Telimep – Dynamics of transformation and perception of mountain territories

The anthropological notion of liminality, applied to the mountains, has become an object of study. Liminality corresponds to an in-between: between a state of “separation” and a state of “reincorporation”, it refers to the idea of threshold, expectation, transition, indefiniteness.

This situation raises questions about the mountain on several scales: through particular places, such as passes, steps and frontiers, which give rise to an imaginary of their own, and in specific geographical forms, such as slopes, foothills or piedmonts. These liminal forms and places raise the question of the social or scholarly construction of the mountain itself. As a region long considered peripheral, they underline its otherness and refer to its symbolic values of overcoming, initiation, revelation…

Liminality enables us to grasp various aspects of the mountain. Fundamentally, it raises the question of innovation in the relationship between places and their temporalities, in relation to the knowledge and imaginaries they produce, and the adaptation, transitions and change they imply in the course of history.

With the Val di Susa (Italy) as a testing ground, conflictuality was taken here as the hypothesis of a key moment in the emergence of social and economic innovations, which redefine territorial identity while maintaining a strong anchorage in history. The cases of barricades through time and the struggle against the Lyon-Turin (TAV) high-speed rail link were of particular interest.

Based on the question of liminality, an operational problematic was developed at the crossroads of different disciplines (history, geography, anthropology, law…), based on the hypothesis of a mountain that can be transformed according to needs, including ideological needs.

These questions were the subject of an article published in 2016 in the Revue de géographie alpine, Montagnes et conflictualité: le conflit, facteur d’adaptations et d’innovations territoriales.