WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

For Photographs, Maps, Tables/Figures,

Further Information, Contact:

Michela Zucca - michela.zucca@tin.it

Matriarchy & The Mountains

The Alps. The People

Anthropology of Small Communities. Demographic Movements. Women’s Condition. Development Perspectives.

By Michela Zucca

ABSTRACT

The project called “Sustainable development processes in the marginal alpine communities of Trentino (Italy)” took off in 2003. We have conducted anthropological fieldwork in five communities regarded as socio-economically marginal. The work has been complemented by demographic research concerning over 1.800 Italian Alpine municipalities, from 1951 to 2001. The data gathered have been used to draw depopulation maps, divided by gender, as well as maps of “critical status” based on different levels of social deterioration. The evidence shows that problems almost invariably associated with mountain communities are not merely of an economic nature. They have massive social and cultural implications.

As far as research method is concerned, we have opted for participatory action-research, which is based on the idea that collected data can and should be used to foster community development. This was done during the period of analysis and afterwards. Actions have been carried out not only on traditional rural activities but on innovative sectors such as tourism, culture and - mainly - on ICT and networking. It is worthy of note that four of the five villages that have come under our anthropological scrutiny have been subsequently selected as beneficiaries of EU territorial development programmes. This has permitted the creation of qualified work opportunities to halt the migration of young people and women.

During our work we have been able to analyse the process of migration within Trentino, mainly in those 10 municipalities were the gender divide in employment had been found to be larger. Evidence for the period between 1991 and 2004 shows that women are moving from their birthplace to the nearest place, usually a medium-large town, which can cater for their needs (healthcare, family support, culture and leisure).

Our fieldworkers have observed the local political, economic and social dynamics, with a particular emphasis on those inconveniences that are more likely to induce residents to leave. By and large, what is most conspicuous is the widespread distrust of the territory itself, and the unravelling of family networks. As a result, local pharmacies, schools, post offices, banks, etc. close down, and this increases the marginality of these areas, for it becomes increasingly difficult for both residents and local authorities to start new business enterprises. It is thus unsurprising that, in some places, development programmes could not take off precisely due to the relative indifference of the local population, a large proportion of which remains set on moving out.

Therefore, the originality of our contribution lies in its focus on the procedures to detect, analyze, and diagnose the experience of marginality in alpine communities. We propose that social change should be premised on a combination of various elements and conditions that are most likely to ensure a self-sustaining process of development, based on local values and opportunities.

Michela Zucca, Centro di Ecologia Alpina, 38040 Viote del Monte Bondone, Trento (Italia)

PART I: The search for an identity.

“PATTERNS OF Sustainable development in the remote municipalities of trentino”

The “patterns of sustainable development in the remote municipalities of Trentino” project was initiated in 2003 and is sponsored by the Centro di Ecologia Alpina. It consists in extensive ethnographic research in five remote communities and in the analysis of the relevant demographic data provided by the National Statistical Institute for the 1951-2001 period. Results raises a series of questions that could be extended to the whole of the Italian Alps.

The Research

The Centro di Ecologia Alpina has been founded in 1993 to investigate human ecology. Current research draws on a great deal of published and unpublished studies.[i][1]

The reasons behind the significant delay in the development of so many alpine municipalities are not only of an economic nature. We hold that the current situation can be imputed to cultural and social factors. Years of action/research specifically designed by a four-specialist team led by Michela Zucca to look into this issue in various alpine valleys have prompted CEALP to undertake a comprehensive ethnographic study to substantiate our initial hypothesis.

The team

Prior to embarking on the actual ethnographic fieldwork, the team members – Alessandro Gretter, Chiara Modenini, Nicoletta Tiziana Beltrame and Claudia Marchesoni – under the direction of Michela Zucca, have attended a course in anthropology of development to learn the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of ethnographic research. The same course was offered again the next years, and this time enrolment was made open to the general public. We believe that it could be taught elsewhere in the Alps, and one of our primary goals is actually to ensure that this will be done soon, also by circulating more widely the papers and reports produced by the team.

The field

Sagròn-Mis, Cimego, in Western Trentino, Terragnolo, in the vicinity of Rovereto, together with Ronzone, in the Non Valley, and Luserna (where an undergraduate has also been involved in the fieldwork). These are the municipalities in which our ongoing ethnographic study is taking place. Each one of them has a population of a few hundred inhabitants and suffers from the depopulation epidemics that affects so many alpine and rural communities.

