Short Abstract:

Mountain communities have long been stereotyped as remote, timeless and backward, failing to note their complexity, dynamism, and agency. This panel invites multisensory work on mountain regions’ cultural and biodiversity, multi-species lifeworlds, and long traditions of natural resource management.

Long Abstract:

This panel seeks to unwrite both the methodological limitations and the stereotypical portrayals of mountains and their communities, including in mountain studies. Unwriting, in this context, calls for a reframing of dominant narratives and the adoption of diverse forms of representation—visual, sensory, and digital—that better reflect the lived realities of these spaces. This includes engaging with Indigenous ways of knowing that are often sidelined in mainstream discourses.

By rethinking both our research methodologies and the narratives that emerge from them, this panel aims to foreground the multiplicity and agency of mountain communities in a rapidly changing world. We seek contributions that question how we can ‘unwrite’ the mountains by moving beyond text to more holistic, inclusive forms of expression.

Examples of work we invite for discussion in this panel include:

• Highlighting the diversity, resilience, and global interconnectedness of mountain communities.

• Conveying vibrant, contested, and dynamic spaces shared by both human and non-human lives.

• Imagining new ways of understanding mountain communities’ participation in global economies, migration networks, and tourism industries.

• Documenting how these communities respond to changes in agriculture, resource extraction, and sustainable development.

• Translating the diverse methods mountain peoples use to shape environmental policies and respond to climate changes.

• Exploring how they negotiate coexistence with wildlife (e.g., wolves, bears) and cope with natural hazards (landslides, mudslides, floods) in complex, context-specific ways.

This Panel has so far received 6 paper proposal(s).
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