Mountainscapes

Often home to rural, indigenous communities, mountain regions are rapidly becoming preserves for the social elite, and altogether unsustainable within the climate crisis. Bringing together scholars from geography, sociology, anthropology, history, and urban studies, Mountainscapes seeks to re-examine the dynamics of mountain mobilities and better understand how tourism, migration, and pastoralism impacts mountain communities. Ranging from the Swiss Alps to the Chilean Andes, this volume illuminates how the processes of place-making and non-belonging specifically manifest and evolve within our ever-changing mountain regions.

Andrea Boscoboinik is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her latest research project focuses on transformation of the rural space, urbanization, lifestyle mobilities and the imaginaries of new populations in mountain areas. She has published numerous articles, book chapters and edited volumes, including Mobilities in the Swiss Alps: Circulation and Rootedness (Quaderns 2022, Becoming Cities, Losing Paradise? Gentrification in the Swiss Alps (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and a chapter co-authored with Viviane Cretton, titled ‘A “Magic Bubble” and a “Place of Strength”’ in New Horizons for the Alps (Bozen-Bolzano University Press 2024).

Viviane Cretton is a professor at the HES-SO Valais-Wallis and an anthropologist specializing in mountain studies. Active in mountain research since 2009, she focuses on social dynamics, human-environment relations, and more-than-human relationships in mountain worlds. She has co-edited special journal issues, including Living in the Mountains (Quaderns 2022), and published peer-reviewed articles on migration, ordinary racism, and mobilities in alpine regions. Trained in Fiji during the context of a coup d’état, her work is grounded in decolonial approaches, amplifying indigenous and transnational perspectives.

Andrea Boscoboinik is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her latest research project focuses on transformation of the rural space, urbanization, lifestyle mobilities and the imaginaries of new populations in mountain areas. She has published numerous articles, book chapters and edited volumes, including Mobilities in the Swiss Alps: Circulation and Rootedness (Quaderns 2022, Becoming Cities, Losing Paradise? Gentrification in the Swiss Alps (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and a chapter co-authored with Viviane Cretton, titled ‘A “Magic Bubble” and a “Place of Strength”’ in New Horizons for the Alps (Bozen-Bolzano University Press 2024).

“This book offers a contemporary and diverse perspective on mobility issues in mountain areas. By combining different academic disciplines, it allows us to approach the subject from a variety of angles. Some chapters of this book are demanding for the reader, but this reflects their academic quality.” • Yann Decorzant, The Regional Centre for the Study of Alpine Populations (CREPA)