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This article analyses an innovative place-sensitive training experience in pastoralism implemented in rural and mountainous Italian areas: the Young Shepherds School. Adopting a methodology based on learning-by-doing and an experiential teaching approach, the School offers its participants—essentially urban young people interested in living and working in rural contexts—an unprecedented learning opportunity and the possibility of setting out on a path towards the shepherding profession. At the same time, the involvement of local actors and the post-training pathway represent concrete steps towards the participants’ project ideas taking root in the area and the development of micro-enterprises in the field of pastoralism, aimed at personal income as well as environmental care.

In this study, we focused on the role of mountain culture in tourism development using the case of Azerbaijan. We found that advances in information technology have led to innovations in the tourism sector. Faster dissemination of information and more accessible advertising on social media have contributed to the growth of tourism. We also identified opportunities for research and development in the field of mountain culture to further promote Azerbaijani tourism. In particular, we assessed the potential of mountain culture in the Shahdag winter tourism development model in northern Azerbaijan.

Today, against the backdrop of the rapidly growing globalization process, the study of ethnogenesis, lifestyle, mentality and worldview of the peoples of the world, as well as the establishment of their role in the development of human civilization has become extremely relevant. Scientific research conducted in recent years in the field of ethnography and ethnology have proven that among the many components involved in the formation and cultural development of the peoples of the world, the landscape of the area plays a special role and is of decisive importance. This article discusses this most important factor, which, using the example of the South Caucasus, predetermines the specificity of the highlanders in terms of their cultural and intellectual characteristics. In this regard, the article conducts relevant analyses that reveal the essence and significance of the natural and geographical components that form the specific appearance and way of thinking of the highlanders individually and the unique mentality of the ethnocultural community as a whole. In the conducted analyses, special attention is paid to those elements of the mountain environment that in various ways influence the psyche, views, passions, critical and creative thinking of the mountaineers. The article also reveals the subtle mechanism of the fusion of the soul of the mountaineer with his native nature and its components. The article also reveals the subtle mechanism of the fusion of the soul of the mountaineer with his native nature and its components. The identification of the unique features of the mountain peoples and the indication of the main reasons for this uniqueness are the leitmotif of this article.

This article examines the role of mountain roads in the ecological transition of the tourism sector. Based on a territorial research approach developed on the Vercors massif (France), this study examines the long-term links between tourism, roads, and the environment. Since the 1960s, the Vercors massif has seen various forms of tourism develop. These have been linked to the different vocations assigned to mountain areas and to changes in global sensitivities. Over the years, it has been common for tourist uses to clash with each other, with the roads playing a central role in these tensions. Today, fragile balances are threatened by the urgency that accompanies the notion of transition.

"Contenuto Rimosso and Ca'Mon - Centro di Comunità per l'arte e l'artigianato di montagna" are two projects located in small mountain villages. They contribute to rethinking the mountain as a place for contemporary production as well the directions of an artistic practice that has civic value in bringing out forms of civic activation and by participating in building new cultural heritage and "heritage communities", capable of assigning new values and meanings to their resources to reconsider the path of local development.

This article explores oronyms, proper nouns that designates parts of the relief, as a sub-category of toponyms within proper names. Beyond research works in the fields of historical linguistics and onomastics, few publications in linguistics have been specifically dedicated to toponyms. This sub-category of proper names itself is diverse and the present study focuses on oronyms. We first explain the specificities of oronyms due to their formal characteristics and their instable referent in a continuous geophysical space. We then explore how this type of proper names comes into being. This process, that we call toponymation, begins when a new relief proper name is proposed until it is commonly used in language and on maps. Along this long and complex process, we describe the numerous hesitations, mistakes and double naming occurrences before an oronym is stable and accepted. This will allow us to define the necessary conditions for the naming of relief.

