World Cultures eJournal

Analyzing the relevant issues concerning contemporary Alpine spaces, Vinigo, Italy could be considered one of such intermediate spaces. Vinigo is a mountain village with an elevation of 1,025 m situated in the Belluno province of the Veneto Region, Italy. It is one of the oldest settlements in the Ladin area in the Dolomites, which have been included in the Unesco World Heritage List in 2009. Local Cultural Models include ‘Causal Model of Nature 2’ although it is difficult to locate the place that animals have in this causal model. Not only today families no longer have active stables but our interlocutors, when asked about the activities connected to taking the animals to the higher fields in the past, focused more around moments of sociality with the elderly or with peers or around the heavy work required by collecting hay (to feed the animals once they were taken back in the village) than about narratives centered on the animals.