Paradossi alpini, ieri e oggi

It has long been assumed that before modernization the Alps had been condemned by a harsh environment to isolation and backwardness and that emigration was a mere escape from poverty. This gloomy image has been challenged in the last decades of the 20th century by a spate of historical researches which have shown, for instance, that skilled and profitable forms of seasonal emigration prevailed and literacy was far more widespread than in the plains. These and other surprising findings have led scholars to talk of an “Alpine paradox” and help realize that the backwardness of the Alps in the mid-20th century was the paradoxical outcome of modernization, which also spurred massive depopulation. The new millennium is witnessing a trend reversal as “new highlanders” are now escaping from the cities to settle in the mountains. A paradoxical consequence is that cultural continuity, be it the survival of a ritual or transmission of local craftsmanship, is often made possible by the demographic discontinuity entailed by their arrival.