Cet article analyse les modes de vie mobiles d’individus privilégiés ayant adopté un mode de vie multirésidentiel dans une station renommée des Alpes suisses : Verbier. D’un côté, les nouvelles formes de mobilité dans le travail, l’habitat et les loisirs brouillent les frontières classiques entre vie privée et vie professionnelle, ici et ailleurs, hôte et visiteur. De l’autre, elles s’érigent en signe de prestige, reproduisant des distinctions de classe entre pratiques et représentations de l’espace montagnard. Les modes de vie mobiles observés — principalement la multirésidentialité — renvoient au capital social, symbolique, culturel et économique d’une classe moyenne supérieure dite créative. Ils se traduisent par la flexibilité de séquences du quotidien autrefois bien distinctes (activité/repos) et l’amalgame des qualités y étant relatives (sérieux/décontracté). À la fois inégalement accessible aux différents acteurs sociaux et réponse à une tendance normalisatrice plus générale, la mobilité multirésidentielle permet, en tant que notion anthropologiquement bonne à penser, d’étudier le processus d’embourgeoisement en cours dans la zone alpine.
This paper will discuss the rural and touristic context in which current changes and tensions pose methodological challenges to anthropological research. The canton of Valais, in Switzerland, is a rural mountain region that has undergone deep transformations, particularly during the second half of the 20th century. The Alpine valleys have seen intense construction activity: traditional farming systems have decreased drastically whereas tourist facilities have significantly increased in number. The recent changes in agricultural policies have amplified farmers' discontent and a new law on construction restrictions in mountain settings has brought to light a marked cleavage between the inhabitants of the Swiss Plateau and mountain dwellers. Economic and environmental interests create substantial tensions. Given these tensions, carrying out research in this setting became quite sensitive and politicised. I will present some results of exploratory research conducted in Valais in September 2012, as well as the challenges that have to be taken into account when organising long-term ethnographic research. It is proposed that one way to overcome personal and discipline-related obstacles is to carry out multidisciplinary research with social geographers, specialists of environmental sciences, agronomists and experts in regional planning and land use. Accordingly, interdisciplinarity and the comparison of various rural contexts are crucial in order to achieve relevant results.
El miedo es una emoción individual, pero también puede ser una experiencia social, colectiva y compartida. Sus múltiples dimensiones permiten que se la pueda analizar con diferentes perspectivas. Las emociones son verdaderamente un tema interdisciplinario que se puede estudiar desde distintos ángulos, tanto desde las ciencias naturales como de las sociales y culturales.
This paper reflects upon the nature/culture dichotomy while focusing on mountain landscapes understood as ideal places for a better life. Taking as example a region in the Swiss Alps, it analyses the motivations that lead mostly urban people to settle in mountain regions for the last three decades. Drawing on long-term multi-sited fieldworks in Swiss alpine villages, it highlights new forms of migration, not directly for economic reasons, as well as the representations of mountains as a trendy 'culturalised' natural place for living, especially for middle and upper urban classes. While giving voice to the research participants to understand the change in values and preferences towards mountain areas, this article enlightens the underlying factors behind amenity-led migration, lifestyle migration and multi-locality. It demonstrates how the nature/culture divide is being reshaped in the contemporary Swiss alpine context, where nature has become a cultural project.
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