Life after snow: anthropocenic negotiations around water, environment, verticality and technology as alpine commons

This thesis examines how Alpine livelihoods are being reshaped in response to novel snow conditions that occur under anthropogenic climate change. Through ethnographic fieldwork in the Surselva Valley, Switzerland, this thesis shows how changing snow conditions have not only environmental impacts, but material, social and economic ones too. Actors in both alpine winter tourism and alpine agriculture are having to deal with weather and landscapes that no longer function to their needs. Both industries are based around the commodification of the surrounding landscape, and both are realising that this landscape is no longer economically, culturally and societally valuable without snow. Across the Surselva valley, inhabitants have to imagine a future without snow while being confronted with the presence of past futures built on snow. These future imaginaries revolve around beliefs in progress and development through technology, upscaling or downscaling technology and infrastructure, or “going with nature”. The concept of nature itself is questioned and redefined in this moment as actors and inhabitants across the valley re-negotiate their relationship to their surrounding environment/landscape.