Social Anthropology
Here we present current research projects dealing with the Swiss Alps.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Haller
Sustainable Commons Adaptations to Landscape Ecosystems in Switzerland (SCALES). Institutional Change, Constitutional Innovations and Public Policies in Swiss Resource Management
The interdisciplinary research project SCALES funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) researches continuity and change in the management of common-pool resources such as pastures and forests in Switzerland. The major focus is on differences and similarities of local institutions (rules and regulations) and forms of organisations (civic communities, corporations, unions) which have been managing common property of these common-pool resources for a long time and which have shaped the cultural landscapes of Switzerland. The project goes back to the 18th century and examines changes from that time to the present day. It refers to the research of the US-Social Anthropologist Robert Netting on the management of common property in the Swiss alpine area of canton Wallis, especially the village of Törbel. This example was one of the empirical case studies, which Nobel Price Winner Elinor Ostrom made use of in order to prove that humans are capable of managing common-pool resources in a sustainable way by crafting robust common property institutions (Ostrom 1990). However, external political, economic and institutional changes in the last 300 years, especially in the second half of the 20th century, created important structural transformations in agriculture and forestry as products from these sectors have lost value in the industrial and post-industrial world. How have the organisations managing the commons reacted to these changes? How have local institutions adapted to changing conditions? These broad research questions are not solely of interest to Swiss but to international scholars as well. They will be researched and discussed in an interdisciplinary group of post-doctoral students from social anthropology, human geography, history, and political science and be supplemented by master students from agricultural economics and economic anthropology. Focussing on five alpine regions in the German, French and Italian speaking areas of Switzerland, the team will gather data regarding robustness, change and innovations of commons institutions. A major interest lies in the local emic perception of common property, the perception of structural changes, and how institutions need to be changed and transformed. In addition, research will be carried out on how changes in local commons management are embedded in the public policies of the respective cantons, and the state.
Prof. Dr. Sabine Strasser
Trapped in Paradise: Entangled Mobilities and Imaginaries of Freedom
In the SNSF-funded project “Trapped in Paradise: Entangled Mobilities and Imaginaries of Freedom” led by Prof. Dr. Sabine Strasser, researchers Dr. Paul Reade and Danaé Leitenberg look at two small tourist towns located on the Oaxacan coast (Puerto Escondido, Mexico) and the German-speaking Swiss Alps. We are interested in the complex regimes of im/mobilities that shape these small and often isolated localities that nonetheless welcome millions of people every year. By following those living and working in “Paradise”, we look at how they experience and ethically negotiate through the requirements of a tourism industry that is on the one side selling the extraordinary (time and/or nature) to tourists and, on the other, exerts pressure on those who build, maintain and re-make the resort day after day. In the Swiss Alps, the fragile balance between “too much” and “not enough” tourism is at the heart of the inhabitants’ concerns over the future, amplified by issues of climate change. At the same time, the historical importance of foreign workforce in the hospitality industry in the area is often downplayed. This has consequences on the lives of those whose work is essential to the economic success of the region but whose voices and opinions on the future are often left unheard.
Dr. Thierry Amrein
Persistence, Constraints and Diversion of the Sexual Division of Labour in the Domestic Sphere. A case study in the Valais Alps
After a similar first experience in the Vallemaggia (Ticino), an ambitious two-year experimental training program specifically designed for women in the alpine valleys and called parcoursArianna was implemented in Val d'Anniviers (Valais). Its designers started from the observation that women in these so-called peripheral regions were disadvantaged in terms of training and access to employment because of their socio-geographical situation. The purpose of this two-year training which relied heavily on new communication and information technologies was to offer participants in situ the necessary courses, tools and support to imagine and then create microenterprises that allow them to balance family and professional responsibilities while contributing to the sustainable development of the territory where they live.
With a feminist perspective in the field of social anthropology, I approached this device as a potential indicator of the evolution of gender relations in the family of participants. My field research aims to analyze to what extent the constraints imposed on participants by the sexual division of labor in their domestic sphere and the articulation between family and training/work do not prevent them from taking full advantage of the opportunity offered in their valley and investing in the development of an original and remunerative personal project aimed at "professionalizing their skills". By reversing the perspective, this doctoral thesis also questions the ability of a public action to interfere in the domestic space to change the norms related to gender roles and sex status.