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- Convenors:
-
Mariann Vaczi
(University of Nevada, Reno)
Dorothy Noyes (The Ohio State University)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
Short Abstract:
This roundtable will focus on the anthropology of Catalan popular culture, identity constructions, and cultural heritage in light of recent political pro-independence transformations, inviting comparative reference to the Scottish independence movement and its politics of culture.
Long Abstract:
This roundtable focuses on the anthropology of Catalan and Scottish identity, cultural heritage, and politics in light of recent political transformations that pursue statehood and independence. It will first briefly present three recent ethnographic works in the Catalan context, and will then feature two broader comparative assessments of the politics of popular culture and language in Catalonia and Scotland. The panelists' remarks will be followed by questions from and engagement with the audience. Nourishing the Nation: Food as National Identity in Catalonia (2019) by Venetia Johannes provides an ethnographic account of the everyday experience of national identity in Catalonia, using an essential, quotidian object of consumption: food. The volume Popular Culture, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Catalonia (2023) edited by Alessandro Testa and Mariann Vaczi draws from various cultural manifestations including festivals, bull runs, and the politics of the Cathar past, discussing how civil mobilization, women's participation, gentrification and heritagization intertwined with national constructions, and the COVID-19 lockdowns. Mariann Vaczi’s ethnography Catalonia’s Human Towers: Castells, Cultural Politics, and the Struggle Toward the Heights (2023) reveals how this unique sport provides a social base, image, and vocabulary for the independence movement. The roundtable will reflect on the development of anthropological research into the politics of culture through Dorothy Noyes’s work, and her seminal Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco (2003). Finally, Sharon Macdonald will discuss the politics of cultural and linguistic heritage in Scotland. This roundtable will problematize the politicization of culture, nation-building, inclusion-exclusion, authenticity, belonging, nationhood, and identity, among others, in the Catalan and Scottish cultural and political contexts.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
I discuss how food is a crucial element of Catalan cultural life. A focus on food provides unique insight into the lived realities of Catalan nationalism, and how Catalans experience and express their national identity today.
Contribution long abstract:
In my work I have provided an ethnographic account of the everyday experience of national identity in Catalonia, using an essential, everyday object of consumption: food. As a crucial element of Catalan cultural life, a focus on food provides unique insight into the lived realities of Catalan nationalism, and how Catalans experience and express their national identity today. In the last few decades, researchers in the social sciences have become increasingly interested in both food and nationalism. However, there are few who have truly considered the connections between these two seemingly disparate areas of social life. In my research in the Catalan Autonomous Community, in northeast Spain, I seek to remedy this gap in the literature by considering how food is used in the Catalan nationalist movement. I will demonstrate a number of the ways in which Catalan cuisine has become one of these markers of national identity. Discourses on food shows how it acts as a source of national pride. I will show how different foods and dishes become heavy with meaning as carriers of national history, representatives of national virtues, and perceived examples of the differences between Catalonia and Spain. I would also briefly like to consider how cuisine is linked to other culture areas more commonly associated with nationalist movements such as language, literature, landscape and history. I will suggest that food is a down to earth way of expressing complex nationalist sentiments in an everyday setting.
Contribution short abstract:
This presentation will contribute to the roundtable discussion by introducing a recent edited volume, "Popular Culture, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Catalonia", and its single chapters penned by a number of authors about a number of topics in Catalan popular culture and national politics.
Contribution long abstract:
This presentation will contribute to the roundtable discussion by introducing a recent edited volume, "Popular Culture, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Catalonia" (Testa, Vaczi 2023), and its single chapters penned by a number of authors about a number of topics in Catalan popular culture and national politics.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper will discuss the thriving castells practice as a symbol of Catalan cultural heritage and identity amid debates around national autonomy and secession from Spain, as it provides a social base, image, and vocabulary for the independence movement.
Contribution long abstract:
The building of human towers (castells) is a centuries-old traditional sport where hundreds of men, women, and children gather in Catalan squares to create breathtaking edifices through a feat of collective athleticism. The result is a great spectacle of effort and overcoming, tension and release. This paper will discuss the thriving castells practice as a symbol of Catalan cultural heritage and identity amid debates around national autonomy and secession from Spain. While the main function of building castells is to grow community through a low-cost, intergenerational, and inclusive leisure activity, this unique sport also provides a social base, image, and vocabulary for the independence movement. Highlighting the intersection of folklore, performance, and sport, Catalonia’s human towers capture the subtle processes by which the body becomes politicized and ideology becomes embodied, with all the desires, risks and precarities of collective constructions.
Contribution short abstract:
Dorothy Noyes will discuss the political implications of changes in the composition of Catalan festive crowds.
Contribution long abstract:
Dorothy Noyes will discuss the political implications of changes in the composition of Catalan festive crowds.
Contribution short abstract:
This contribution will offer reflections on similarities and differences between the Catalan and Scottish situations, especially as regards independence debates, primarily by considering other panel contributions in light of the politics and practice of cultural and linguistic heritage in Scotland.
Contribution long abstract:
This contribution to the roundtable will act in part as a reflection on the other contributions, which are focused on Catalonia, by introducing a Scottish perspective and so opening up comparative discussion of the Catalan and Scottish situations. It will offer reflections on similarities and differences between the two, especially as regards independence debates, and the politics and practice of cultural and linguistic heritage in Scotland. This will include the more multiple linguistic heritage of Scotland, including Doric and Gaelic.