The present study aims at characterising the recent thermal evolution of permafrost in the Aosta Valley region (Italy, Western European Alps) using active layer thickness anomalies and warming trends of both surface and deep temperatures as indicators. The dataset includes monitoring sites located at different altitudes and geomorphological contexts such as rock walls, high-altitude plateau and proglacial margins.The results show that the thickness of the active layer is increasing everywhere and that anomalies are consistent between sites despite their different characteristics and distances. Significant warming trends of about +0.2°C/10y are observed at 15 m depth in sites around 3000 m of elevation. In steep rockwalls warming trends at the rock surface are significant only on the north-facing faces where values are on average +0.42°C/10y at elevations above 4000 m.The present study aims to provide a snapshot on the current thermal evolution of permafrost in the north-western Alps as well as consistent and useful information for risk management. Taking advantage of this analysis, the study also aims to highlight as the temperature measures in permafrost could contribute to the elevation-dependent-warming debate.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, archaeological and paleoenvironmental investigations have been carried out both in high and middle mountains in order to understand how these territories have been enhanced by human societies over the past centuries. The same objectives have led geoarchaeological research in the Mont du Forez. Since 2016, archaeological surveys and paleoenvironmental studies have begun and have been multiplied, especially in the upper part of the mountain named “Hautes-Chaumes”. A total of 24 sites have been referenced thanks to pedestrian prospections. Field studies have provided valuable information on the Gallo-roman occupation and its architecture during the early roman period. Archaeological excavations were carried out on five sites from that period in order to highlight architectural processes and their evolution over time. These changes are probably linked to the socio-economic dynamics that appear in the neighboring plains of the Dore and the Loire. In the Hautes-Chaumes window, the dynamics of land use that appeared at the beginning of the roman period actively participated in the management of the environment through the development of agro-sylvo-pastoral activities that increased during this period.

In the 18th-19th centuries, Roşia-Montană, a village in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania (Apuseni), Romania, has been privy to a period of prosperity due to the gold ore existing in the area, but also a period of social and cultural bloom due to the autonomy awarded by the government in Vienna (Transylvania was at the time a province in the Habsburg empire). The community of this village structured around some common goods owing to the harsh environment of mountain living conditions, as well as to the risks inherent to the mining activity. Communism and the following transition towards the market economy reduced the autonomy and transferred properties to the State and subsequently to multinational companies. This had a significant impact on said goods. All these changes then determined the inhabitants to structure around a new “common”.In order to highlight the positive influence of commons on the development, this article performs a historic analysis of the four cornerstone periods of Roşia-Montană. Each of these has witnessed a specific property regimen and specific freedoms of action. Therefore, for each stage we aimed to highlight the degree of co-activity in the life of the people, their capacity to convert the gold ore into real freedom and the satisfaction of their varied needs. This is how we were able to conclude that there is an ongoing connection between commons and development.

In the 18th-19th centuries, Roşia-Montană, a village in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania (Apuseni), Romania, has been privy to a period of prosperity due to the gold ore existing in the area, but also a period of social and cultural bloom due to the autonomy awarded by the government in Vienna (Transylvania was at the time a province in the Habsburg empire). The community of this village structured around some common goods owing to the harsh environment of mountain living conditions, as well as to the risks inherent to the mining activity. Communism and the following transition towards the market economy reduced the autonomy and transferred properties to the State and subsequently to multinational companies. This had a significant impact on said goods. All these changes then determined the inhabitants to structure around a new “common”.In order to highlight the positive influence of commons on the development, this article performs a historic analysis of the four cornerstone periods of Roşia-Montană. Each of these has witnessed a specific property regimen and specific freedoms of action. Therefore, for each stage we aimed to highlight the degree of co-activity in the life of the people, their capacity to convert the gold ore into real freedom and the satisfaction of their varied needs. This is how we were able to conclude that there is an ongoing connection between commons and development.

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In the field of natural hazards, there is a strong consensus on the interest of using centennial chronologies of past events. In order to grasp the evolution of natural hazards and of the processes at their origin, it is necessary to contextualize the chronologies resulting from historical sources by taking into account all potential explanatory factors and their interactions. On the basis of a geohistorical and systemic approach, this article provides a lecture grid that operationalizes the contextualization workflow, so as to optimize the chronologies of past events. The spatial and temporal matching between the events and the different components of the territorial system studied leads to a comprehension of all factors at play, and thus, of the hazard and risk evolution. This approach is illustrated with the analysis of a spatial and temporal chronology of avalanche risk in the Vosges Mountains (northeast of France) since the end of the 18th century. Four prisms – avalanche hazard, risk, event and "sources effect" – combine and their respective weights vary in time and space. Climate and land use changes explain the "disappearance" of avalanche triggers at low elevations and of those flowing down from the summits to the valley bottoms. The combined evolutions of stakes, climate and land use contribute to explain the risk evolution. Finally, the "sources effect" preponderantly influences the evolution of the amount of events. Various results regarding the local evolution of the risk and the comprehension of environment-society interactions which have generated the chronology suggest that this approach could be valuable for many applications in geohistory of risks.

