The relighting of community ovens in the Western Italian Alps as a process of commoning

ABSTRACT

Commons and commoning have been historically instrumental in sustaining livelihoods in Alpine areas. After decades of abandonment and oblivion, a process of repopulation is instilling new life there, with community building emerging from new and old highlanders’ commoning. Focusing an anthropological lens on these processes, this study investigates community ovens in the Western Italian Alps as commons, and their relighting as a process of commoning that engenders community building through bread, kneading, and baking. We capture the ovens’ relighting as a heterogeneous and experimental process that manifests in fluid ways in different hamlets based on the commoners’ different backgrounds, ideologies, and visions. We further reflect on the capacity of the process to trigger ripple effects upstream and downstream local food chains, to shape ways of living the mountains and of relating with the world beyond the hamlet and the valley, and to root these renewed Alpine communities to place.

KEYWORDS:

• Commons
• alpine valleys
• new highlanders
• community building
• local food chains
• bread

Acknowledgments

We are very thankful with all the bread commoners and all the people we met during our time in the hamlets. We also thank Mauro Cornaglia for helping in creating the GIS map of the hamlets, and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was given by the Ethic Committee of the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo, Italy, in June 2019.

Notes

1. Borgata (pl. borgate) in Italian.

2. There is a plethora of different forms of management and use of high Alpine pastures: civic use, collective land, common pastures, demanio comunale – property of the municipality.

3. https://food52.com/blog/17,568-the-centuries-old-form-of-public-cooking-that-s-making-a-comeback.

4. https://www.lovens.net/.

5. http://www.flatbreadsociety.net/calendar#event=49.

6. A hamlet, differently from a village, is not a municipality, but a relatively small complex of houses and other buildings that are usually rather isolated and geographically separated from the main village. A municipality can include several hamlets.

7. Ecomuseo Alta Val Sangone, Coazze – https://www.comune.coazze.to.it/il-comune/ecomuseo/.

8. Following the lockdown and the associated restrictive measures on movement and gatherings due to the Covid-19 pandemic, some interviewees reported a discontinuity in the lighting of the ovens across 2020.

9. Ula cooked in the oven.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chiara Flora Bassignana

Chiara Flora Bassignana is a candidate of the PhD Program in Ecogastronomy, Education and Society at the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo, carrying out interdisciplinary research in agroecology and anthropology investigating the emerging trajectories of agriculture and related food practices in the Western Italian Alps.

Gabriele Volpato

Gabriele Volpato is an anthropologist, lecturer, and research fellow at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (Italy). His interests are interdisciplinary and include biocultural diversity studies, ethnobiology, pastoralism and human-animal relationships, as well as food systems and peasants’ livelihood strategies.