The cultural embeddedness of population mobility in the Alps: Consequences for sustainable development

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the impact of culture on population mobility, settled landscapes, and regional sustainability in the European Alps over the past c.1500 years. For older developments, the authors analysed existing research on specific areas in the Alps, and for developments that are more recent they analysed census, agricultural, and tourism data at municipal level. They find that, following immigration in Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages, different historical settlement and socio-demographic systems have evolved in the Alps as a result of various cultural traditions of the local population. These cultural differences have essentially persisted over centuries and still influence socio-ecology and regional development indirectly, especially via fundamentally different developments in agriculture and tourism. The way that culture affects the relationships between socio-demographic, economic, and even ecological sustainability is discussed. The authors conclude that the Alps may serve as a case in point to suggest that culture might be a steering component for regional sustainability, as different cultural practices lead to regionally diverse developments.

EDITORS:

• Hannes Palang, Kerstin Potthoff, Catriona Turner

KEYWORDS:

• cultural landscape
• cultural sustainability
• European Alps
• migration
• socio-ecology

Acknowledgements

This article is dedicated to Axel Borsdorf, the founder and director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research (IGF) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who retired in December 2016. He is thanked for encouraging us to follow our scholarly curiosity and to conduct the research that underlies this article. We are indebted to our project partners and students for conducting and analysing interviews. In addition, we thank Kati Heinrich, Nadine Houbé, and Tobias Töpfer for preparing Figs. 1–8, Brigitte Scott for help with the translation, and two anonymous reviewers and the editors, who provided a number of very constructive and helpful comments on a previous draft of the manuscript.

ORCID

Oliver Bender http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4780-8202

Andreas Haller http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9406-1108

Notes

1. Contrary to previous editions, in the 4th edition of Die Alpen Bätzing omits ‘ethnic’ determinants when explaining cultural differences between the northern and southern Alps (Bätzing 2015). Where we refer to these differences, we cite the 2nd edition of his book (Bätzing 2003).

2. All regions of the Alps where Romance languages are spoken.

3. A social and sometimes economic system whereby urban people from the upper classes spent summertime (sometimes for a number of months) in rural places, which sometimes were linked to traditional agriculture.