Prof. Dr. Viviane Cretton and Dr. Andrea Friedli

(Becoming) at home in mountain regions: Diversification, gentrification, cohabitation. A comparison between the Swiss Alps and the Spanish Pyrenees (SNF: 10001A_172807)

The current changes in the mountain areas are particularly striking due to the often quite intense building activity, which profoundly reshapes the landscape. However, new forms of cohabitation and social and cultural idiosyncrasies and strangeness among old and new residents are often overlooked. This field research is carried out in Valais (Entremont and Zermatt) and Spain (Val d'Aran and Cerdanya). It is intended to show how the various long-time native residents and different groups of newcomers negotiate their identitary positions. Using four ethnographic situations, the study will investigate the interactions between newcomers from home and abroad with long-established mountain dwellers and the mutual influence between the inhabitants and their living environment. 
This project is concerned with the acquisition of local belonging, which is understood as a phenomenological characteristic of social life in the context of a dialectic between cultural relations and innovation, as well as social (re)production between the local and global levels. Thanks to the comparative anthropological approach in several locations, concrete practices of constructing and reproducing (indigenous) homeliness in the Swiss Alps and the Spanish Pyrenees can be recorded and broader trends can be identified, particularly on the European level.