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Running with fire: Catalan ethnic identity in 21st century Spain

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thesis
posted on 2022-03-28, 09:59 authored by Eloise Hummell
Catalan ethnic identity is an ongoing process of transformation, negotiation and meaning-making that is set within and draws sustaining energies from a field of dynamic and ambiguous connections. Many social theorists label Catalan people as an ethnic group yet very little work has focused specifically on the ongoing formation of Catalan ethnic identity. Catalans are most often mentioned alongside Basque, Québécois, Scots, Celts and Flemish. That is, they are usually categorised with groups that exhibit strong nationalist sentiments or are considered as nations-without-states. As the vast majority of works on Catalan identity focus on nationalism and few on ethnicity, I saw an opportunity to utilise an ethnicity framework to better understand an ‘identity under construction’, an identity that is responding in novel ways to present conditions to assert difference and uniqueness. Catalan people are not, however, simply affirming existing difference, but forging a contemporary identity that draws on tensions and ambiguities, and resists reductive inclusion into a dominant Spanish identity. I argue that there is a foreshortening of the full significance of Catalan identity construction if the interpretive grid supplied only by nationalism is invoked. This thesis harnesses the potentials of ethnicity theory to propose that the Catalan struggle for identity embraces complexities and creativities that resist attempts to resolve their identity into particular scripted meanings or contained 'essences'. Ethnographic fieldwork has enabled engagement in the everyday worlds where Catalan ethnicity ‘happens’ to develop nuanced understandings of being and feeling Catalan within contemporary contexts of change and contestation.

History

Table of Contents

Introduction -- Chapter One. Meanings, methods and musings -- Chapter Two. Ethnicity, ethnogenesis and human castles -- Chapter Three. “Language is non-negotiable” -- Chapter Four. Dragons, roses and four bars of blood : symbolism and the significance of place and space -- Chapter Five. History and memory on public display -- Chapter Six. A chant rings out across the crowd : nationalism and independence -- Chapter Seven. The narrative (comm)union of a oessebre vivent -- Chapter Eight. Being and feeling Catalan -- Conclusion. Running with fire -- Appendix -- Bibliography.

Notes

Theoretical thesis. Bibliography: pages 319-347

Awarding Institution

Macquarie University

Degree Type

Thesis PhD

Degree

PhD, Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology

Department, Centre or School

Department of Sociology

Year of Award

2017

Principal Supervisor

Kristina Lyn Everett

Additional Supervisor 1

Pauline Johnson

Rights

Copyright Eloise Hummell 2017. Copyright disclaimer: http://mq.edu.au/library/copyright

Language

English

Jurisdiction

Spain

Extent

1 online resource (viii, 347 pages) colour illustrations

Former Identifiers

mq:70130 http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/1260549