Sustainable Livelihoods and Gender in the Marginal Alpine Communities of Trentino

Abstract

In Europe, wilderness is long gone. Even seemingly untouched landscapes are the outcome of human action, like grazing and timber cropping. Prior to the advent of mass tourism and industrialization, that is, until the second post-war period, the most common land management model in rural Europe was still subsistence farming in smallholdings. It was parsimonious and provident because the unrestrained exploitation of the land could force people to migration. Peasants possessed a distinct sense of history: changes in the ecosystems were made with an eye to their immediate and lasting consequences and bearing in mind the experience of their predecessors (Bätzing. 1987).