Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Guide to the 2014 Catalan Independence Referendum

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A mural in Granollers (Vallès Oriental) in Catalonia supporting the independence referendum and the yes vote. From murals9n.blogspot.com.es
This was an article written for One-Europe and posted in the week preceding the Catalan Independence Referendum on the 9th of November. It is meant as a brief description of the history, current situation, key players, and prospects for Catalonia, Spain, and Europe.

On the 9th of November 2014 the 7.2 million inhabitants of Catalonia, currently one of the 17 Autonomous Regions of Spain, will vote on independence from Spain in a move labeled unconstitutional by the Spanish Constitutional Court and denounced as illegal by the Spanish government. The referendum, referred to colloquially as 9N, has gone through many changes and negotiations over the past few months – some of which are even on-going in the last week before the polls open.

The principal players in these negotiations are:
  • Catalan Regional President Artur Mas from the center-right and moderately nationalist party CiU 
  • Oriol Junqueras, leader of the left-wing and strongly nationalist ERC which forms the parliamentary support for Mas’ independence coalition  
  • Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy from the right-wing PP 
  • The Spanish Constitutional Court 
As well as a host of Catalan grass-roots movements, organizations and NGOs campaigning in favor of independence.
In the periphery of the debate stand the many stateless nations, minority nationalist and separatist movements in the EU, principally represented by the European Free Alliance in the European Parliament. Other states facing minority movements such as the UK (Scotland and Wales), France (Brittany, Corsica, Savoy, and others), Italy (Veneto, Sardinia, and others) and several other countries are also following the Catalan referendum debate closely.

A yes vote could have enormous consequences not only for Catalonia, but for Spain and the EU as well. Catalonia represents around 20% of the Spanish economic output and their secession would have disastrous results for an already crisis-ridden Spain, perhaps even leading to a statewide bankruptcy.

The immediate lead-up to the referendum ostensibly started as early as 2010, when the Spanish Constitutional Court declared the newly formulated Catalan Statute unconstitutional. The Statute, approved by both a popular Catalan vote and by a large majority in the Catalan parliament, was essentially a bill of rights that would have increased Catalan autonomy and given it the definition of a nation, one of the Constitutional Court’s foremost points of critique. In 2012, large-scale pro-independence rallies gathered upwards of 2 million Catalans in the regional capital of Barcelona, an act repeated by 1.5 million demonstrators on the Catalan National Day of September 11th 2014. This led to elections, where Artur Mas (CiU) emerged as the victor with an electoral campaign emphasizing independence for Catalonia. In December 2013, a broad coalition of pro-independence parties (El Pacte Nacional pel Dret a Decidir) in the Catalan parliament agreed upon both the date of November 9th 2014 and the questions to be posed to the Catalan voters:

1) “Do you want Catalonia to become a state?” (“Vol que Catalunya esdevingui un estat?)   2) “In case of an affirmative response [to the above], do you want this state to be independent?” (En cas afirmatiu, vol que aquest estat sigui independent?”)   

This September, as supporters of Catalan independence flooded the streets of Barcelona, Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy asserted the illegality of the referendum, and brought it to the Constitutional Court. After a preliminary veto from the Court and the strong statements against it by the Spanish government, it seemed at first that President Mas would cancel the referendum. Following massive internal protest in Mas’ independence coalition from ERC , the Catalan Greens and the pro-independence, Marxist party CUP, Mas clarified that the referendum will indeed take place, but labeled it an ‘alternative consultation’. This put into question the political weight and legitimacy of the referendum, but still allows for the possibility that a ‘yes’ might lead to the Catalan parliament declaring independence.

So where do the Catalans stand now, one week before the scheduled referendum?

Over 35.000 volunteers have signed up to aid in the referendum, and more than 900 municipal governments in Catalonia have offered their public support, with only six refusing to cooperate. The regional government will supply materials, urns, and all of the 6.430 ballot boxes will be located in governmental buildings or public schools. Several poll-sites have been opened for Catalans living abroad in London, Berlin, Copenhagen and other places, and the eligibility to vote has not been changed. The most recent polls show that more than 80% of Catalans support the vote, with around 56% supporting outright independence

Technically then, the new ‘alternative’ referendum is almost identical to what was initially proposed. The political value of a yes has been heavily diluted, however, to the chagrin of ERC chairman Oriol Junqueras. His party has openly criticized Mas’ leadership and attempts at political compromise with the Madrid government, culminating in Junqueras’ recent statement that “independence is not negotiated; it is proclaimed (…) The pact is over. ” In recent polls, ERC seems to have greatly increased their support, and would likely topple Mas’ government, should elections follow the referendum.

