What are the mountains? “Mountain” is indeed a concept so familiar to us that it requires no special attention, and for this very reason, upon closer analysis, it reveals the fragility of its foundations. This is no mere rhetorical exercise—it’s a reflection that leads us to question highland areas, the communities that inhabit them, and the relationships they maintain with other territories. Contemporary human geography has been radically influenced by ideas that emerged in France during the second half of the twentieth century, particularly by Henri Lefebvre’s work (1968, 2000, 2001). Analyzing society’s territorial transformations, he identified a progressive tendency toward urbanization—not to be understood as the expansion of the urban fabric and city centers, but as a gradual emptying of the characteristics that made territories and “rural” communities qualitatively different from urban ones.