This article aims to analyse the reasons for the unexpected absence of Greece in Mario Rigoni Stern’s works about the Italian military campaign against Greece during the winter of 1940-1941. As a young soldier, Rigoni Stern fought in that terrible war in the Albanian mountains, close to the Greek line, and recounted those events many years later. I focus in particular on Quota Albania (1971), in an attempt to show that the novel is not only a memoir, but rather a Bildungsroman, in which he recounts his personal life, his disillusionment with Italian disorganisation and the difficult conditions he endured, the cold and hunger. Furthermore, I would like to explain that the surprising indifference to Greek events is linked not only to the author’s narrative intention, but also to the fact that in the final battle Rigoni Stern did not go to Greece, and never returned thereafter. On the other hand, his unfamiliarity with the Mediterranean justifies the lack of descriptive details of the Greek landscape.

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In Tunisia, mountain territories have been little concerned in recent decades by rural and agricultural development policies. Moreover, they have been partially addressed in scientific productions, which have often only proposed reflections on pastoralism or the degradation of forest resources. While the lack of knowledge about them is an additional factor of their marginalization, this article intends to offer a new look at the rural mountain territories in Tunisia, in a post-2011 revolution context that invites questions about the development of interior regions. To do this, it draws on the results of a series of interviews conducted in 2020 with researchers, representatives of agricultural services and farmers of Jbel Bargou. By restoring and comparing their discourse, this text provides elements for reflection on the prospects for transition of rural mountain territories in Tunisia. He indicates that the lack of a "collective" among farmers is, for the time being, an obstacle to the implementation of innovative agricultural practices, and specifies that this situation is mainly the result of inadequate and partly outdated action by agricultural services.

In a context of global change, reconciling agricultural production and biodiversity preservation is a major challenge. In mountain regions identified as "High Nature Value", divergent visions between shepherds and ecologists take the form of clashes of expertise regarding the effects of agricultural practices on ecological dynamics. In order to promote exchanges between opposing groups of actors, this research aims to shed light on the nature and conditions of the elaboration of the shepherds’ local naturalist knowledge, of the French and Spanish Pyrenees. We consider that beyond the knowledge of breeding, the daily frequentation of a non-productive flora and fauna allows the acquisition of knowledge related to the personality of each shepherds and to the places that he frequents. We therefore assume that this knowledge is inseparable from the spatial and ecological characteristics of the places and environments that the herders shape, but also from their inhabitancy. Based on forty in-depth interviews, we show the existence of a pool of common knowledge, particularly related to wild species that pose a problem for livestock farming. On the other hand, for non-problematic species, much more differentiated knowledge distinguishes individuals and places. Inhabitancy is an essential determinant of this knowledge’s acquisition, but are still understudied by social or ecological sciences.

Copyright of Synergies Algérie is the property of GERFLINT (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches pour le Francais Langue Internationale) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article investigates the trajectories of landscapes in mountain areas developed for alpine skiing during the second half of the 20th century and looks at those where the activity is partially or totally abandoned today. From an observation of the current traces in the landscape complemented by documentary, cartographic and dendro-chronological analyses of three sites in the Vercors (Gresse-en-Vercors, the Arzelier pass and Saint-Nizier-du-Moucherotte), we study the dynamics of their abandonment through time and space. The infrastructures linked to the ski lifts that remain in place are often particularly significant and evocative, but they are the least prevalent remains and many other landscape markers, such as earthworks and woodlands, allow us to reconstruct the recent yet partly forgotten history of these sites developed as winter resorts. These different landscape trajectories, categorised according to their visibility, also make it possible to better understand the uses and values of these areas, which have been totally or partially abandoned by skiers and developers, but which have also been re-appropriated for other practices or projects.