Parallel to these internal Catalan tensions are the continuing claims from Madrid that the referendum is illegal and unconstitutional. The Spanish government has not yet specified the consequences for Catalonia if the referendum is held, but Prime Rajoy has menacingly assured that “the government has all necessary measures ready in case anyone tries to hold an illegal referendum. ” The options of charging President Mas with high treason and the suspension of the regional autonomy of Catalonia have been suggested, both of which would be unprecedented and extremely serious measures. Furthermore, thousands of Spanish Civil Guard police officers have been readied in case the government decides to send them into Catalonia to prevent the referendum. It is unknown how Catalonia’s own police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, would react to such an intervention but ERC’s Junqueras has called for nation-wide civil disobedience if the referendum is prevented from taking place.

With only hours left until the ballot-boxes open it is still uncertain how the Catalan independence referendum will proceed, as are the political consequences of a yes vote. More certain are the deep rifts that have formed between the Spanish and Catalan governments, and the high stakes facing the citizens of Catalonia seeking a democratic vote this Sunday.
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How not to deal with separatist movements: The Catalan Example.

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Stateless nations in Europe according to eurominority.eu. Catalonia is in the northeast of Spain.
An article I recently wrote for the online media platform One-Europe. Reprinted here on my personal blog.

Following the recent unexpected shift in momentum for the independence movements in Europe, particularly those of Scotland and Catalonia, EU policy makers in several states have too had to ask themselves one important question:  How do we reach a mutually beneficial, satisfactory, and above all peaceful solution to the issue of 'separatist' movements? 

For a prime example of how policy makers should not act in the sensitive matter of separatism we can look south to the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The confrontational stance exhibited by Rajoy and the Spanish government towards the Catalonian region has helped to radicalize the Spanish political spectrum, thus creating serious democratic problems and heightened antagonism between the political actors at the regional level (Catalan) and the national level. The continued unequivocal refusal by Rajoy to allow a referendum on independence for Catalonia despite the wishes of several million Catalonian inhabitants presents him with a democratic problem, one which he has not handled well. His rigid legalism and lack of willingness to negotiate with separatists has effectively shut down dialogue between the government in Madrid and their regional counterpart in Barcelona, making Catalan frustrations rise further. 

Although dominant at a regional level, the lack of separatist representation in national parliaments around Europe hinders their recognition as legitimate political movements and democratically representative actors. In the UK parliament for example, the regionally dominating Scottish National Party (SNP) currently holds no seats in the House of Lords and only 6 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons. In Spain, the second largest and most ardently separatist party, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), holds 3 out of 350 seats, with the less radical CiU holding 16 in both the Senate and the Congress of Deputies. However, the vitality and democratic legitimacy of these parties can hardly be questioned. They dominate regional elections and in the case of Catalonia they manage to arrange pro-independence rallies of almost a third of their regions’ populations. Despite their lack of institutional power at a national level, they are a democratic force to be reckoned with – and should be recognized as a valuable partner in dialogue. 

When I spoke to ERC politicians in 2011, before the mass demonstrations in Barcelona, they correctly foresaw the renewed rise of the Catalan independence movement stating that issues of independence tended to fall in the background when the government did not apply pressure on Catalonia. Whenever the central Spanish government acts in a confrontational manner, support for separatism surges. If they did nothing at all, activist Carles de Rosselló argued, “We’d only be four separatists in Catalonia in 20 years time”. 

After the onset of the economic crisis the possibility for tensions between relatively well-off Catalonia and the rest of Spain has increased. Instead of calling for dialogue and understanding the PP government launched a political offensive against the integrated school system of Catalonia where teaching in Catalan is compulsory in public primary schools (though not private schools). Now the Catalan government must offer public education in Spanish to any student demanding it. This has effectively divided the education system into Spanish-language and Catalan-language schools and further causing tensions in a region that is already ripe with conflicting ethnic and linguistic identifications. “[They’re] (sic) creating ghettos”, Pau Vinyes from the ERC told me. “One school here chooses Catalan, another one Castilian. It’s going to be completely ghettoized”. A recent article in the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia revealed that only four families out of a population of more than 7 million had demanded public schooling in Spanish, making this issue a highly symbolic venture for the Madrid Government rather than an expression of actual need on behalf of Catalonia’s citizens. 

