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Paper short abstract:

Our proposal presents an anthropological research project that addresses creative ways of approaching the issues of living and of using local environmental resources in three marginal villages of the Italian Alps, with particular attention for the recovery of agricultural practices and knowledges.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents the theoretical and methodological background and the first provisional results of a research project conducted by an anthropological équipe, flanked by an economist and an agronomist. This research is part of a broader Italian nationwide research project, which aims to conduct in-depth ethnographic investigations in several villages in marginal areas of Italy. The anthropological investigation, which will last a total of three years, aims at understanding perceptions, conceptions, and practices of inhabiting in peripheral and small-scale living contexts, calling into question the notion of “margin” and exploring innovative processes of cultural production and sociality creation. With a comparative view, it focuses on three communities in the Italian Western Alps, affected for decades by demographic decline and progressive reduction to marginal lands, which are now experiencing new practices for a more balanced and sustainable growth and virtuous processes of local development. The project looks with particular interest at the emergence of associations and farms that are reintroducing historically documented but almost abandoned cultivations, as a creative way of addressing the issues of living and using local environmental resources. The research aims at illustrating examples of possible responses to the concept of marginality, evaluating both “capital” and limits, observing the ways in which local communities are addressing questions that have involved the whole Alpine territory over the last twenty years: who are the inhabitants of the villages and marginal areas today? What kind of resources, of networks, of social and cultural capital are produced in upland communities?