This article seeks to establish the link between the notions of landscape and outdoor activities. The creation, this winter, of steep ski slopes in the Valgaudemar mountain area as well as other mountain ranges, raises the question of the notion of the landscape as a supporting space (in the sense of Joliveau, 1994) and as a kind of representation of nature. The question of the spatial references encountered on the way up and on the way down the slopes and their perception by the actors will be addressed in the first part of the article, along with the question of their meaning in organisational and emotional terms for the people who use them (itineraries, equipment, dangers, objectives, etc.). The north face of the Chaperon at the entrance to the Valgaudemar Valley serves as a starting point for this study based on the author's experience of the first ski descent of this slope which is considered to be extreme. The duality of perceptions between the ascent using mountaineering techniques and the descent on skis of this very steep mountain face raises the question of the notion of the ascent, which is well defined and based on numerous mountaineering stories and sociological works, and that of the descent, which is very seldom discussed and includes a complete change in spatial references and the construction of dynamic and adaptive itineraries according to the conditions encountered and the sensations experienced. The second part of the article will address the conditions of the narration, the sharing of these landscapes and sensations experienced, and the degrees of appreciation and recognition by the communities of mountaineers and skiers as well as the general public.

Copyright of R.A.R.E - Association Roussillonnaise d'Entomologie is the property of Association Roussillonnaise d Entomologie and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There are the Alps, the Alpine space, and there is heritage or heritages, depending on the meaning of the term and on the position adopted with regard to the questions raised by this notion. Heritage is not only something that exists and to which we are attached, but it should also be possible to produce it. It is this production that is addressed in these brief reflections on architectural works that attempt to combine heritage and “montagnité”. As soon as the mountain is built upon, the problem of form and, therefore, of its shaping arises. It is the latter that requires production, i.e. a way of thinking that is capable of thematising both the mountain and the heritage. But what are we talking about when we apply the heritage label to Alpine architecture? Is this what is commonly defined as edilizia rurale (rural housing)? Or is it the architectural work that interprets the edilizia rurale and, in a way, absorbs it? Assuming that the heritage regime in the mountains is part of the variation and not the fixity of a notion such as that of the monument, and that the notion of heritage informs and conforms every architectural project in the mountains, it is possible to put forward a second hypothesis and to affirm that both the edilizia rurale and the architectural projects that transform it, operating within and against it, are heritage. For the latter, however, the rules that Adolf Loos wrote for those who build in the mountains remain valid.

The present-day collective lands of Corsica differ in their origin from those of the rest of France. Probably appeared in the Middle Ages, for the few specialists, historians, or ethnologists, who were interested in the evolution of the nature of island land, they would have disappeared in the 19th century. According to the thesis of this article, it is, on the contrary, currently that they are legally recognized. Indeed, the agreements of delimitation of forests between the state and the municipalities, known as the Blondel Transactions of 1852, lead to the legalization of indivision between each inhabitant of a community on wooded areas. From the 20th century on, the crisis of the island agro-pastoral economy saw the disappearance of certain collective lands, appropriated by municipalities and even individuals. At present, a few survivors still bear witness to the ancient community practices of the Corsican mountain. In an exceptional context of land disorder, the return to common practices of the land is perhaps a solution to combat the rural decline of the interior of the island.

The present-day collective lands of Corsica differ in their origin from those of the rest of France. Probably appeared in the Middle Ages, for the few specialists, historians, or ethnologists, who were interested in the evolution of the nature of island land, they would have disappeared in the 19th century. According to the thesis of this article, it is, on the contrary, currently that they are legally recognized. Indeed, the agreements of delimitation of forests between the state and the municipalities, known as the Blondel Transactions of 1852, lead to the legalization of indivision between each inhabitant of a community on wooded areas. From the 20th century on, the crisis of the island agro-pastoral economy saw the disappearance of certain collective lands, appropriated by municipalities and even individuals. At present, a few survivors still bear witness to the ancient community practices of the Corsican mountain. In an exceptional context of land disorder, the return to common practices of the land is perhaps a solution to combat the rural decline of the interior of the island.