The Catalans have taken to the streets to show their frustration time and time again, most recently during the National Holiday “la Diada” on the 11th of September this year. In 2012, a pro-independence rally in the regional capital of Barcelona numbered upwards of two million people according to the BBC, such acts cement the mass appeal of separatism in Catalonia. Compared to Catalonia the Scots seem almost apathetic. By allowing a referendum on independence to be carried out the 18th of September, David Cameron’s government has kept the debate civil and effectively lowered the tempers of the Scots, preventing the type of protests seen in Catalonia. 

After the Spanish transition to democracy following Dictator Franco’s death in 1976 many Catalan political actors expected a move towards a federal state – a move that for many reasons failed to happen causing many Catalans to feel robbed of autonomy. The ERC activists I spoke with had all favored federalist solutions in the past but now feel continually betrayed by the central government’s lack of dialogue and unwillingness to comprise in Catalan issues. As Alfred Bosch, MP for ERC has stated: “The federalist cause is very difficult for the federalists, because no-one wants to federalize with them anymore”. 

This is perhaps most exemplified by the Madrid government’s outright refusal to accept the new Catalan Statute of Autonomy in 2006, a document both written by democratically elected representatives and approved by a popular Catalan vote. 

By denying dialogue, and referendums the Spanish government are neglecting the frustrations felt by millions of Catalans and Rajoy is contributing to tensions and animosity in both Catalonia and Spain as a whole. Rather than uniting the population that voted him into office, Rajoy has shown himself to aggravate tensions between the Catalan regional government and the separatist Catalans on one side, and his own government and the people of Spain on the other. 

Since federalist alternatives are no longer an option, and as the Spanish government staunchly refuses all dialogue and negotiation with the Catalan government, many Catalans see only one option: Take to the streets and (re) claim their autonomy and independence. 

Such an outcome is more radical, less democratic and more prone to creating ethnic fault lines and tensions in both Spain and Catalonia than if the Spanish government had swallowed their pride, sat down to negotiate and recognized the mass popular wish for autonomy in the region of Catalonia. 

EU policy-makers faced with separatist issues should take note.
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Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Getting Organized: Notes

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I find that part of being a successful academic is the skill with which you organize your thoughts, your work and your time. Much of this comes simply from experience. However, you can easily learn how to better structure your reading and note-taking. Here I supply my own methods, but you can just as well develop your own, or improve on mine. The most important thing is to get organized!

Working in academia, you need to keep yourself well-informed about your subject. This goes for students, who need to digest a ton of new knowledge fast, and for experts, who need to keep themselves up to date on the research in their field. Both are faced with an immense amount of reading material. In order to keep track of the texts I read and to make their points more available to me as time passes and the memory of them fades, I use a system of categorized note-taking.

Firstly, I would advise anyone looking to get better organized to download the Firefox add-on Zotero. It comes in a free version with limited space which should suffice for most students. It is an immensely powerful tool for structuring your material, arranging it into groups, making your own tags and for quickly and automatically constructing a bibliography. No more late nights typing Harvard citations before a hand-in!

Secondly, whenever I read a text, I open a word file on it with the name and year of the author. Example:

Wilken, Lisanne. 2012. “Anthropological Studies of European Identity Construction.” Pp. 123–44 in A Companion to the Anthropology of Europe, edited by Ullrich Kockel, Máiréad Nic Craith, and Jonas Frykman. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 

I save this as "Wilken 2012.docx" (or whatever word processing program you're using). Whenever I find an interesting quote, I copy it to the word document. With most modern texts, this is just a matter of copy-paste. If you have a physical copy of the text in question, you're going to have to type.

Then, I write my analytical thoughts on the text in red font and any references to other texts or thoughts outside the text in blue. I recommend changing your shortcut keys in word so that you can easier switch between font colors. The document will look somewhat like this:

