Paper short abstract:

"EC Environment" targets to protect and reintroduce endangered plants and animals. One of the consequences of this policy is the return of the wolf in some regions of the Alps, which leads to shepherds withdrawing from alpine pastures with their flocks.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deals with a conflictual relationship between new (animal) intruders and old marginalized humans, a situation which at present is regulated through a centralized EU institution. Shepherds in South Tyrolean valleys are known to locals as reticent persons who would stay with the animals on the high altitude pastures during the summer while getting a seasonal job at the ski lift in the valley in winter. However, two years ago some of them appeared with their flocks during summer in the valley stating that they would not remain on the alpine pasture as 'the wolf' had killed sheep and would threaten their flocks. Outraged shepherds and farmers in the Alps and all over Europe report similar experiences complaining about the loss of livestock, protesting against EU regulations with lightening 'warning fires'. This paper looks at the relationship between shepherds with their domesticated flocks and immigrating wolves. It investigates how EU regulations on the protection of wild animals are perceived at a local level. How can this relationship between marginalized people (as is often the case with shepherds), immigrating wild animals (perceived as bringing back 'uncivilized' traces of the South and East of Europe) and urban bureaucrats of Brussels be contextualized?

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the variety of actors claiming rights over the mountain pastures of the Resia Valley (NE Italy): long-term settled and newcome breeders, rangers, hunters, tourism providers, and wild animals. Who represents these different visions and and what lies behind them?

Paper long abstract:

The Resia Valley is a remote valley situated in the Western Julian Alps in the North-Eastern part of the Friuli Region (Italy). Research into the remainders and transformations of traditional Alpine herding/pasturing revealed its intense disintegration and, at the same time, a variety of different actors and initiatives claiming rights over more or less abandoned mountain pastures. Besides some long-term settled breeders, owners of the pastures in the lower alps, there are also tenants of the high alp from the surrounding lands, and rangers from the Julian Prealps Nature Park, which in fact manages the single high alp and whose main concern is to protect the diversity of the flora and fauna. Its aims appear to partially overlap with those of the hunters, who several years ago actually invited into the valley a transhumant herder with large flocks of sheep and Romanian shepherds. There are some other long-term and newcome actors desiring to make their living through activities (in)directly connected with the mountain pastures; either by gathering wild herbs, apiculture, or by various tourism activities. Furthermore, large feral carnivores are also present in the area, seemingly most protected among the involved actors. Who is qualified to represent these different visions in the public discourse, and where, if at all, is it taking place? Who is deprived of being represented? Finally, what lies behind these apparently conflicting visions?

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the complex changing relationships between people and mountain resources in the western Alps between the 18th and the 19th century.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the process of economic and social changes that affected mountain areas and valley floors between the 18th and the 19th century, particularly regarding the way highlands and lowlands have been exploited. I have chosen a western Alps valley floor located between Albertville and Chambery, known as Combe de Savoie, as a case study. This specific portion of land has been subject in turn to two different dominations: first the Savoyard State and then, starting from 1860, the second French Republic. Both governments drew up a cadaster, respectively in 1738 and 1870; these two sources of information provided a detailed account of soil typology and exploitation of land by local protagonists. My paper analyses the differences between these sources from the point of view of two communities based in the Combe de Savoie: Sainte Hélène sur Isère and Les Marches. Their economy was mainly based on complementary exploitation of the land of low valley floors and high mountain pastures. The documentation provided by the communities archives highlights the exploitation practices of these pastures and the movements of people and animals, even travelling long distances. The cross-analysis of cadastral and local sources of information will illustrate how these practices changed during the great territorial reorganization in the first half of the 19th century. Particular attention shall be paid to the management of common goods, whose image underwent major changes, and represented an important source of income for the local communities.

Paper short abstract:

The landscape reflects man's idea of himself. Does the mountain today belong to its inhabitants or to those who scout it as tourists? The alpine landscape reveals the stratification of the different communities that have lived in it.

Paper long abstract:

Landscape and man maintained a close and symbiotic relationship since time immemorial: almost as if one depends on the other, in a biunique manner. For different decades, environmental and alpine anthropology, starting from the pioneering study of Cole and Wolf (1974), has been investigating the procedures of territorial construction. This paper examines the case of the territory north of Trent and south of Bozen (the Rotaliana Plain and Salorno area), a true human laboratory from a socio-anthropological and historical point of view. Both linguistic communities practice similar agricultural techniques, but the resulting landscape, used also for touristic purposes, is a conscious demonstration of the communities' identity. The historical reconstruction and archive research (18th - 20th century), made possible by a research scholarship of the Swiss National Fund, and field work on anthropological research (PhD in Contemporary Anthropology) will highlight the mechanisms that the two communities implement to reaffirm their affiliation. Whose mountains are these? In the past the mountains belonged to the communities that also governed the valley floor with local governmental instruments such as the Carte di Regola (charters) and cadastres. They would fix damages caused by natural calamities and plan survival solutions. Today this area is strongly exploited (vineyards, apple orchards and handicraft industries) and crossed by communication lines: the landscape is governed according to different strategies, highlighted in the images that tourists look for and capture. In this case, do the mountains belong to the inhabitants or to those who still hope to find something exotic?

Paper short abstract:

How new is the "new peopling" of the Alps? While it represents a departure from the demographic closure of the modern age, a longer-term perspective reminds us that nobody was born a mountaineer. This helps us to look with different eyes at the delicate relations between "locals" and newcomers.

