Associazione Internazionale per la Storia delle Alpi (AISA) and the universities of Ljubljana and Capodistria; Margareth Lanzinger and Aleksander Panjek (Web)

Time: 29.-31.08.2024
Venue: Ljubljana

Programme (PDF)

The Alps have been an almost classic research area for social anthropological, especially American, studies on villages and families, dealing with property and inheritance, etc. since the 1960s, some of which were already quantifying. Previously, population-geographical demographic studies – such as the “Innsbruck School” – had also been carried out on some Alpine valleys. Intense and controversial discussions in the Alpine context revolved around, among other things, homeostatic concepts. These questioned about a possible connection between population and available resources in the sense of a demographic-economic balance or the limits of population growth, based on marriages and births as essential factors. More open and broader approaches rejected environmental deterministic perspectives and referred to options for agency, pluri-activity and integrated economies.
With the international boom in research on family history since the 1970s, questions from historians have also focused on household composition and work organization, on differences and implications of inheritance laws and practices, on specific migration and marriage patterns and also historical-anthropological topics. Here and there, mountain regions stood out due to specific household constellations: for example, the presence of stem families in the narrower sense, in which fathers continued to hold the power, authority and economic position in their hands, even after a son or daughter had married into the house; or shared fraternal inheritance and complex households with several married brothers; or household-heading women and absent men due to gender-specific seasonal mobility. Overall, studies have been able to illustrate the diversity and complexity of families and households.

Source: Rural History Newsletter 99/2024-109/2024