La fabrique des hauts-lieux des alternatives sociales et écologiques dans les marges rurales françaises : le cas de la montagne limousine

• Main Author: Nassima Hakimi-Pradels
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Société Royale Belge de Géographie and the Belgian National Committee of Geography 2021-06-01
• Series: Belgeo
• Subjects: social and ecological alternatives; high places; sustainability; ecology; rural areas; mountains
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/48884

Larzac, Couserans or plateau de Millevaches are remote rural highlands. During the XXth century, they became famous for being high places of social an ecological aternatives. This transformation is usually seen as a process brought in by outsiders: neo-rural people who settle in the countryside to act out their utopia. The goal of this article is to discuss this thesis by developing the idea according to which, in these high places of alternatives, initiatives and practices breaking with the norms of contemporary capitalist societies are not solely made by neo-rural people with an alternative ethos, very aware of the challenges of sustainability and working intentionally to build a society that they want more just and more ecological but also by people who do not have this awareness and/or who act with other motives. In the second part, three explanatory factors will be explored to explain the high proportion of this specific type of initiatives and practices in certain marginal French rural areas: a contextual factor, a geographical factor and a relational factor.