Demófilo, Folklore and Contemporary Spanish Anthropology. Readings of Antonio Machado y Álvarez (1846–1893)

Antonio Machado y Álvarez (1846–1893), also known as Demófilo, was a pioneering collector and interpreter of folkloristic material from Andalusia and Spain. He wrote on popular dialects, literature, tales, sayings, music, flamenco and other expressions of popular culture. In this contribution I bring his writings of the end of the 19th century in conversation with debates at the end of the 20th century. At that moment, different readings of Demófilo, and of the Spanish folklore tradition in general, played a prominent role within an evolving anthropological discourse in and on Spain. In particular, I focus on the three related themes both in the writings of Demófilo and the commentators of the “folklore tradition” in more recent times. First, I look at the discussions over the “scientific quality” and the “subaltern” status of Spanish or otherwise regional or national anthropological traditions. Second, I discuss the relationship between cultural (identity) studies and the interplay between central and peripheral ethno-nationalisms in Spain. Finally, I reflect on the academic dispute over the differences between contributions of “foreign” and “local” scholars to the analysis of the Spanish cultural reality

Confronting the Extinction Narrative: Diversity research, media, and folk views on language endangerment

The presentation is based on experiences from the EU-FP7 research project ELDIA, in which comparative research on the maintenance of linguistic diversity was conducted with a wide range of multilingual minority communities across Europe. The project included a media-sociological analysis of the representation of minorities and minority-majority relationships, and reactions to the project and its events in local media were also systematically collected. Across the European meta-diversity (highly diverse types of multilingualism and roles of different languages in the life of the communities at issue), the ELDIA media analyses showed that media when reporting on minorities often neglect questions of endangerment and revitalisation and focus on politically harmless human-interest issues, especially the representations and conservation of traditional (visible) culture in its traditional habitat. This, in turn, may reinforce the image of endangered languages as reified entities, not human actions and choices. Endangerment and extinction of animal and plant species are issues well known to Western media consumers. Tapping into this interest, media representations of research into minority languages and cultures often portray endangered languages as reified “organisms” inhabiting an endangered ecological niche, focusing not on the actions and choices of the speakers of the language but on the expert role of academic researchers, whose activities are portrayed as a “rescue mission”. This folk view on language endangerment, downplaying the agency of speakers, may also endorse the vulgar-socio-Darwinist idea that some languages are less fit for survival and that language extinction is a natural process and therefore inevitable. In this presentation, I will analyse the material of media reactions to the ELDIA project from the point of view of the “extinction narrative”. Moreover, I will propose a preliminary list of measures which should be explicitly included into the media and communication strategies of research projects dealing with endangered languages

Dancing the Pluriverse: Indigenous Performance as Ontological Praxis

This article discusses ways that Indigenous dance is an ontological praxis that is embodied and telluric, meaning “of the earth.” It looks at how dancing bodies perform in relationship to ecosystems and entities within them, producing ontological distinctions and hierarchies that are often imbued with power. This makes dance a site of ontological struggle that potentially challenges the delusional ontological universality undergirding imperialism, genocide, and ecocide. The author explores these theoretical propositions through her participation in Oxlaval Q'anil, an emerging Ixil Maya dance project in Guatemala, and Dancing Earth, an itinerant and inter-tribal U.S.-based company founded by Rulan Tangen eleven years ago

Dancing the Orishas: Exporting a Constructed Form of Popular Culture from Havana to Arcata

“Dancing the Orishas: Exporting a Constructed Form of Popular Culture from Havana to Arcata” The staged sacred and social dances of the Afro-Cuban community were chosen to represent the new “revolutionary identity” of Cuba. Maya J. Berry writes about this phenomenon in her essay, “From ‘Ritual’ to ‘Repertory’: Dancing to the Time of the Nation” in the Afro-Hispanic Review. This paper builds on that work. First, it defines a bodily archives a performed identity. Constructed by the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional de Cuba (CFN), Compania Raices Profundas, Cutumba and Ballet Folklorico Afro-Cubano, this archives created the revolutionary identity. Through these dance companies\u27 methods of “folklorization,” a “classical-folkore” repertory and training was created. Second, this paper seeks to understand the ways this “classical-folklore” has been exported from Cuba and influenced the Diaspora dance movement in the United States. An example of its export takes place in the “Explorations in Afro-Cuban Drum and Dance” workshop which takes place in Arcata, California perpetuates the classical Afro-Cuban training outside of Cuba and is central to this study of Popular dance

'It used to be forbidden' : Kurdish women and the limits of gaining voice

Women’s rights and human rights projects in Turkey and elsewhere routinely construe and celebrate subaltern voice as an index of individual and collective empowerment. Through an ethnographic study of Kurdish women singers’ (dengbêjs) efforts to engage in their storytelling art in Turkey, this article questions the equation between “raising one’s voice” and having agency. It investigates two concrete instances in 2012, in Istanbul and Van, where Kurdish women publicly raised their voices. It shows that public audibility does not necessarily translate into agency, because these spaces, like most, discipline voices ideologically and sonically. Audibility is not a neutral achievement but an ideologically structured terrain that shapes voices and regulates whether and how they are heard and recognized. Voices routinely have ambiguous and even contradictory effects once they become audible in public. It is not simply a matter of “having voice” or “being silenced.

The life cycle of authenticity: neo-nomadic tourism culture in Kazakhstan

The paper presents the findings related to the stages of life cycle of authenticity where Kazakhstani nomadic culture in a post-Soviet heritage evolves towards tourist consumption. Using a qualitative case-study research approach, the analysis of data traces stakeholders’ perception of authenticity of various elements of Kazakhstani cultural tourism. The study intertwines inextricably with the processes of authenticity, commodification and cultural change as Kazakhstani traditions have evolved to a neo-nomadic tourism culture where authenticity becomes a currency at play and a point of differentiation from other tourism destinations. The findings offer an original approach to understand the transformation of authenticity at various stages of Kazakhstani tourism development and explore how authenticity is positioned in the influx of tourists and supporting roles from local governments and organisations