TeLiMéP : Territoriality, Liminality and Metropolisation Peripheries

This project aims at analysing together the mountain transformations which we will tackle as liminal spaces, on the long term (the rallying and recomposition of Alpine identities), and the transformation related to the metropolisation process which affects mountain peripheries (beyond planning processes induced by the new public territorial action devices).

The mountain transformations will be jointly analysed through the collective dynamics of territories, and with problems related to frontiers and limits of all natures. This will lead to a better knowledge of the territorialities at stake and the gradual reterritorializations (locally or more broadly).

The metropolisation will not so much be analysed as a process of urban expansion from the centre to the peripheries, but rather as a survey of the multiplication of centralities and peripheries everywhere.

In the long-term territorial and metropolisation transformation, does the mountain keep generating specific identities, behaviours and customs which pertain to conflict overcoming? The initial claim is that there are continuous social, political or cultural tensions and even oppositions which the mountains express and reveal through frontier-related stakes and through metropolisation phenomena. Thus phrased, the hypothesis considers that mountain territories offer specific conditions to facilitate the transition from dispute to a dynamics of project. Among these conditions, the intrinsic diversity of mountain territories leads them to become prolific inventors of new solutions and alternatives to address the distinguished issues entailed by moving frontiers or margins.

On the one hand, we will analyse the specific link to the mountains between places and their temporality as related to the various types of knowledge and imagination they produce, the adaptations and changes they entail throughout history, from the XVIth century to the present day, so as to analyse the transformation of Alpine identities: crossings, circulation-blockade, inhabiting the limits and slopes, regulations, acceptability and new values.

On the other hand, we will investigate the relationship between individual and collective actions in the mountain peripheries now become metropolises in the observed dynamics of territorial development so as to better analyse the gaps between the latter and the regular models of public action and to observe how processes, measures and devices are already put into practice, for they are better adapted and more flexible.

The common objective of these investigations is to present another look on mountain territories, as more related and interdependent with metropolises, which are both framed by the actors themselves and which are undergoing major changes. 

LabEx ITEM awards a maximum budget of € 89 000 spread over the total duration of the project as a budget revised annually.