This research has focused on areas where the social and economic fabric has been frayed but also on other, less marginal districts, with real potential for growth and where depopulation can be halted. During their residence, researchers have sought to understand the development of the communities not only from a historical perspective but, above all, the human element and the socio-cultural factors that have led to the present situation.

Participatory planning for sustainable development

We have opted for the technique called participatory action-research: based on data collection, we have started, already in the fieldwork stage, new programmes for sustained development, which combine traditional rural activities with innovative and broad solutions in the area of tourism, culture, handicrafts and, above all, new technologies and web services. We expect that this initiative will facilitate the creation of qualified labour, so as to prevent young people and women from leaving their villages. Development programmes of this sort, especially concerned with the promotion of local cultural identities and the active participation of the local residents, have been tried before in Trentino, at Pejo, Primiero and in Val di Cembra, as part of the RECITE II “Learning Sustainability” and Interreg III C “European Network of Village Tourism” frames. The “European Network of Village Tourism” has involved four of the five municipalities under study, namely Cimego, Luserna, Terragnolo e Ronzone.

Fieldwork in areas where resettlement programmes are in place

Fieldwork for the empirical verification of conditions abroad has been carried out in tandem with the one taking place in Trentino. We have selected regions with similar environmental and demographic circumstances, like the Science Park of Sophia Antipolis in the French Alpes Maritimes department, Eastern Ireland, and the Spanish Pyrenees. This has enabled the team to propose solutions that had already been successfully tested elsewhere.

Data gathering and quantitative analysis – data mapping

We have compared qualitative and quantitative data through statistical analysis of census data relative to the 1951-2000 period, for every municipality of the Alps. Tabular summaries have been graphically displayed as depopulation maps, featuring total numbers and gender breakdown. In a similar way, we have produced “critical status” maps of municipalities on the brink of extinction, assuming that shrinking municipalities are those with a size of less than 500 inhabitants and at a distance of at least at a 20 minute drive from the nearest town (the convention being that in the Alps towns have at least 5,000 inhabitants). We have considered the ten municipalities in Trentino where the men/women of fertile age ratio was the most significant – incidentally, Trentino is the Italian region where the male/female ration is the most unbalanced - in order to figure out where, over the past 13 years, women have resettled.

Data from the interviews have been run through statistical processing, and we have arranged the most frequent statements thematically, so as to show relative frequency and significance.

The context

The trend towards the abandonment of settlements and economic activities in the remotest regions of the Alps points to a state of deep social and cultural crisis and is entirely confirmed by the interviewees. Inhabitants of small alpine villages sense their marginality, their declining living standards and the perceived increase of their “distance” from towns. Throughout their fieldwork, researchers have examined the process of cultural change occurring during the transition from tradition to modernity, one that has exerted a considerable influence on the relationship between community and land and between the community members themselves.

In the space of a generation, the traditional economic, social and cultural signposts have changed dramatically and we suggest that it would be useful to learn, through an interdisciplinary approach, what the effects of this transformation are, and what the most likely future scenarios might be. >From a broader perspective, the situation is even more serious. Demographic projections to 2025 of international organizations like FAO predict that 87 percent of the European population will be concentrated in urban districts. In the Alps, the depopulation rate ranges from 30 percent in Trentino to over 80 percent in Carnia. Accurate data are not available for the Apennines, but it is reasonable to postulate that data may be even more alarming.

People in the mountains live in an undeclared state of emergency that calls for complex and diversified solutions, sensitive to local identities and needs but also, where possible, ground-breaking. This is all the more important because, even though 70 percent of Italy is mountainous, Italians, even in the Alps, regard themselves as city-dwellers. This has important repercussions at a political and administrative level, because local authorities are not prompted to see depopulation as an actual problem that needs to be tackled with determination. Consequences can be vastly many, from the shortage of people managing the land, to cultural and group identity loss and the erosion of economic and social structures.

Objectives: development plans

The main objective of the project is the anthropological definition and assessment of a development plan increasing the quality of life in remote mountain communities and reducing the discomfort of their inhabitants. This will provide important indications concerning the way reforms and changes in the social, economic and environmental fields should be effected in order to allow these communities to survive. The four fieldwork researchers have illustrated a number of recurring themes that could be used to induce young people and women to continue to reside in their birthplaces. This study should uncover the factors that affect most dramatically the development of these communities, and prevent the use of local resources, both of an economic and cultural nature; it should also suggest a way in which this seemingly inexorable loss of “vital forces” can be halted.