Paper long abstract:

After a prolonged period of demographic decline, the Alps are experiencing a widespread, if uneven, process of "new peopling". Historical evidence shows that this process represents a departure from the demographic closure documented for the long stretch of time that extends from the 16th to the late 20th century. Yet, a longer-term perspective reminds us that nobody was born a mountaineer. Such a realization helps us to look at present-day immigration with different eyes. Nevertheless, relationships between people of ancient local descent and newcomers are bound to be delicate. Anthropologists are rightly focusing on the effects of demographic change on the transmission of intangible cultural heritage: just who should be entitled to learn about, transmit and promote local cultures may entail tense social negotiation between autochthonous and immigrant sectors of the population. However, this focus on intangible heritage should not obscure the role of tangible assets - such as land, buildings and rights to private and collective resources - which are often essential to ensure that traditional craftsmanship is rescued and preserved. In particular, attention should be paid to structural and political factors which favour inhabitants of ancient descent and partly meant to encourage them to remain: when nobody could imagine that people might again be desirous (or forced) to move to the high valleys, they were praised as a brake on mountain depopulation. They might now turn into mechanisms of exclusion which hamper the new peopling of the Alps and block potential avenues of social innovation and cultural creativity.

Paper short abstract:

As historical crossroad of different cultures, the Valle di Susa has long manifested a sense of community which, far from being culturally bounded, acknowledges the potential enrichment brought about by process of incorporation of alterity as a way to create original strategies of co-existence.

Paper long abstract:

As an historical crossroad of different cultures, the Susa Valley (Piedmontese Alps) has long manifested a sense of community which, far from being territorially and culturally bounded, acknowledges the potential enrichment brought about by the process of incorporation of alterity as a way to create original strategies of co-existence. In addition to the traditional projects for asylum seekers' reception, recent agreements allocating only few people to each village have directed pre-existing forms of bottom-up mobilization towards innovative forms of social inclusion. Thanks to the migrants already hosted, a network of local inhabitants and volunteers that originates from the local "NO TAV" movement is now serving as a bridge between migrants in different hosting communities. People who take part in this movement are showing a higher degree of solidarity with asylum seekers than the rest of the local population, and are involving themselves in various initiatives with migrants. Asylum seekers are by definition caught in an uncertain liminal phase, in which their personalities fluctuate between a sense of loss of social values and the need to learn new ones. By addressing liminality not only as a phase of interruption of the previous status, but also as a period in which the actors can produce new forms of creativity, the aim of this paper is to consider emerging strategies to incorporate alterity into the local communities, focusing on the important role of the new forms of creativity promoted by local inhabitants.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses Swiss wolf debates by focusing on two visions of the Alps: Cultural Landscape and Ecosystem. We elaborate three analytical dimensions (functionalising, practical vs. theoretical knowledge, spatial-temporal horizons) that help understand negotiations of modern Alpine societies.

Paper long abstract:

In the face of wolves' return to Switzerland, the official stance is to facilitate a coexistence between man, livestock and the predator; meanwhile, sheep breeders see the wolf as a threat to their traditional practices and lifestyles. Thus, the wolf can be seen to accentuate ongoing socio-economic changes, nurturing typically Swiss debates about centralism and federalism, political paternalism, urban-rural or highland-lowland dynamics, and the depopulation of the mountains.

In this paper we focus on the visions of the Swiss Alps that are being negotiated in this context and propose to look at the two concepts of Cultural Landscape and the Ecosystem. Focusing on these two different (but not opposite) ways of understanding the alpine surroundings we analyse the debates evolving around the return of the wolves from a perspective that aims at mapping out common elements shared throughout a broad variety of actors. As a result, we elaborate three analytical dimensions: Actors a) functionalise natural surroundings as circular, interdependently functioning systems; actors b) move between practical/experience-based and theoretical/abstract knowledge; and they c) engage with different spatial and temporal horizons. Building on these reflections we conclude with suggesting that what really is negotiated in the context of the wolves' return is the vision not only of the actual condition of the Swiss Alps, but also that of a contemporary, modern Swiss society as such.

The paper is based on ethnographic research with various actors in the field of wolf management in Switzerland.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon research conducted in the Italian Alps of Trentino, the paper examines the ways the economic crisis and the subsequent decline of the 'public sphere', as a domain of social interaction, affect the intergenerational communication of different kinds of knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Considerable attention has been paid, in Anthropology and History, to the ways in which European mountain communities have been reproducing themselves socially over time. Yet the questions of how such communities reproduce themselves culturally, and of how 'local culture' (broadly defined) is communicated from one generation onto another in the face of technological change and of the economic crisis remain largely unexplored. Drawing upon research conducted in the Italian Alps of Trentino, this paper discusses the ways 'local culture' is renegotiated in some communities at a time when the decline of forestry and the scarcity of manual jobs force most of their inhabitants to commute to other places, and when the village elders have lost much of their moral authority as repositories of knowledge. The paper shows that up until very recently the availability of manual jobs in the area and the existence of a 'public sphere', as a domain of social interaction, fostered the intergenerational communication of different kinds of knowledge and skills, as well as the incorporation of information and ideological messages emanating from the centres of political and economic power into 'local culture' itself. The paper pursues the argument that the availability of virtual media and the subsequent access to a wide range of information have contributed to a considerable degree to the erosion of these communities' putative cultural autonomy. Yet at the core of this process also lies the decline of the 'public sphere' as the space within which 'local culture' is communicated, negotiated, and contested.