An anthropology of and within welfare in a valley of Piedmont mountain: the Valchiusella Laboratory

Abstract

This article presents an applicative project, the Valchiusella Laboratory, which combines research, academic teaching and community development, by involving in a fieldwork training students from the nursing degree course at the University of Turin. The methodological and ethnographic description of the laboratory and of the Valchiusella territory will be the starting point for proposing some reflections on what role could be assigned to an anthropology that intends to act, through research-action practices activated in the sphere of social and health services, in internal and, more specifically, in mountain areas. The ethnographic gaze on the valley and on the laboratory-related processes will make it possible to highlight how an anthropological outlook is essential to deconstruct excessively one-dimensional representations of territories characterised by a high degree of complexity and to allow instead a stratified reading of mountain communities.