We want to understand why young people and, according to the available demographic evidence, especially women, leave the places where they were born and raised and move to the cities. A better understanding of this phenomenon will encourage the formulation of adequate legislation and policies that, once locally implemented, will hopefully keep small communities alive and vibrant. Ultimately, we would like to provide evidence of the conditions of remote villages, of their levels of social cohesion and of the quality of their relationship with the environment, while assisting local authorities developing and advancing plans for the enhancement of the living standards of the inhabitants of small villages.

An innovative content

The advantage of the approach that we propose lies in the method that we employ to ascertain the conditions of marginalization of alpine communities at the intersection of their social, environmental, anthropological, and geographic dimensions, with a view to the possible benefits that can be reaped from the added value of local opportunities and practices.

Central to our study is the notion of sustainable development, that is to say, an approach responsive to the needs of the present generation, including economic and profit growth and distribution, working opportunities, social and cultural services, better housing and education (viz. Brundtland Report).

The concept of sustainability and of quality of life that we set forth stresses the importance of the social and anthropological elements that make up a community and the strong but flexible bonds between a community and the surrounding region. The research method that we employ combines quantitative (statistical) and qualitative (ethnographic) data. Both provide benchmarks for each issue that we explore. The definition of the opportunities for sustainable growth will not only consider structural factors, but also the living conditions of the community, marked by cultural distinctiveness, by traditional ways of doing things, as well as by its vulnerability and deficiencies, vis-à-vis the ubiquitous market economy.

The development of targeted methods and strategies of implementation will involve a plurality of variables and will have a special regard for the fragility of the environmental, economic and social context in which they are deployed.

Methodology for sustainable development: action-research

During our fieldwork, we have employed the action-research technique, consisting in data-collection aimed at the development of a given region, through the involvement of its population. ² The goal is eminently practical: the actors involved in an action-research study are both the researchers and the informants. The definition of the problem comes at a later stage, when researchers and the community come together to discuss the relevant information and decide in concert what should be done next.

The observation of the social context is vital. “context” is an expression which comes from the Latin verb “con-tessere”, meaning “to weave together” and, by extension, “fabric.” Specifically, “context” includes all the elements that define the identity of a group, a set of complex economic, social, cultural, human, religious, mythical, and archetypal relations that constitute a social milieu. This is the key-scenario for every development plan. It must consider both economic and socio-cultural dimensions and must be empirically tested, by trial and error. This is what makes it flexible: it varies as the context changes, for there are no universally applicable, pre-packaged solutions. Needless to say, theory is important, since no intervention can be built on a foundation lacking an accurate theoretical framework and a reasonable amount of information.

Two methodological assumptions underpin this approach:

1. The gradual emancipation of the social sciences from positivism and the theoretical models of the hard sciences, with their irrefutable results and their scientific reliability based on universal laws. Diversity of human behaviour generates a variety of situations and solutions even when the context is ostensibly the same: it is this complexity that a positivistic approach cannot fully grasp;

2. Expertise must be applied. Expertise is only valuable when it is of some use.

Guidelines

For our action-research we have followed the EU preferential guidelines for 2002-2005. The proposed criteria are as follows:

• Capacity of the project designers to make it suit the needs of the community;

• Bottom-up approach at every stage;

• Broad participation in planning and execution;

• Increased equal opportunities, especially for women, through mainstreaming and empowerment throughout the design and implementation of the project; involvement and economic, social and cultural growth of disadvantaged areas;

• Identification and involvement of end-users, by informal as well as direct contact

• Project sustainability.

What needs to be evaluated

When it comes to economic development, including sustainable development, the first thing to do is to appraise the initial conditions. A project cannot take off without it and one needs to address the following issues:

• The number of inhabitants of a community;

• Their occupations;

• Their age;

• Their schooling and education;

• Their attitude towards entrepreneurship;

• The core values of the community;

• The community’s expectations;

• The expectations of the most dynamic social actors;

• The role and expectations of women;

• The role and expectations of young people;

• Conflict and disagreement;

• Distribution of wealth;

• Family ties and patron-client relations;

• Formal and informal associative and aggregative patterns, within and without the community;

• Business activities;

• Entrepreneurial spirit;

• Relations and partnership between economic actors;

• Drive for innovations among the young generations;

• Type of local government and policy-making process;

• Degree of consensus about the initiatives of the local authorities;

• Measure of trust;

• Trust and consensus with respect to action-researchers and their project;

THEORETICAL PREMISSES: NOTHING IS MORE PRACTICAL THAN GOOD THEORY

Human ecology

Human ecology is about the processes of transformation of the environment triggered by natural phenomena or human intervention. Human beings have always modified the environment, as one can easily deduce from the numerous signs of their presence, such as cropland and grassland pasture and grazed forest land.³ Human beings determine the evolution or extinction of entire ecosystems. Ecosystems are specific, porous environments where population and nature co-exist and the impact of human action is usually significant.

