The Role of the Family in Mountain Pastoralism—Change and Continuity
2014
Fassio, Giulia | Battaglini, Luca M. | Porcellana, Valentina | Viazzo, Pier Paolo
The distinctive features of mountain pastoral families in the past, and their adaptations to environmental and economic constraints, have been the subject of many comparative studies. Less effort has been invested in exploring the role of the family in today's pastoral economy and identifying structural and cultural continuities within the dramatic changes of the last decades. Our ethnographic fieldwork in several valleys of the Italian Western Alps revealed that, contrary to some expectations, families do retain a central economic and productive role and are instrumental in keeping pastoral farming alive. Some present-day herders belong to families that have continuously engaged in pastoralism for a long time; in other cases, younger generations have returned to pastoral work their parents abandoned for jobs in industry or the service sector; in still other cases, “new highlanders” have turned to pastoralism and become the heirs of local pastoral knowledge. Family structures have changed considerably, and their size and composition as well as their entrepreneurial choices depend on a delicate balance between market demands, domestic strategies to keep or attain the right household size and composition, and the availability of local resources. Access to communal resources to which some pastoral families are entitled by their local origin may prove crucial to the success of their enterprises.
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