Since 2017, France has seen some extensive literature, books, woodland sites, professionals tackle the issue of forest bathing or “shinrin yoku”. This social phenomenon reflects a present-day concern, an activity which takes the form of taking a tour, following an itinerary or wandering, roaming a woodland environment (i.e. some mountain here) to come and meet the trees and their forest environment. The goal is to immerse oneself in the community of forests and trees. This analysis questions our relationships with our natural surroundings, to get a better understanding of how individuals consider themselves and act within the environment they are in. By structuring space and time in an orderly universe, mythical narratives give meaning to this roaming practice.These social experiments are analysed from a roaming anthropology standpoint, an approach which combines spatial, cultural, body, emotional and spiritual dimensions. The various forms of roaming the forest are said to enhance the capacitive body.

Toward the end of the 20th century, several major development projects that had been proposed in the Briançon area were defeated thanks to collective mobilization efforts. New initiatives now challenge the socio-spatial segregation of exiled people who are trying to cross the border amid the latter’s heavy militarization and in the context of the sensationalist coverage of events by the media. This article examines the discourses produced around these struggles, as well as people’s memories – in particular, that of Émilie Carles (1900–1979). The article considers their impact on how the “mountain” is perceived and hypothesizes that it can play a role in the dynamics of how mountain spaces are essentialized and their inhabitants naturalized. We find that the theme of a “mountain-refuge” is reactivated and enriched by the political work done by local memories. Through a critical geography approach, this article carries out a political analysis of the figures of the mountain-refuge and links the issues of exile and ecology in order to contribute to thinking on the future of mountain areas.

This article analyses “what the mountain does” to people seeking asylum in Switzerland. It focuses on their experiences while they are accommodated in collective reception centres at high altitudes. At the level of Swiss society, asylum seekers are subject to an “integration” injunction, despite the uncertain outcome of their application. When the waiting and uncertainty imposed by the asylum procedure is experienced at an altitude of more than 1300 metres, the feeling of being kept away from life in urban centres is reinforced and the emotional burden exacerbated.The specific experiences of collective accommodation in the mountains, experienced by asylum seekers – and by the professionals or volunteers accompanying them – are expressed in their story telling of the place. Far from the tourist and romantic representations of the mountains, the oppositions between the top and the bottom (the valley and the plain), between the periphery and the centre (the mountain and the town) run repeatedly through the collected narratives. They maintain a representation of the mountain as a non-place of social life, an isolated place, as opposed to cities on the plain. When the reception "above" lasts, it sustains a process of social effacement "below" which makes the injunction to integrate into Swiss society eminently paradoxical.

This article analyses “what the mountain does” to people seeking asylum in Switzerland. It focuses on their experiences while they are accommodated in collective reception centres at high altitudes. At the level of Swiss society, asylum seekers are subject to an « integration » injunction, despite the uncertain outcome of their application. When the waiting and uncertainty imposed by the asylum procedure is experienced at an altitude of more than 1300 metres, the feeling of being kept away from life in urban centres is reinforced and the emotional burden exacerbated.The specific experiences of collective accommodation in the mountains, experienced by asylum seekers - and by the professionals or volunteers accompanying them - are expressed in their story telling of the place. Far from the tourist and romantic representations of the mountains, the oppositions between the top and the bottom (the valley and the plain), between the periphery and the centre (the mountain and the town) run repeatedly through the collected narratives. They maintain a representation of the mountain as a non-place of social life, an isolated place, as opposed to cities on the plain. When the reception "above" lasts, it sustains a process of social effacement « below» which makes the injunction to integrate into Swiss society eminently paradoxical.

Toward the end of the 20th century, several major development projects that had been proposed in the Briançon area were defeated thanks to collective mobilization efforts. New initiatives now challenge the socio-spatial segregation of exiled people who are trying to cross the border amid the latter’s heavy militarization and in the context of the sensationalist coverage of events by the media. This article examines the discourses produced around these struggles, as well as people’s memories –in particular, that of Émilie Carles (1900–1979). The article considers their impact on how the “mountain” is perceived and hypothesizes that it can play a role in the dynamics of how mountain spaces are essentialized and their inhabitants naturalized. We find that the theme of a “mountain-refuge” is reactivated and enriched by the political work done by local memories. Through a critical geographical approach, this article carries out a political analysis of the figures of the mountain-refuge and links the issues of exile and ecology in order to contribute to thinking on the future of mountain areas.