But while in the past, at least until WWII, traditional economic systems prevailed and human intervention was visible in settlements and fields, without being exceedingly conspicuous, as there used to be a certain concern for keeping the balance between nature and society, resources and the population, now these practices are being phased out.

The study of demographic trends is at the core of human ecology. Historical-demographic research carried out by anthropologists⁴ clearly shows that men in alpine communities migrated seasonally. Women did the same less frequently, in order to supplement their other occupations: farming and herding for men, mainly domestic chores for women. Families relied on a great deal of functional flexibility. Where temporary migration did not occur, there still were ways in which procreation was kept at bay, such as high celibacy and late weddings: a case in point is the Swiss village of Törbel, studied by Robert Nettino.⁵

Social organization is another key aspect of human ecology. It comprises the institutions, principles and rules established by the community to govern individual behaviour. We are talking about a process, whereby individual actions are not determined by social organization but really are its outcome. In the Alps, wedding practices have shaped an institutionalized model of society that forestalls an excessive demographic growth.

Another branch of human ecology is cultural technology, introduced by Haudricourt and Leroi-Gourhan⁶ in the Forties. It studies the relationship between human beings and their environment, with technology as the intermediary. The interdependence of science and society, which manifests itself through technological advance, is an important variable because, according to Haudricourt, technological innovations arise from a society undergoing a major process of social and cultural change. It is technology that generally adapts itself to society. On the other hand, no technological advance will occur so long as it is not socially and culturally acceptable, because the process of devising something technologically new is almost always related to a broader and diverse socio-cultural context.

Cultural ecology

For the experts of cultural ecology⁷ change comes from the process of adaptation to the environment.

This outlook focuses on the relationship between society and nature, on the embeddedness of a community in its environment, on resource management and on the harnessing technologies, on herding and domestication, on demography, food habits, biological and technical adjustment to extreme climates, on the “techniques of the body,” on health and healthcare practices. It involves studies of primatology, prehistory, archaeology, ethnology, environmental sciences, linguistics, and biological anthropology.

In cultural ecology, the element of technology has a special importance. Andrè Leroi-Gourham⁸ and Andrè Haudricourt have pointed out the close relatedness of science, technology, and society, breaking away from traditional divisions between hard sciences and social sciences, and demonstrating that tools, any sort of tools, from a plough to a spaceship, are inventions that can only exist in a specific social and economic context.

This implies that there will be a constant interplay between a technological environment, namely the technologies, techniques, actions and modes of work available in a certain historical period to a human group, and the surrounding ecological system. This substratum consist in the technological background of the culture under study, and in the technological background, which includes the technologies employed by those neighbouring peoples with which there is an ongoing exchange of products and ideas. ⁹ Innovation occurs when a society is ripe for it: then, it is either devised inside a community, or it is imported and reworked: the difference between the two scenarios is, for all intents and purposes, negligible.

Sustainable development

The issue of socio-cultural change is crucial when it comes to sustainable development and to putting an upper limit to growth for environmental reasons. The most popular definition of sustainable development is the one used in the Brundtland Report, in 1987, which led to the official adoption of the same definition by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCDE), organized by the United Nations. The report, entitled “Our common future,” reads as follows: “humanity has the ability to make development sustainable, to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable development does imply limits – not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities.”

Such a definition can be contradictory, and this is precisely the opinion of Serge Latouche, the chief advocate of downscaling growth.¹⁰ In point of fact, our culture is still heavily influenced by nineteenth century evolutionism, stressing the importance of the notion of “progress” as the engine of a more affluent and ultimately better society, thanks to a larger distribution of goods, and of a linear perspective on human history. Therefore, despite the results of many studies published over the past decades,¹¹ which demonstrate that further growth is impossible, coming to terms with the reality that the production of goods should be curtailed and that it is about time that we implement forms of sustainable development, remains awfully unpleasant.

