Abstract
A dynamic conception of identity is not about asserting traits or searching for primordial essences but about the processes and contexts of its dynamic and living production including its social futures. Looking forward to contributing to Basque Studies this article offers an analysis of the complexities of contemporary reconfigurations of identification processes by focusing on the problem of Basque identity in the 21st century. I propose an approach not linked to the "Homeland/Diaspora" model but rather to a form of multifaceted and trans-local dynamics that arises from interaction with multiple places and contexts of cultural production and collective identification. The analysis pivots around a case study concerning a family of five, who emigrated to Argentina in 1973 and returned to the Basque Country 30 years later. The essay belongs to a wider anthropological project about the everyday production of national values and contemporary forms of Basqueness beyond ethnicity both in Argentina and the Southern-Spanish Basque Country.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18122/boga.11.1.1.boisestate
Recommended Citation
Gaztañaga, Julieta
(2024)
"Basque Identity in the 21st Century: Up Close No One is Normal,"
BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal: Vol. 11
:
Iss.
1
, Article 1.
https://doi.org/10.18122/boga.11.1.1.boisestate
Available at:
https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/boga/vol11/iss1/1
About the Author
Dr. Julieta Gaztañaga is a specialist in the political anthropology of Argentina and the Basque Country. She is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires (FSOC & FFyL, UBA) and Independent senior Research Fellow at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET). Her current research is about social movements in the Basque Country, in fields that include self-determination claims, sovereignty, political imagination, and nationalism. During her doctoral studies, she was visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics (2007, UK) and l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (2008, Paris), and during her postdoctoral studies she acted as Visiting Scholar (2017–18, 2021–22, 2024) at Euskal Herriko Unibersitatea (UPV/EHU, Basque Country), at the University of Manchester (2010–11 UK) and at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (2010, Brazil). She studies Euskara in Euskaltzaleak of Buenos Aires and participates of the activities of the Basque Diaspora in Argentina.
Education
*( 5-years degree with mandatory final research monograph)
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1135-1864