Research questions

General Research Questions

Economics

• How is participation constructed in municipalities composed of analogue and digital economies? 
• Does the digital economy integrate into the local economy within alpine regions through the establishing of digital workspaces for the native population? (IT apprenticeships and jobs, low qualified digital work in the ‘publishing system’)?

Labour

• What kind of gender relations are established through digital labour and how do these interact with those within ‘analogue’ workspaces in the alpine region? 
• New forms of labour and employment regulations: Which kind of labour rights apply to digital labour? 
• The issue of taxation of digital contract work and gains made by digital companies, which are not location-bound or exist as actual digital nomads: Is there an emergence of low tax islands observable in this context?

Resources

• How are alpine land and resource rights developing under the influence of gentrification of rural areas and the growth of non-agricultural resource usage? 
• Currently, Water, Forests, and Pastures in the alps are regulated largely within municipal and alpine cooperative property rights. Does digital economy in the alps lead to privatisation of resources due to accompanying demographic and political changes? If so: How would this affect the ecosystems largely characterized by cultural landscapes? Or will parallel land-use universes be able to co-exist in the future?

Migration and Labour

• Does the gentrification of the rural lifestyle through the digital elite in connection with the emergence of a service sector provided by cheap migrant labour lead to a social stratification in the alpine region, similar to what Saskia Sassen diagnosed as happening in global cities?

Nature and Culture

• Which ideologies of nature does the digital labourer bring to the alpine region and how might such views stand in contrast to those of the native population (Key thought: Dealing with predators)?
• In terms of politics and culture, how does the local population react to the arrival of a digital elite with swiss citizenship, who can partake in political processes, as opposed to service-migrants and foreign second-home owners?

Prof. Dr. Tobias Haller

Resources

The increased demand for energy from hydropower will increase the value of water and thus also change water rights, some or all of which belong to local communities or corporations and are owned through collective rights. Under this premise, the following research questions arise:

1. Will these collective rights remain and what does this mean for the collective owners?
2. Does this lead to a strengthening or weakening of collective ownership (keyword: water grabbing)?
3. What influence do these changes have on negotiations with companies in the crypto-currency sector? Who will have the power to determine water rights in the future and is access to water and energy still affordable for the general public?
4. What role do sustainability discourses (hydropower as renewable energy in the context of climate change) play in legitimising changed resource rights?

Prof. Dr. Heike Mayer

Digitisation and space

1. How does digitalisation affect regional development in peripheral (mountain) regions?
2. What are the differences and similarities between digitalisation in urban and rural regions? And why do these differences and/or similarities occur?
3. How does digitalisation influence our workplace mobility (e.g. co-working, third places, digital nomads, home offices)?
4. Which places are used for working when, how and why? How does visited marginality affect work? And what role do digital technologies play in this?
5. To what extent does digitalisation affect urban-rural linkages?
6. Urban-rural linkages in digital space: How do distance, place and space change in the digital age?

Digitisation and Tourism/Social Media

1. How does digitalisation affect the tourism industry (urban, rural, mountain)?
2. What role do social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) play in the marketing of tourism destinations/regions? And what changes in tourism go hand in hand with digitalisation and industry?

Digitisation and Industry

1. How does digitalisation affect the different sectors of the economy? (e.g. comparative analyses in certain regions)
2. What innovations does digitalisation bring with it and how do they affect rural and peripheral areas?
3. Which sectors benefit from digitalisation? How does this affect a region? (e.g. construction industry, labour force)

Prof. Dr. Jean-David Gerber

Ressources/Commons

The Alps have been extensively studied for their commons. Traditional commons include pastures, irrigation channels or forests. Today the dependency toward these resources has declined as alpine villages have become integrated into (inter)national economic flows. While the importance of these commons declined, new commons appeared, such as the scenic landscape, biodiversity, recreational areas, pure air, etc. This shift from old to new commons raises several questions:

1. Are the new commons really “commons”?
2. Which role do the new commons play in the livelihood of the users of the old commons?
3. Who uses, regulates, maintains the old and the new commons? Do these categories of actor match in the case of the new commons as they did for the old ones?
4. If city dwellers are the main users of the new commons, which implication does it have on management or decision-making?
5. How are the new commons regulated?
6. Does self-regulation still play a central role in the new commons as it did for the old commons?
7. How does self-regulation fit within the complex political-legal system of Switzerland?