One hundred Swiss railroad posters are analyzed. They run from the end of 19th century to the beginning of the mass tourism, before the generalized use of the photography. They are draftsmen’s work. They represented symbolic landscapes of low mountain range: meadows, forests, waterfalls, blue sky and snowy crests. They aimed at a young public of foreigners. They are incited to take the train to go in the new Swiss fashionable stations, at first in summer then in winter, to breeze some fresh air and to practice sports.

Triglav, the highest mountain in the Slovenian Alps (2864 m), with its three characteristic pyramid-shaped summits, was carved by the high mountain erosion, especially glacial and by karstic processes. It bears also a high symbolic and patrimonial value in Slovenia, so that it is represented on the national flag of the young nation and on Slovenian euro coins. Bearing at the same time a scientific and an emblematic value, it can be regarded as a well-characterized geomorphosite.

In mountain tourism resorts, the shoulder seasons correspond to off-peak periods during which alternatives in terms of job offers are scarce. Therefore, seasonal workers are confronted with a period of cyclical unemployment. Combining a form of uncertainty in the employment relationship with a relative predictability of recruitment periods, this “intermediate” situation, is not without controversy. How are these phases of seasonal unemployment experienced in these areas? Do these temporal sequences correspond to a “dead time” or to a plural time? In a context where periods of seasonal employment are predominantly social times of holydays and vice versa, how is time negotiated for seasonal workers? In this form of intermittent employment, can unemployment time be conceived as a time of professional career building? This article focuses on the forms of adaptation to the employment and unemployment rhythms of seasonal mountain workers and shows how these periods of unemployment contribute to the internalization of specific rhythms.

For over 150 years, humans have tried to limit the geomorphic activity of mountain watercourses, and the related damage, using torrent control works. Check dams are likely the most emblematic civil engineering structures used in mountain system soil conservation programs. Modern mountain societies have inherited thousands of these structures built in upland gullies and streams. The expected qualitative effect of check dams on river systems is referred to their function. Check dam function must be clearly understood to help define their effectiveness and decisions concerning their maintenance or new project designs. The next steps concern quantitative assessments of each function on the flood features and propagation of all effects through the sediment cascade. The present understanding of these sometimes old structures’ functions can be complicated because the societal and environmental contexts in which the original structures were built may have changed. To bridge this gap, this paper traces the purposes for which check dams were built, through a detailed analysis of French archives. We first analyze chronologically how each function was theorized and applied in the field. In the nineteenth century, engineers developed a thorough empirical and conceptual knowledge of mountain soil erosion, torrential geomorphology, and sediment transport processes as well as check dam interactions with these natural processes. The second part of this paper synthesizes conceptual descriptions of the check dams’ functions, in the light of more than 150 years of experience. The French experience is compared to other countries’ pioneering works. Finally, the next steps and remaining research challenges toward a comprehensive analysis of check dams’ efficiency in torrent hazard mitigation are presented. This analysis is proposed to remind how, conceptually, check dams may influence geomorphic systems, bearing in mind the knowledge represented in pioneer guidelines and recent works on the subject.

In the Alps, mountain roads offer clear examples of the 19th-century policy of modernising road networks. In the middle of the 1800s, the Vercors mountain range in the French departments of Isère and Drôme was criss-crossed by a network of carriageable roads. Most of these roads were built to transport wood but rapidly became tourist routes. After the Second World War, the roads started being used more and more as daily transit increased. At the end of the 1970s, however, the risk of landslides was increasingly becoming an issue. Some of the roads were closed following landslides or after the construction of safer and faster roads. At the time they were built, these roads were symbols of modernity. Later, as they became obsolete, they came to embody both the development strategies of territories and the legacy of former policies of modernisation. Now, this closed roads aren’t showed alongside other “magnificent roads”.

