Designing connections between a spectrum of scales. Composing a world while making cheese in high Alpine summer pastures

I ethnographically illustrate the work of cheesemakers who produce cheese from the raw milk of the cows that live with them up in the Alpine mountains. Their work engages multiple activities across a spectrum of scales that go from taking care of the curd’s microbes to care for cows and the landscape, to finally manage regulations imposed by European laws. While cheesemakers are aware of the connections between these different scales, most people cannot see them. Invisibility of connections make them undervalued or not being valued at all. In reality, these connections provoke a series of material effects and socio-political consequences. My argument is that designers can intervene in these dynamics by making visible and tangible some kind of connections across different scales. I will conclude with a couple of anthropological insights on how to realise this ambition because making things visible is never a neutral task.