Human beings can partly circumvent natural selection and intervene to alter the natural order in a way that does not compromise it. But they can also neutralize or destroy those processes that allow ecosystems to adjust to change, regain their balance and re-establish their self-sufficiency. The result is deterioration and loss of biodiversity.

Europe, and especially Northern Italy, from the river Po to the Riviera and to the Alps, has been densely populated since ancient times and its inhabitants had to learn how to functionally adapt to the environment. Over time, they have developed a lifestyle that was instrumental to the harnessing of natural resources without depleting them: this highly sophisticated “technological environment” has brought about important environmental changes across the Alps, barring glaciers and peaks. ¹²

Human beings decide to what extent the modification of the environment should be pursued, which model of socio-economic development is the most advisable: a sustainable, long-term and harmonious approach, or something entirely different, since between wilderness and deterioration lies a gamut of options. We think it would be most desirable for the natural environment and human society that humanity attempted to strike a balance between the improvements of both. Protecting nature does not mean placing it in a crystal coffin. What we should rather do is to manage in a fair and effective way human progress and the evolution of the environment.

It is plainly evident that this is the ideal challenge for anthropologists, because their expertise enables them to explain what has already been done and to make an important contribution to the decision-making process concerning the steps that should be taken to redirect attitudes and practices toward the environment in the light of the local culture, its values and its history.

Peasant culture and environmental protection

In Europe, wilderness is long gone. Even seemingly untouched landscapes are the outcome of human action, like grazing and timber cropping. Prior to the advent of mass tourism and industrialization, that is, until the second post-war period, the most common land management model in rural Europe was still subsistence farming in small holdings. It was parsimonious and provident because the unrestrained exploitation of the land could force people to migration. Peasants possessed a distinct sense of history: changes in the ecosystems were made with an eye to their immediate and lasting consequences and bearing in mind the experience of the predecessors. ¹³

Interventions were tailored to address specific needs and attempts were made to anticipate future needs on the basis of the historical record and to coordinate present and future activities. Until a century ago, the European rural civilisation would manage the ecosystem regardless of demographic fluctuations. Human interventions shaped the land over and over again with a different intensity depending on the community and its needs.

The Alps are a case in point. Until the early seventeenth century, the Alps were one of the most densely populated region of Europe; ¹⁴ so much so, that most mercenaries for the European wars came from there. In spite of this human concentration - which was greater than, for instance, that of the fertile Pianura Padana, and even at higher altitudes, where the ecological equilibrium is more precarious -, the Alps were less seriously affected by the effects of the cycles of bad harvest, famine, and pandemics, which were normally devastating in a world where resources were limited. The main reason for this greater adaptability, which was shared in common with the Pyrenees, the Apennines and the Massif Central, was the broader distribution of settlements, which were located at different altitudes and in different ecological settings, which encouraged synergies and a more rational management of resources. In this “environmental mosaic,” the economic base ranged from sub-Mediterranean cultivation (lemon and olive trees), near the lakes, to high-mountain grazing near the glaciers. This allowed the full and differentiated harnessing of resources, so that a large amount of them would be obtained directly from nature (viz. timber, fish, game and herbs), from farming (cereals, potatoes, fruit and vegetables), and from herding. Seldom was there shortage of them all at the same time. The Alps were an area of intensive farming, as opposed to the plain, where, as a rule, only one crop was harvested each year (monoculture) and if the harvest failed, many would starve and social and economic dislocation would ensue (unattended irrigation systems and river embankments, murrains, etc.).

In fact, crop production in the plains was comparatively remunerative in a market economy, but this did not prevent most peasants from living through recurring periods of hunger. A small-scale, family-oriented economy was less likely to produce a marketable surplus, but could sustain the entire population in disadvantaged areas.

It is of signal importance that the capitalist system is a fairly recent development in Southern Europe and one of the consequences of the diffusion of the market economy in rural area has been economic, social, demographic and ecological imbalance. A vicious circle took shape, in which economic growth was concentrated in regions with high production standards. Rising living standards in those same regions led to demographic growth and intensive cropping. Simultaneously, less favoured areas experienced recession or stagnation, emigration, and abandonment and turn into sources of cheap, unqualified labour for the fastest-growing industrial districts of the United States, France and Germany. Today large cities near the Alps are the favourite destination of these migrant workers. The capitalist economy has caused the demise of small-scale rural economy and the objective of production is no longer survival for the family and the community, but market profitability. In agriculture, the imperative was to cut down on costs and design economies of scale; farming was mechanized and, where necessary, the whole enterprise would be relocated in the Third World. As a consequence of this transformation, more land is needed to support a family, farmers are encouraged to expand and incorporate smaller farms and more and more large land holdings are devoted to monoculture, more efficient in terms of profitability but considerably detrimental in terms of biodiversity and traditional habits and customs.

