The Hidden Life of Tirol

Split between the modern nations of Austria and Italy, the "Holy Land of Tirol" sits in the heart of the spectacular Alps, astride the mountain passes that link the edges of Europe. Tirol has some of the most accessible and integrated social traditions in the world. But the deeper meanings of life in the region remain hidden. Here, then, is an anthropological guidebook. The goal is to make sense of and explain how the history, geography, politics and the rootedness of community life fit together. The conventional categories of an ethnography are all here: religion, subsistence, marriage, land tenure, ethnicity, agro-pastoralism, folklore, and inheritance. But the viewpoint is unconventional: the anthropologist is a fellow-traveler, taking readers on a tour in imagination to a region often visited but rarely understood or studied. The study of European folklife and cohesive communal societies such as this have particular relevance today. In a world where ethnic groups and class tensions dominate the news, The Hidden Life of Tirol is a story of how people worked out these differences.