Microbial Antagonism in the Trentino Alps: Negotiating Spacetimes and Ownership through the Production of Raw Milk Cheese in Alpine High Mountain Summer Pastures

In this paper I analyze fermentation practices in the production of cheese in Alpine high mountain summer pastures and their connection to politics of space, heritage, and ownership in times of ecological, social, scientific, and economic transition. In the Trentino Alps, fermentation is a technology for enacting different spacetimes in that it is not only a technical act but is also connected to how people practice and give meaning to places. I will focus on how fermentation participates in the composition of different human, more-than-human, and microbial spacetimes, which I call "utopias," "heterotopias," and "atopias." In these spacetimes, fermentation translates space into cheese through different logics: overlap, transduction, or abstraction. Discussing how fermentation is managed and perceived gives us the opportunity to reflect on who owns the Alps and leads to a debate on how to constitute sustainable and just futures. Fermentation plays a key role in scientific innovation as well as in social innovation as to how the Alps will be assigned value and ownership.