Sozialanthropologie
Hier stellen wir aktuelle Forschungsprojekte vor, die sich mit den Schweizer Alpen beschäftigen.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Haller
Sustainable Commons Adaptations to Landscape Ecosystems in Switzerland (SCALES). Institutional Change, Constitutional Innovations and Public Policies in Swiss Resource Management
Das interdisziplinäre Forschungsprojekt SCALES untersucht Kontinuitäten und Wandel in der Regulierung von Allmend-Ressourcen (engl. Commons) wie Weiden und Wälder. Das Projekt interessiert sich für die Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten der verschiedenen Regelwerke und Organisationsformen (Bürgergemeinden, Korporationen, Genossenschaften), in denen kollektives Eigentum bis heute verwaltet und genutzt wird und damit die Kulturlandschaft prägt. Das Projekt setzt zeitlich im 18. Jahrhundert ein und betrachtet die Zeitspanne bis in die Gegenwart. Es bezieht sich auf die Arbeit des US-Sozialanthropologen Robert Netting über die kommunale Ressourcenverwaltung in der Schweiz am Beispiel von Törbel (Wallis), die von der Nobelpreisträgerin Elinor Ostrom (1990) aufgegriffen und neben anderen Fällen als Beweis aufgeführt wurde, dass Menschen nachhaltige und dauerhaft funktionierende Allmend-Institutionen entwickeln können. In den letzten 300 Jahren und insbesondere im Verlauf der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts haben die Land- und Forstwirtschaft jedoch tiefgreifende Veränderungen erlebt, die im politischen, ökonomischen und institutionellen/rechtlichen Wandel ihre Wurzeln haben. Wie haben die Körperschaften des kollektiven Eigentums auf diese Herausforderungen reagiert? Welches waren und sind die Bedingungen dafür, dass lokal adaptierte Nutzungskonzepte entwickelt wurden und auch in Zukunft umgesetzt werden können?
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.