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The objective in this paper is to identify driving forces and favourable factors that ensure the persistence of mountain livestock farms over time. The paths and processes of change are studied in a sample of 14 existing livestock farms near Chambéry in the Savoie, adopting a retrospective approach going back to the 1950s. The authors focus on key factors: workload, dairy restructuring and off-farm job opportunities. The results show that in this area, livestock farms have persisted thanks to the integration of other farming or off-farm activities in the farm-family system during at least one phase of their history.

ABSTRACT. Social-ecological resilience is defined by Brian Walker and colleagues as "the capacity of a social-ecological system (SES) to absorb disturbances and reorganize while undergoing change so as to continue to retain essentially the same function, structure, feedbacks, and therefore identity." It is an increasingly widespread concept whose success depends, among other things, on the promise of its rapid transfer from science into practice and its operational character for the sustainable management of SESs. However, tangible examples of management methods based on resilience remain limited in the scientific literature. Here, we test the resilience management framework proposed by Brian Walker and David Salt by applying it to the case of mountain summer pastures in the French Alps, which are complex SESs in which human and ecological dimensions are closely linked and subject to substantial perturbations due to climate change. Three steps were implemented: (1) building a conceptual model based on expert knowledge of the functioning of summer pastures; (2) building, from the model, a template for summer pasture resilience analysis; and (3) testing the operational character of the model and the template for two pairs of contrasting cases. This heuristic tool enables understanding the ways in which farmers and herders manage the resilience of their system but does not aim to quantify resilience. The method developed, together with the resilience concept, provide insights into the functioning of summer pastures from both biophysical and management perspectives. The modeling process constitutes a learning process, which will support the implementation of adaptive management. We identified three critical points for making the method truly operational: basing modeling on an equal consideration of social and ecological dimensions, defining the boundaries of the modeled system based on the social dimension, and selecting a scale of analysis coherent with the type of development actions to be implemented.

Drawing on a multidisciplinary survey carried out in three contrasting areas of the Rhône-Alpes Region in France, this article investigates how the concept of multifunctionality has been understood and appropriated. After a retrospective look at French agricultural policy, the first part presents our analytical framework, which is inspired by the sociology of action. The second part analyses the socio-political issues of farming in each area and the compromises established around the various functions attributed to agriculture. The third part highlights the different ways of considering and practising farming, as well as the social expectations towards agriculture. This regional comparison shows that professional identities are constructed at local levels in different places: the farms and their neighbourhood, local groups and agricultural organisations. Local agreements on agriculture and the construction of professional identities take into account multifunctionality in specific ways, which depend on the social and economic relationships that the farmers have established with their fellow citizens.T he concept of multifunctionality was introduced in various international negotia-