Impacts of tourism on two villages with different development trajectories: Vent and Obergurgl (Tyrol)

Abstract

For a long time, livestock farming formed the basis for sustaining livelihoods in the Ötztal Alps, including the two villages Vent and Obergurgl (municipality of Sölden) in the upper Ötztal valley in Tyrol, Austria. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the development of tourism in the Alps has triggered an economic boom in the Ötztal and led to fundamental socio-economic as well as cultural transformations over the course of the twentieth century. This article traces the contrasting development trajectories of Vent and Obergurgl from a historical perspective and subsequently discusses them in terms of urbanization and the wider context of infrastructural developments in the Alps. This leads to farming traditions, which according to a concept by Hobsbawm and Ranger serve to anchor structures from the past in the present. Even though agriculture had little significance for the sustainment of livelihoods in Vent and Obergurgl in the late twentieth century, farming identity and the associated farming traditions still played a major role within both communities.