Mountains in crisis: what responses by social innovation?

Context: why examine social innovation in mountain territories? Although the concept of innovation initially referred to technological progress and economic development (Schumpeter 1990, and Alter 2000), questions on the subject of social innovation have arisen since the late 1980s that go beyond these objectives alone, in particular at the Centre de Recherche sur les Innovations Sociales (CRISES – Centre for Research on Social Innovations) in Canada. A social innovation may be defined as “an intervention initiated by social actors to respond to an aspiration, meet a need, provide a solution or take advantage of an opportunity for action in order to modify social relations, transform an action framework or propose new cultural orientations” with a view to “contributing to the greater wellbeing of individuals and communities” (Saucier et al., 2007, p. 390). This notion, which is rather more connected with the human development approach (Sen, 2003), has as much to do with the social pu...

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