Changing Mountain Communities

x This chapter explores the concept of Glacial Intimacy to examine the evolving relationships between humans and glaciers in the Swiss Alps, particularly in the canton of Valais. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and using a multi-sensory methodology, the study reveals how glaciers are more than geophysical entities; they are dynamic actors in local cultural practices, memories, and activism. By focusing on both local residents and urban climate activists, the chapter uncovers a complex interplay between personal attachments to glaciers and broader global narratives of climate change. Understanding these human-glacier relationships also sheds light on how mountain villagers are adapting and transforming in response to environmental and social shifts. Through ceremonies, rituals, funerals and everyday interactions, glaciers are seen as more-than-human beings that shape and are shaped by human experiences. The concept of Glacial Intimacy highlights the interconnectedness of these icy landscapes with belonging, memory, and the Anthropocene, urging a reconsideration of how glaciers are engaged with in both local and global contexts.

x In the Alps, economic and ecological uncertainties, coupled with public debates and governmental policies, have rapidly propagated the idea that ecological transition represents a necessary shift for the viability of local economies and ways of life. However, propositions on how such changes should be achieved are still modest and tend to ignore the ways these discourses circulate and are understood at the ground level. Based on a comparative ethnographic research project in the Swiss, French and Italian Alps, this essay explores ecological transition as a peculiar form of desired social change within Alpine contexts. In particular, it resorts to the notions of crafting and imagining in order to explore emerging social worlds and transition-related practices, and to describe the attitudes of people supporting change in local social spaces. In dealing with local forms of cultural imagination, the essay shows how narratives of change and transition stem from meanings and memories attached to the Alpine-ness and mountain-ness of the three explored settings. Moreover, in considering the position assigned to the authors when in the field, it explores the effects ethnographic research could have when documenting crafted, going-to-be worlds.

x Mountain areas are particularly susceptible to climate change. In the Italian Alps and Apennine mountains, average temperatures have increased, the intensity and frequency of precipitation events have changed, and the timing of the seasons has shifted. These changes are intersecting with on-going social and ecological changes and are, at local scales, felt to a greater or lesser extent by local people. In mountain areas, among those most exposed to the consequences of climate and associated environmental crises are smallholder farmers, beekeepers, hunters, and all those activities that depend directly on the climate, including tourism and winter skiing. The current chapter provides three case studies of how climate, social, and ecological changes are intersecting to affect these individuals and sectors and how they are facing and confronting the challenges. The examples reveal how the impacts of climate change are compounded by on-going social and ecological changes, how the climate crisis connects diverse actors at local scales while also bringing them into contact with global processes of change, and how human and non-human actors are connected by the impact of climate change on mountain ecosystems and weather patterns.

x This chapter examines the case of a village located on the eastern edge of Transylvania, deep within the pine forests of the Eastern Carpathians. Founded in the late 19th century as a logging settlement, the village experienced rapid economic and demographic growth, evolving into a melting pot of diverse ethnic groups. However, this economic boom was accompanied by setbacks, and nearly every period of prosperity in the village’s history has been followed by crises. The most recent crisis occurred in the 1990s, after the collapse of socialism in Romania. Despite these challenges and a continuous decline in population, the village persists and even attracts new settlers. The chapter explores the contradictions and uncertainties of mountain life in the 21st century through the cultural-ecological frameworks of mountain studies and the findings of socialist and post-socialist anthropology. Building on previous research, it aims to apply the social-ecological system (SES) approach by investigating the inter-play between natural resources and human practices and decisions.

x This study examines the socio-economic and cultural transformations in Sardinia’s mountainous regions from a historical and anthropological perspective, highlighting the shift from polyculture agriculture to intensive pastoralism and recent heritagisation and economic diversification efforts. Using historical sources and ethnographic methods, it identifies three critical phases: traditional agro-pastoralism, a decline due to migration and industrialisation, and a revival through tourism and heritage branding. Today, local initiatives aim to integrate traditions with new economic opportunities, promoting quality certifications and cultural identity, underscoring the importance of local resilience in adapting to global changes. This analysis offers insights into broader trends affecting mountain communities worldwide, where heritage and tourism are relevant strategies.

x What does it mean to be somewhere? This chapter follows the reflections and testimonies by a variety of natives from Castro Laboreiro, in northern Portugal, dubbed the castrejos. Among these castrejos, to be somewhere, both in space and in time, seems to carry a sense of belonging that transcends the transformations that the 20th century brought to mountain communities of the region. This sense of always being there in Castro Laboreiro, from the castrejos, is inexorably entwined with contemporary forms of economic survival and heritage-making, leading to interesting ambiguities and un-ending questions of truth, authenticity, legitimacy, and identity.

x This chapter presents the theoretical and methodological background and the first provisional results of ethnographic investigations conducted by an anthropological team complemented by an economist and an agronomist. This research is part of a broader Italian nationwide project specifically designed to conduct in-depth ethnographic investigations in several villages in marginal areas of Italy. The piece of research on which this chapter is based will extend over a period of three years and its aim is to understand 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. Adopting a comparative perspective, it focuses on four 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. It also 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 in marginal surroundings and using local environmental resources. The goal is to provide illustrations of possible responses to the processes of marginalisation, taking into consideration the limitations that these processes impose, but also the opportunities that arise from them, and observing the ways in which local communities are facing questions that have become increasingly important for the whole territory of the Alps over the last twenty years: who are the inhabitants of Alpine villages and marginal areas today? What kind of resources, networks and social and cultural capital are, or can be, produced in upland communities?

x This chapter focuses on the interconnections between rituals, indigenous communities’ sociopolitical dynamics, a potential ecological crisis, and tourism development in Laguna Blanca – a highland village in the Province of Catamarca, Northwestern Andean Argentina. We present an ethnographic description of a ritual offering called corpachada, which is made by the villagers to Pachamama (Mother Earth) on 1st August every year, both in private family and public ceremonies. We are interested in tracing and building connections between the corpachada ritual and the current political, social and ecological transformation of the area; especially as regards new mining projects which have stirred conflicts within the local communities and families. Drawing on the methodologies of sociocultural anthropology and geography, we propose map-ping the spatial and temporal dynamics of the different ritual offerings to understand how sociocultural change in the communities of the Biosphere Reserve Laguna Blanca is interconnected with the processes of politicisation, festivalisation, and touristification of the mentioned corpachada ritual. In addition, we argue that the ritual can be seen as an open cosmopolitical arena in which new possible strategies of alliance among indigenous communities, researchers, and even tourists, can be experimented with.