Wilken references Johan Fornäs’ distinction between different kinds of EU symbols: “The first type includes symbols that have a purely discursive or symbolic application – the flag, the anthem, Europe Day, and the motto, for instance. These symbols signify the EU in an abstract way and are not (yet) embedded in people ’ s everyday life. The other type of symbol has a double function, as both a symbolic expression of identity and a material tool of integration; this type of symbol includes the passport, which is a personal document of belonging that literally distinguishes “ us ” from “ them.”” (Wilken 2012:131). Cf. Billig 1995 and his banal nationalism.
The Euro is also an integrative symbol: “Fornäs has for instance argued that the design of the euro notes and coins creates a narrative about unity and diversity, which is reinforced by the way that money is circulated. The fact that nationally distinct euros can be used in any and all of the countries in Euroland represents a form of intercultural interaction beyond economics.” (Ibid.:131)
With reference to Sassatelli’s work on the European City of Culture program (Sassatelli 2002), Wilken concludes that as representatives of local communities also aid in constructing the notions of the European culture promoted with the initiative, the outcomes of EU cultural politics cannot be reduced to the intentions of the policies themselves. (Ibid.:132)
Wilken explains that there has been an official attempt to give the EU an identity, its ‘Other’ being Europe’s own past: “A European past of war, conflict, division, repression, and discrimination exemplified with references to colonialism, racism, warfare, holocaust, communism, totalitarianism, and xenophobia was juxtaposed on an EUropean present, which was defined with reference to values such as peace, tolerance, multiculturalism, antiracism, anti-antisemitism, anti-islamophobia, and respect for minorities. This positioned “ Europe of the past ” and in particular “ Europe of the nation-state ” as the EU’ s most significant Other.” (Ibid.:133)
On page 134 is a nice list of anthropologists who have worked with European identity formation. There is also a section on methodological difficulties. However, “It is also generally accepted that the anthropological research methods which were originally developed for data collection in small - scale societies, do in fact produce valuable insights when applied to larger - scale societies.” (Ibid.:134)
When finished, I mark the text in Zotero with the tag "read" and a rating for how helpful or interesting I thought it was: Gold star, Silver star etc. You can personalize these tags to better fit your way of working, but the general idea is to put the text in a relevant category.

This might take some initial work, but the returns are immense. Amassing a library of these "notes on texts" will enable you to quickly re-acquaint yourself with past texts, identify relevant parts and incorporate quotes or points to whatever you're currently working on. It provides you with a powerful overview, as each "note on text" is vastly condensed compared to the original text. This allows you to much better structure your notes, your work and your time.
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Monday, February 27, 2012

Writing Academically, Part 2: The Butler Did It

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You're not writing a crime novel. We don't want suspense. We want a clear, well-formulated argument beginning from the first sentence of your text. Think of it as game of backwards Cluedo, the board game where you have to guess an assassin, a murder weapon and a crime scene. We want who, how and where, and we want it to begin with. Start by stating exactly what you think; that the butler did it in the dining room with a wrench. Let's look at a short example, a text by Heiko Henkel concerning the Muhammed cartoon crisis in Denmark, 2005:

"Using a conceptual framework developed by Axel Honneth, I suggest in this article that the cartoon crisis is part of an ongoing struggle for recognition in Denmark, through which the terms by which Muslims residing in Denmark are recognized as legitimate citizens/residents of Danish society are negotiated—and on which Muslims may recognize the demands of Danish majority society as legitimate." (Henkel 2010:67)

Henkel nicely sums up his entire essay in a single sentence. We know from the beginning exactly what his central argument is (that the butler did it), in what context he's writing (the dining room) and what conceptual framework or theory he'll be using to analyze the issue at hand (the monkey wrench).

You don't need a lengthy introduction, teasing the readers into reading more. We want the argument to be clear and concise. In the last post on writing, I urged writers to keep on track and have their points in order before beginning an essay. Show the reader that you did your homework! The more you write with your eyes on your project, the easier it'll be for a reader to follow you.

For a somewhat extreme, but very effective example, consider this introduction by Danish anthropologist Thomas Lemke:

"In this paper I would like to address two questions: (1) why does the problem of government assume a central place in Foucault’s work? and (2) how could this concept serve to analyse and criticize contemporary neo-liberal practices?"

It certainly wouldn't work as the first chapter in a Sherlock Holmes novel, but in academia, it's sublime. You know exactly what this author wants to show and you can easily judge whether he succeeds or not. You're not lost as a reader, you're guided by the hand.

Don't chew what you can't swallow. One central argument is enough for any essay, unless you're a French structuralist - in which case, more power to you. Even some of the best books I've read concern only one argument, that could easily be summed up in just a single sentence. That one sentence belongs up front. All the rest of the essay is the basis for your argument. The next installment of this writing workshop will focus on just that; the 300-odd pages that follow your one golden sentence.