On the threshold of the 21st century, Ecuador entered the darkest economic period in the history of its republic, resulting in a vast migratory movement to foreign countries. In the high Andes valley of Cañar, the speed and extent of the movement seemed, in many ways, to be the precursory signs of an exodus and of the environment’s return to nature. A decade later, the agrarian landscape reveals a strange paradox: some sections of the landscape, apparently abandoned to wilderness, suggest a progressive decline in agriculture, whereas others suggest the progression of a fodder front to higher altitudes. So what can we say about this landscape that shows a process of set-aside in some of its sections and cultivation in others? What meaning can we give to the term ‘fallow’ with the mountains displaying what appear to be antagonistic methods of agricultural development? These are the questions dealt with in this article, with ‘fallow’ as the main unifying thread. An analysis of the landscape, combined with the agricultural history of the study area, helps to shed light on the reasons for the observed paradox and gives meaning to the relationships between types of fallow and agricultural dynamics, mobility and the process of social differentiation. The principal result is: far from signifying abandonment, fallow land is visual proof in the landscape of the maintenance of agricultural activity by those who are unable to migrate or modernize their farms. This result invites us to revisit the notion of fallow (from an agro-economic point of view), in particular the need to understand the stakes and uses of the various tiered ecosystems and to understand the function of the different fallow lands assigned to them by the categories of farmers who benefit from them.

This article analyses the mountain excursions of young people living in Grenoble's working-class neighborhoods offered by community organizations, such as the Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture. Despite the popular practices that are taking place in the mountains, many municipal and associative actors wish to extend the democratization of this area, which they consider still marked by elitism. A unifying story around the mountain, as a "emancipatory elsewhere", serves to take the youth out of their neighborhoods, often judged in a negative way. Once extracted from the urban environment, they take over the mountain space in their own way, sometimes allowing them to thwart, sometimes feeding the assignments to which they are often reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In France, in medium-high mountains, avalanche risk appears as totally missed out whereas avalanche hazard and elements at risk truly exist. This article shows that this paradox results from images that go beyond the sole physical process. The predominance of the alpine archetype (the European Alps remaining the model of mountains) as well as the construction of the medium-high mountain concept in opposition to high mountains make medium-high mountains a distinct space characterized by its “tenderly mountainous”2 nature. In this context, the territorial anchorage in high mountains of snow avalanches and of the related risk can be found up to the scientific and institutional spheres. This results, in terms of operational risk management, in two distinct systems, the one devoted to medium-high mountains being characterized by the absence of numerous specific tools and actors. Finally, the characteristics and images associated to the snow avalanche and mountain concepts implicitly or explicitly lead to occulting the risk in medium high mountains, and, hence, to the non-emergence of the avalanche problem in this space. The archetypal case of the Vosges massif illustrates the demonstration.

The pastoral land associations are tools of land restructuring created by the pastoral law of 1972 to propose a solution to the specific problems of the land in mountain (division, joint possessions, absentee owners). It is a very standardized statutory instrument, which nevertheless allows to implement original forms of governance thanks to three major elements: the (statutory) procedure which obliges, the object (the land) which involves and the scale (the municipality) which facilitates. Thus social and geographical closeness appears as the central ingredient which allows to explain the success of AFP.

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Copyright of Management international / International Management / Gestiòn Internacional is the property of Management International and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on interviews conducted over a four-year period following a meadow-flowering competition in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region, this article studies the relationship between livestock farmers and the landscape in the light of discussions about the differences between their approach to the landscape and that put forward by public authorities. The article seeks to show how the way farmers experience the spaces in which they live and work is meaningful in landscape terms and how this incites them to look beyond the collective use of the landscape to also think of it as being at their service. It analyses this singular experience of the landscape and brings to light the way in which the landscape is a part of the daily actions and gestures of livestock farmers. The ultimate goal is to demonstrate how the role of the landscape in their farming and living activities as well as the awareness farmers have of their contribution to the landscape leads to considering this reciprocal relationship as a service provided by and for the farmer.

Talking about "organized tourism of adventure" in the present context of outdoor leisure activities, an aberration is it? This oxymoron could be explained by the ambivalence on tourist practices that take advantage of the combination of these two forms of tourism, isn't it? "Trekking" is considered both as a specific term and as a marketing term. This duplicity gives it his specificity: a tourism based on adventure, nature and cultural discovery; nevertheless, it is included into a very organized marketing system. Wilderness, culture, sociability are sometimes the main motivations of a trip in Moroccan mountains, or sometimes they constitute one of the main reasons. In addition, motivations to participate to an organized trip in Atlas are becoming more and more diverse and affect various travelers. Imagination and dreams are supplanted by a combination, sometimes contradictory, of motivations. Tourist industry renewed these pseudo-imagination and we are now seeing their assimilation by both professionals and tourists. Adventurous experiences and industry of adventure face each other and encourage the emergence of a new tourist utopia.