The ecology of abandonment and the identity crisis

The ecology of abandonment is one branch of human ecology that focuses on how human beings decide to move out of an occupation and of a given ecosystem and the disappearance of traditional ways to graze and to manage forests. It documents the short- and long-term consequences of these phenomena, such as the interrelation between depopulation¹⁵ and ecological transformation, and their social, economic and cultural causes. Needless to say, “abandonment” has anthropocentric connotations, for the same phenomenon could also be described as nature’ final vindication.

This discipline is concerned with those regions that have been transformed by stable human presence and, all of a sudden, within the space of a few decades, have been deserted. They have experienced the deterioration of their biodiversity, hydrogeological characteristics and landscape. Take the terracing of the Ligurian slopes, for instance. Massive urbanization along the coast meant that only retired old people, deeply attached to the land, would continue to manage terrace-cultivation. After their death, things will get certainly worse for the stability of the ecosystem.

The disappearance of cultivations and the return of the forest on the pastures cause the extinction of various valuable and fragile vegetable species, especially herbs, and the impoverishment of the soil. One of the results of this process is that essences and products that were once derived from agriculture and plants are now chemically mass produced, without attaining the quality standards of the natural ones, viz. lavender essential oils.

A vegetative analysis carried out by the Centro di Ecologia Alpina¹⁶ on some crop patches in Monte Bondone (Trento) shows that, compared to mowing patches, low density larch forests and beech forests, open meadows and swards that have not been used for cattle-grazing and mowing for 30 years exhibit a greater biodiversity. Analysis of the variety of species in these different habitats shows restrictions in the range of species, from 97 species in the sward, to 70 in the meadow, 48 in the larches’ undergrowth and 46 in the beech forest.

The management of pastures affects the ecological dynamics of vast stretches of land. Alexander Cernusca and Ulriche Tappeiner¹⁷ in the Hohe Tauern national park, Austria, point out that after only one year of abandonment, pastures display quantitative and structural changes of vegetation as well as microclimatic variations. These alterations may influence the run-off of rainwater, and therefore erosion patterns and streamflows, in mountain ecosystems. The two researchers argue that this research provides some important criteria to assess the environmental impact of mountain farming. This, in turn, will affect the amount of subsidies that will be allotted to mountain farmers. Such criteria should also include the positive effects of alpine agriculture for the entire population, like recreational benefits, the protection from avalanches and landslides, the preservation of a vital source of potable water and hydropower. Data analysis has revealed that because of the management of high pastures in the Hohe Tauern national park, the owner of the hydro-electric power stations within the limits of the park should contribute 90 Euros per hectare to local farmers to compensate them for the additional 3 percent of water run-off that reaches its stations due to their activities. Such estimates should be extended to other areas. The beneficial effects of the work of mountain farmers and of their culture have been far too often neglected. So much so that today mountain ecosystems are threatened by the dramatic identity crisis of this category of workers and mountain dwellers. The young generations and some middle-aged people often come to the conclusion that rural economy and agricultural work are doomed. At first, they are kept going by women and the elderly, then, when women manage to find another job, they leave the land behind and, with it, their native culture and traditions, now deemed worthless and passé. The young mountain-dweller easily forswears his identity, he is ashamed of himself and feels isolated, with no public support.

Older generations normally don’t think in terms of profit alone and are more willing to stay and cultivate the land and perpetuate their ways of life. So long as they can support themselves and are physically capable, older people continue to live in their households and, if they are forced to leave, they lose their zest for life. Otherwise, they retain a sense of stewardship (and ownership) towards the place where they were born and raised.

