Imaging the Basques: anthropological perspectives

Macclancy, Jeremy

Publication year:

2008

Publication place:

Donostia-San Sebastián

ISBN:

978-84-8419-152-0

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Summary

What can an anthropologist say about travel-writers? More specifically, what can a British anthropologist of the Basques say about Anglophone travel-writers who visited the Basque Country? Some writers see the Basque Country as essentially Castilian; more saw Basques as very different and exaggerate the contrast. Some seek to explain this difference in environmental, psychological or traditionalist terms. Others chose to catalogue the Basques in terms of anatomy, language, or a primitive simplicity. Others indulged in the concept of "race" or eulogized the landscape. Almost all presented the Basques as living out of time.