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

Abstract

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.