For a farmer “home” includes the whole region where he lives: “his” mountain, “his” valley, etc. He feels guilty when a dry stone wall falls apart, when terraces are eroded, when a pasture reverses to scrub, as though he were personally responsible for the survival of the cultural landscape: traditional agriculture has become a second nature for him! Mass tourism has revolutionised the traditional socio-economic model, premised on an all-sufficient and decentralised mode of harnessing natural resources. The new, centralized model of total exploitation of one resource over the others, is entirely removed from the control and management of ordinary people, in that it depends on large investments of capital. The ecological balance of the farmed land can only be ensured by a sufficient amount of human labour devoted to its restoration. This process stalls when human beings no longer feel such a vocation. In the Alps, shared toil perpetuates the culture and gives meaning to the notion of nature and landscape stewardship. Nevertheless, over the last thirty years, national policies have produced enormous structural changes in both agriculture and apiculture causing a dramatic reduction of cropland and grazing land. Vegetation has reversed to typologies that existed before the establishment of human settlements.

Such a process may take decades and entails several successive stages, each defined by specific and unstable combinations of flora and fauna. Mountain communities knew full well that there are thresholds that should not be crossed when it comes to balance social needs and concerns about natural resources. They were aware that what is taken away from nature must be given back, at some point (e.g. manure), and in the same proportion. To the extent that these communities remained independent and free, they retained their environmental conscience and a degree of functional interdependence with nature. Then, pressures from the outside (nationalism, wars, housing speculation, capitalism, mass tourism, and so forth) tipped the balance against nature. FOOTNOTE? For further information on the subject of commons, public domains, and the management of mountain resources in the Alps, see the research conducted by the Centro studi per le proprietà collettive e demani civici, at the University of Trento (http://www.jus.unitn.it/usi_civici/)

Anthropology and Economy

Even today, the common perception of economics – among ordinary people as in the ivory tower – is that it is an exact science,¹⁸ based on mathematical models that can be applied to clearly definable situations: underdeveloped countries, countries of the Northern hemisphere, agriculture, industry, new economy… Save for the Anglo-Saxon countries, anthropology is seen as too subjective a discipline to make reliable predictions about what will happen in the future in a given community, especially with regard to the economic sphere. However, the most receptive economic analysts have known for a long time that barter, much in the same way as the exchange in the global market, must obey to cultural, not only functional, rules. The way in which production is planned, a commodity is assigned a material and symbolic value, and is marketed, is the result of cultural dynamics specific to each civilization. The ability to propose and the willingness to accept a new, manufactured need (of goods, services, living standards, etc.) are contingent on the effectiveness of a message. A cultural model can be imported, exported, removed more quickly than a commodity. Economy and anthropology are interrelated and the science of economics cannot be dissociated from the study of the society where cultural and consumer practices take shape. From this perspective, marketing strategies can greatly benefit from a methodical ethnographic analysis. The hi-tech boom has produced an enormous quantity of data to examine. But such is the amount of information that even the most sophisticated computers could not handle it. One has to pick out the most valuable information, and anthropological criteria can help considerably in making this choice, by showing the navigation through variables and functions, figures and reports to meet the expectations of the client, together with one’s own.

Anthropology cannot certainly replace economics, but it can scrutinize the same evidence and offer a constructive critique, bringing out the implicit and hidden relations between production, distribution and consumption on the one hand, and society and culture on the other hand, because individuals and groups with their biases, beliefs and undisclosed assumptions, are the only true agents in these relations. The practical implications of this analysis, which are of considerable interest, are however all too often ignored by those who manage the economic growth of a country or a region.

Economics as we see it is how people’s decisions on how to produce commercialize and consume are informed by their background and habits of thought and action, which are in turn culturally, socially, and historically determined variables.

Recently, then, the debate on some crucial economic questions has moved from universities, public offices and corporations to the public arena, and across the world. The destruction of non-renewable energy sources, the increasing economic rift between the rich and the poor, globalization, the influence of advertising, and the commodification of individual identities, the changing nature of work, are matters of consequences for the public.

In pre-industrial communities, even in small rural communities, the dominant economic model was autarchy: people tried to produce what was necessary to support themselves and resorted very little to market exchange. Family ties defined production relations. Production seldom exceeded the needs of a family. This system collapsed with the advent of market economy in both colonial societies and rural communities in Europe.

Today we cannot possibly define that system as backward, because it did manage to accomplish what contemporary economists can only dream of: a closed cycle of production-consumption-recycling-environmental care. The collapse of this age-old system led to environmental degradation. This is why we cannot think of it as a simple economic model. On the contrary, it is a complex model that minimizes the ecological impact and may offer some valid solution in these times of environmental crisis. In this sense, the work of anthropologists fills the gap left by other academicians, providing the expertise necessary to develop a new economic paradigm more attuned to the demands of the public, more respectful of nature, more responsive to the disparities between developed and developing countries, and between mountains and plains, cities and countryside.

