Abstract

Adopting a "topographical" approach to the analysis of social and cultural practices, the author tries to understand how local spaces and places were and are perpetually produced and re-produced. The identification of the local processes through which sources are generated allow him to analyze them as transcriptions of the practical uses of institutions by the people as well as by the elites. A number of these uses is identified as far as the production of places is concerned: in particular, people used (and use right now) hamlets, chapels and 'brotherhoods of the Holy Spirit' to build temporary territorial coalitions in order to cope with the demands of seigniorial, Church and State authorities. The whole process is Illustrated through the 'territorial history' of an industrial valley in the Piedmontese Alps from the fourteenth to the late twentieth century.