Dynamics of the population and dynamics of the memory of an alpine community on the border

Abstract

Association pour la diffusion de la recherche alpine Electronic reference Roberta Clara Zanini, « Dynamics of the population and dynamics of the memory of an alpine community on the border »,

Negotiating the Mountains. Foreign Immigration and Cultural Change in the Italian Alps

“…Such a loss of political weight would impinge not only on the vitality of the language, but more generally on the whole cultural sphere by paving the way for what they call "diffuse ethnicities, " grounded not so much in linguistic competence as in subjective assertions of belonging by "new highlanders" eager to claim the right to promote and enhance local culture. Recent ethnographic investigations have indeed shown that the new inhabitants are very often the ones who prove most active in negotiating or even manipulating social processes-dealing especially with the use and re-invention of memory -that are not so much concerned with the "traditional" behaviours in themselves, but rather with the political rhetorics of production of traditionality (Zanini 2013).…”

Socio-Demographic Changes and Transmission of Tangible and Intangible Resources: Ethnographic Glimpses From the Western Italian Alps

“…Interviews there were used to reconstruct the multigenerational stories of most of the families currently exploiting the Alps for pasture; investigate property and land use rights; study the management of mountain pastures; and assess the transmission of economic assets and technical skills both inside and outside families and the local community . Research in Macugnaga, on the other hand, relied principally on intensive and prolonged participant observation, exploring the complex dynamics of memory, belonging, and identity in a settlement of Walser origin which has long experienced waves of immigration that have deeply altered the composition of its population (Zanini, 2013). Because of these differences in methods and focus, the data are not fully comparable and fail in instances to address some aspects of the issues discussed in this article.…”

“…At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who favor more extraversive approaches, directed toward communication with the outside and to those who do not belong to the group. These individuals are convinced that forms of valorization involving tourists may not only be an aid to economic development, but also-and no less importantly-be one of the only ways to preserve a large portion of Macugnaga's Walser heritage, which otherwise may be doomed to ossify or utterly disappear (Zanini, 2013).…”

Migratory trajectory and recomposing of Alpine societies

“…Regarding the subject proposed by this number of the Revue de Géographie Alpine, we must state that we came to deal with a large number of cases of migrants who were "mountaindwellers by choice" (Corrado, 2013;Dematteis, 2010), even what one might call "amenity" migration (Moss, 1996, Perlik, 2011, but these "new inhabitants" (Zanini, 2013) or "neoValaisans" do not settle in zones that could be qualified as "depopulated" (ibid. ), peripheral, or even marginal.…”