researchers and practitioners in rural development is getting at sensory or embodied knowledge so that it can be made conscious and represented through language. Interdisciplinary investigations that align rural conservation studies with language-based fields are gaining interest among policy makers and funding institutions. This dissertation provides evidence that a documentary video toolkit enlarges an emic perspective of situated practices, grounded in local knowledge, that necessarily serves the interests of scientific research.Specifically when focusing through the lens of a camera, attention can be directed towards tacit knowledge or specifically, "the practices that exists in people's hands and in their actions." For this dissertation, I am seeking the knowledge dynamics communicated among Sardo-Modicana breeders, whose livelihood depends on the well-being of this rare and endangeredbreed of cattle. From this study, a narrative account was crafted from the stories of six individuals that draw from a pool of knowledge that has been passed down over generations and has remained stable for nearly 150 years. A burgeoning market economy for grain was the exigency leading to innovation: the Sardo-Modicana was bred for traction in the 1880s, to cultivate wheat and carry it to the market-place. Today, men still draw the cow's milk by hand, while the women continue to produce an artisanal cheese for family and local consumption. The traditional production system maintained through intergenerational animal husbandry practices became the source of innovation for the breeders in the 21st century.In 2001 a "code of practice" indicating a formal discipline specifying new fattening procedures how the animal was drawn up in the document, "The Discipline of Production for the Protected Geographic Indicator (I.G.P. in Italian): Il Bue Rosso Del Montiferru." While this document acts as a network of communication that makes affordances for both "farmer know-how" and the "schooled knowledge" by technical or scientific experts, it necessarilyacts on the age-old livelihood practices of the Sardo-Modicana breeders. The protected geographical indications (P.G.I. in English)" is intended to fulfill the goal to conserve and to support traditional resources and protect farmers' rights and their impact on the preservation of indigenous species and traditional and local knowledge. This is a story of how each of thebreeders make sense of their world as they attempt to maintain or change cultural patterns, during a time of rapid changes in agriculture, the environment and market-driven demands.
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