New Horizons for the Alps – Ethnographies, Reshaping Challenges, and Emerging More-Than-Alpine Relations

x This chapter traces the development of Alpine anthropology from the community studies conducted by American researchers in the early decades after the Second World War up to the present day. The first question it addresses is whether the theoretical approaches and ethnographic methods introduced by these studies proved beneficial or, rather, stifled pre-existent national traditions of research in the European countries which share the territory of the Alpine region. The chapter then re-assesses the relations between “native” anthropologists and their colleagues coming from faraway countries, and the past and present status of Alpine anthropology and anthropologists within the wider realm of anthropological research and its practitioners. It is suggested that in at least some Alpine countries and across the Atlantic the perception of the Alps as being close and remote, strange and familiar, undermined their recognition as a fully legitimate field side for ethnographic research. The final part of the chapter argues that the status of Alpine anthropology in the future will largely depend on how successfully ethnographic investigations and anthropological reflections will be able to grapple with the many changes the Alpine region has been experiencing since the beginning of the new millennium, from the effects of global warming to the unexpected settlement of new dwellers after a long period of depopulation.

x Where do the Alps end? This chapter locates the Southern Alps between the local and the global, the highlands and the lowlands, the rural and the urban. Through literature review and ethnography conducted in Lombardy, I reflect on the ecological, cultural, and economic dimensions of heritage, and of “working landscapes” as common resources for futurity. Drawing on recent scholarship on the transformations of the Alpine landscape and on local discussions on the interplay between socio-economic forces and ecological change, the “alps” emerge as a node in a web of flows, a place of significance for its inhabitants and for the history of the dairy industry, increasingly regarded also for its microbiomic wealth. This foregrounds an attention to practices of locality, their positioning in more-than-local flows, and their historicity. Central to the development of this argument is the history and ethnography of pasture-use, of dairy farming and cheese-making, and of transhumance and alpeggio (alpage) in particular. While the sedentarisation of transhumance led to the rich dairy industry in the Po lowlands, the tradition of summer grazing on the higher pastures has been “heritagised” to brand mountain cheese, as a revitalization of local ways of life. The language of typicity is key to this imagery, triangulating between local livelihoods, national and European policy, and global markets.

x What does Alpine anthropology bring to the study of other mountain spaces, and vice versa? How does observing the Alps from the south of the Italian peninsula contribute to the anthropological analysis? In this article, the author explores the implications of taking a comparative look at two mountain areas that are not usually considered in comparative terms. Going back to her early fieldwork in the French Alps, which focused on the economic issues and conflicts that the production of “locality” generated, the author shows the construction of an analytical regard on space and places. Although there are certain elements of proximity between the Alps and the Apennines such as their real or apparent marginality or the mobilities that have characterised them for centuries – a comparative view is constructed more through an ethnographic and analytical back-and-forth. Mountains are “good for thinking” about some political and economic processes, but it is the “expansion” of the ethnographic focus and the widening of the comparative perspective that allows us to capture continuities, ruptures and specificities.

x This chapter revisits the Krstenica alpine pasture in the Julian Alps, Slovenia, to ex-plore its evolving role through long-term ethnographic observation. The study exam-ines the transformation in alpine pasture management over the past decades, focusing on the changing dynamics between the local agrarian community, livestock owners, shepherds and cheese-makers. Through a blend of historical and contemporary eth-nographic data, the research reflects on the latent conflicts and diverse perspectives surrounding the management of the Krstenica alp. The paper notes the tensions be-tween traditional practices and modern agricultural challenges, especially consider-ing urbanization and changing family structures, and in the context of these conflicts, it considers the concept of “uncommon worlds”, drawing on cosmopolitical theories to suggest new approaches for managing shared resources in alpine environments. The study illustrates how alpine pastures, once central to local economies, have become sites of cultural heritage and identity, facing pressures from both conservation efforts and tourism development.

x This paper focuses on how the Vinighesi (inhabitants of Vinigo di Cadore) perceive and engage with their changing environment. Their primary focus is on the woodland and its management, highlighting the contribution of human activities that made the forest a vibrant living space in the past. However, they also acknowledge that today it is in a state of neglect and no longer a resource for the Vinigo people. Instead, it has become a source of anxiety as the forest encroaches upon the village. They point to changes that are mainly due to human activities, such as depopulation, changing livelihood practices and a different approach to forest management that has led to a lack of care for their environment. The combination of these elements has created a discontinuity in what they perceive as a strong past relationship between people and their territory – particularly the forest – which once allowed the environment to be maintained in a healthy state. Vinighesi assert that this relationship must be restored.

