Contribution short abstract:

This paper presents findings of a pilot study examining the construction and maintenance of agricultural irrigation systems (bisses/Suonen) and mountain bike trails in the Canton of Valais in Switzerland. Using Maintenance and Multispecies Studies, we challenge traditional views of these infrastructures as human-centered, instead seeing them as sites of complex interactions between humans and non-humans. Through 'unwriting' modern scientific narratives, we reveal the mountain as a dynamic web of elements with agency, enacted through specific practices and interactions.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper presents the initial findings of our pilot study, “Geteilschaften? Communal Maintenance as More-than-Human Cooperation in the Anthropocene.” This ethnographic study examines the practices involved in constructing and maintaining two types of mountain infrastructures in the Canton of Valais in Southern Switzerland: agricultural irrigation systems (bisses or Suonen) and mountain bike trails. Using approaches from Maintenance and Multispecies Studies in order to offer new insights into more-than-human cooperations and/or frictions in the Anthropocene, we extend the concept of Gemeinwerk—traditionally referring to collaborative, communal maintenance work carried out by agricultural collectives sharing resources and responsibilities—to include non-humans and contemporary, leisure-oriented infrastructuring practices. This perspective challenges both the common interpretations of these mountain infrastructures as mere expressions of human domestication of nature and the simplistic distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ infrastructuring practices. Instead, we consider both the channels and the trails as sites of complex interactions between humans and non-humans (including plants, animals, geological formations, climate, technical objects, legal regulations, narratives about the past or the future, etc.). Through a gesture aiming at unwriting modern scientific narratives, ‘the mountain’ is here approached as a material-semiotic actant: not a passive or uniform backdrop, but a dynamic, intricate web of elements, each with specific modes of agency and in constantly transforming relationships with others; and continually and situationally enacted through specific practices and interactions.