History, anthropology, advocacy and the struggle for identity

Looking into the possibility for small alpine communities to develop by their own efforts means writing the history of how a human group pursue the identity struggle, that is, how its history has been manipulated and neutered. ¹⁹ Without a strong identity economic growth will not be as robust as one would hope for, and nurturing a group identity without investing in collective memories, that is, in a common and unique history, is futile. Yet, rural populations in the Alps have been labelled “peoples without history” for centuries. ²⁰

Until the 1960s Italy was essentially a rural country; those who lived in the cities were a minority. Even today, we only study the history of a 10 percent of the population that lived in the cities; or, better said, of a 10 percent of that 10 percent, that is the members of the ruling classes. Still more precisely, we are talking about half of the latter, i.e. the men. In other words, our history is the monopoly of 0.5% of the entire population. This may well be of historical significance, but it is statistically irrelevant. A major shift towards social history in historiography occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, when Marc Bloch and Lucien Fèvre founded the “École des Annales” ²¹ and began to focus their attention on the history of the people who lived at the bottom of society. This school made history and anthropology come together to counterbalance the earlier overwhelming focus on events and historical figures.

Through the study of ordinary people and their concerns, the historian detects the fundamental mechanisms of a society.²² This theory has yet to make headway in mainstream historiography: today the history taught at school is still the same as it has always been.

Furthermore, we tend to “forget” that most of the cultural, social and economic thinking in the Middle Age was going on in cloisters and castles: illuminated manuscripts were drawn in places that could be called “eagle’s nests.” Epoch-making technological and scientific discoveries such as watermills, oil mills, the forge hammer, the sawmill, and the wine barrel have not been made in universities but in egalitarian, autonomous, mostly self-sufficient rural communities, that did not shy away from innovation and creativity.

The question of which history and which identity suit a community is not an easy one to answer because, for all intents and purposes, the past is what historiography defines as such, and the rules of historiography are determined to no small degree by historical and ideological contingencies. History is culturally and anthropologically mediated. Proof of that: the transition from the history of the great figures and great events to social history, where ethnographic data and information on the mentality of ordinary people proves decisive. The masses become protagonist of their history, even though the rationale and the forces of change sometimes are blurred, or even overlap. This is really difficult to grasp, let alone accept, from within a linear, cause-effect perspective on historical trends, one in which the centrepiece is the individual, within a timeframe close to zero, made of quick, uneven and short oscillations, that is, what we call “events.” These events form the baseline of history, seen as an historical account of the way things really happened, as though human life were entirely prey to the whims of exceptional men whose actions and discoveries determine the fate of the common people. This is a kind of history that is seen from above and not in the long-durée. Yet, major social transformations do not originate from the decisions of charismatic figures: the thoughts and actions of historical figures themselves are the result of streams of events and processes unfolding over extended time-periods and these are non-linear, non teleological; they are the ideal subject for an anthropological study.

An anthropological outlook takes into account the inventions born out of collective wisdom that are generally neglected by the official historiography. Take the Middle Age, for instance. It was a period of major technological advance, viz. watermills. But those accomplishments were the outcome of the practical skills and reasoning of nameless people; it took hundreds of years to develop and perfect them. But while less arresting innovations are studied by heart, watermills are confined to textbooks dealing with the history of agriculture. It is not a coincidence that most of the techniques that sensibly improved our life, starting from the Middle Age, were introduced in the Alps, and have been developed and tested by those people that for centuries have been regarded as uncivilized. Among them, watermills, sophisticated irrigation techniques, sawmills, forges, oil mills, grindstones, furnaces, presses, felt cloth, etc. Social history, like anthropology and psychoanalysis study not only the conscious and clearly identifiable activities of human beings but also, and with a special emphasis, what is left unsaid, what is taken for granted and tacitly assumed, the collective subconscious, psychological and mental framework of a particular society at a given time. Anthropological historiography describes the culture of a community, its aspirations, its change, standstill, or even regression, its adaptation to the environment and to changing economic, political, religious and social conditions. Its focus is on collective history, where groups, communities and the masses play the central role and where the experts attempts to figure out the whys and wherefores of the life of anonymous people at the same time influencing and influenced by the socio-cultural milieu.