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Paper short abstract

Drawing on photo-ethnography in Alpine valleys, this paper examines how fast ecological change reshape relations between local populations, non-human entities, and territory. It questions the analytical relevance of the concept of autochthony in non-colonial mountain contexts.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on photo-ethnography conducted in Alpine valleys, this paper examines how environmental transformations reshape relations between local populations, non-human entities, and territory in a non-colonial mountain context. It focuses on the ontological frictions emerging from environmental governance in fast-changing Alpine landscapes, and on how these frictions reconfigure everyday forms of territorial belonging that are not articulated as explicit claims to indigeneity.

Rather than analysing overt narratives of indigeneity or ownership, the paper attends to how ordinary practices and situated relations with mountain milieus produce implicit boundaries of belonging and authority. The Alpine case thus offers a critical entry point for reflecting on the analytical limits and political effects of extending the concept of autochthony to mountain regions shaped primarily by environmental regulation in the absence of colonial dispossession.