x This chapter explores the challenges currently faced by high altitude farmers in South Tyrol (Italy) who maintain their farms at altitudes between 1,300 m and 1,900 m. It examines the transformation that these workplaces have undergone in recent decades, from subsistence-based multi-generational family farms to specialised monoculture dairy operations. A development caught up in the contradictory relationship between resilient notions of rural life and urban condescension, and in the modern hybrids of “nature” and “culture”. A brief historical review of the medieval and early modern periods shows that such changes in agricultural intensification are not the exception but the rule, and are often, as in the case of the most recent changes, politically driven. Two case studies illustrate the impact of these changes on individual farmers and the variability in their implementation. The most recent transformation, while initially successful in preventing vertical out-migration and preserving the cultural landscape, is currently facing challenges due to increasing regulatory demands in relation to various subsidies on which farmers rely, and due to fluctuations in grain and milk prices. This shows the low resilience of the industrialised system but contrasts intriguingly with the century-long tenacity with which high altitude farmers still insist on remaining on their hard-to-operate mountain farms.

x This chapter explores the making of high places in the Alpine cryosphere in Tyrol, western Austria. In it, I propose that in our studies in and of mountain regions the three-dimensionality of space should become the focal point. Taking the Pitztal glacier ski resort as an ethnographic case study, I argue that, consequently, we must take the notion of “verticality” seriously if we wish to understand place-making in Alpine regions. What I claim particularly is to throw light on the “lived verticality”, as experienced both by local research partners and anthropologists working in Alpine cryospheres. By employing a relational and multidimensional understanding of verticality I show the physical, social, moral and political dimensions of it. In doing so, we gain insights into the relational and flexible as well as self-determined making and manifestations of verticality and identity in high places in the European Alps.

x This chapter reflects on the production of locality in a specific urbanized, tourist, and cosmopolitan region of the Swiss Alps. Through the example of two ski resorts in the canton of Valais, we examine the ways in which people from different horizons connect to mountain places and the dynamics between human practices, imaginaries, and place. To understand the role of representations when visiting or settling in the Swiss Alps, we use ethnographic interviews conducted in Verbier and Zermatt with people who, for different reasons, live, tour, or work there. The reputation of these international resorts is actively produced and maintained through tourism promotion, whose conveyed imaginaries are embedded in the discourse of residents. In addition, the historical and social specificities of Zermatt’s bourgeoisie and Verbier’s liberal attitude help to understand how these factors influence the way residents interact with the place and the landscape. The chapter explores how the cohabitation in Verbier and Zermatt among wealthy second-home owners, creative entrepreneurs, tourists, permanent residents with migration backgrounds, precarious seasonal workers, natives, and the mountain other-than-human entities, with their affinities and tensions, contributes to (re)composing locality. In the end, the distinctive ways of dealing with otherness in Zermatt and Verbier partly determine the modes of relating to the place and thus the production of locality.

x Focusing on Sinti concepts of time, space, memory and respect, this paper explores the overlooked presence of Sinti in the Alps and their relationship to Alpine landscapes, which is closely linked to their relationship to their dead. Their way of making the world calls for a rethinking of concepts concerning the relationship between humans and land and opens up a different possibility for thinking about societies in the Alps. Since silence is a practice linked to Sinti memory and land, the question arises of how to write about these people. Drawing on the discussion of the concept of silence in the work of Patrick Williams, the paper interweaves ethnographic data from twenty-five years ago with more recent ethnographic archival research.

x It is a great pleasure for me to write an epilogue for this collection of articles about one of the anthropological topics which is dearest to my heart, the Alps. Growing up in the foothills of the Alps, they were also my first field of study as an anthropologist. My point of departure was an interest in the differences between Swiss Volkskunde (folklore studies) and American anthropologists who studied the Alps during the 1970s. The encounter between these related, but different, disciplines initiated a dialogue and served as a starting point for an Alpine anthropology, as evidenced by several articles in this volume. Anthropological research in the Alps started in the Holocene, took an ethnographic turn and was critical in the emergence of political ecology. Today, anthropologists explore what it means to live in the Alps during the Anthropocene. In carving out this role, Alpine anthropology became a field of its own, with its own tradition, and as such, it makes an important contribution to anthropology in general.