De la relégation à la participation : les avatars socioculturels d"un aménagement en station de montagne, les snowparks

Typical innovation of the end of the 1990s, the creation of snowparks has widely participated in the renewal of the winter sports offer in the 2000s. They quickly became widespread and are now essential to the attractiveness of mountains resorts. Many transformations occurred, on several plans: spatial, but also organizational and social. This article, based on multisite fieldwork, combines ethnography, interviews, and documentary analysis. It focuses on the examination of two dimensions: sociocultural and political. Beyond the technical dimension, the paper underlines how the design, the shape, and the maintenance of these practice spaces gave rise to a new management model, both participative (with many stakeholders) and embedded in a cultural context that implies specific stakes and norms.