Bibliography

Henkel, Heiko
2010: Fundamentally Danish? The Muhammad Cartoon Crisis as Transitional Drama. In Human  Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 8 (2), 67-82

Lemke, Thomas 
2000: Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique. Paper presented at the Rethinking Marxism Conference, University of Amherst (MA), September 21-24
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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Writing Academically, Part 1

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Since this is supposed to be a blog for budding young anthropologists, I thought it wouldn't be enough to just have resumes and analyses of texts. We need to know how to get started on our writing as well. How do you write an anthropological essay?. Obviously this isn't the only way to do it, and I've never published a New York Times best-seller. However, I have written my fair share of essays and at least I know how I like to write. It seems logical to me that everyone should put some effort into finding what works for them and construct a personalized work method adapted to their needs. Knowing the steps I go through might help you along the way - so here goes.

Know what you'll be writing about
This point might seem redundant, but I find that if I'm not disciplined before starting an essay, I seldom know precisely what my argument is, which texts I'll be using and in what way. It might turn out fine in the end - but then again, it might not. Allowing for flexibility and flow is not the same as being unprepared. Do yourself the favor of taking some notes. It doesn't have to be awfully much, just an idea for an argument and how you'll present it. For example, here are my actual notes for an exam I had to write:

"On so-called primitive exchange, use Sahlins' theory/arguments & Stark's empirical data from the Flats (modern). Use Tapay [an ethnography by Karsten Paerregaard on economic strategies in a remote Peruvian village] to show diff. forms of non-mon [non-monetary] exchange. Exists in b. primitive and modern society. Fosters social ties and connects people/villages/families. Nothing primitive about it, very useful for coping with uncertainty & hard times. Outside of the est. [established] system, on the fringes of mod. cap. econ. [modern, capitalist economy], same uncertainty as in "primitive" times.

Tentative conclusion: Exchange and barter is not primitive at all, Sahlins is too narrow. A strategy, not mode or obsolete remnant of earlier, primitive times."

You'll see I had some idea of my texts and the central argument. I had a half-written conclusion in there as well. But it's short. It didn't take long to write, but helped immensely in staying on track. I find a couple of sentences as this to be enough for a 20-paper essay. Obviously it wasn't the whole paper and other revelatory tidbits came down the line, but the skeleton structure persisted. So, first lesson is very simple, yet important:

Know your central argument and conclusion before starting an essay. Scribble it down and keep yourself on track during the writing phase.
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Producing Culture: A Reading of Marshall Sahlins’ Culture and Practical Reason

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I've just finished reading Culture and Practical Reason by Marshall Sahlins, a cozy 400 pages of a theoretical debate between materialism and symbolism in Anthropology. It was a highly actual book when it was written, but I must admit it seems a little bit dated now. However, the book has some extremely well-written and interesting passages and forms a persuasive and coherent arguement in favor of symbolic analysis in the social sciences. I wrote this paper as a critical reading of the book for a course in Symbolic Anthropology, and this is my original text. You'll notice my references to Wolff in the middle part, cleverly recycled from an earlier blog post. Work smarter, not harder folks!
I hope you'll save yourselves some time in reading this instead of the whole dusty tome that is
Culture and Practical Reason. I highly recommend always reading the Introduction and Conclusion chapters first when faced with any text. This applies especially when you don't plan to read in its entirety due to constraints of time, effort, delight or the enticing call of a nice Valpolicella. Enjoy!

Introduction
This paper will function as analysis of Marshall Sahlins’ seminal work Culture and Practical Reason (1976). I will proceed to outline Sahlins’ main issue and discuss his arguments, supplying with what I deem to be interesting points and references, but keeping a firm focus on Sahlins’ own points and writings.
Terms 
I will use (historical) materialism, Marxism and utility or praxis theory interchangeably, as does Sahlins. I regard idealism, “cultural order” and symbolic structure as near-synonyms as well. I do not distinguish between terms such as the West, bourgeois or capitalist society, either. 
 The Main Point
The point of departure for Sahlins’ work is the theoretical debate between idealism and materialism. Arguably, this dualistic distinction has existed at least since Plato’s contrasting of phenomenon to idea, continuing up through European thought for over 2000 years, manifesting clearly in Cartesian dualism. Sahlins argues that much if not all of Anglo-Saxon anthropological debate centers on the relationship between utilitarianism and culture, whether cultural order is the codification of actual and pragmatic action and so determined by material circumstances and action; or conversely, whether human action in the world is mediated by cultural design (Ibid.:55).
Which shall we as anthropologists use best to describe human culture, a focus on material production or cultural order? Praxis structured by symbolic schemes and culture or vice versa? These two cannot be dialectic and the answer does not lie in between, maintains Sahlins (Ibid.). I find this starting point to be lacking, as Bourdieu had already synthesized these two analytical viewpoints in a mix of French structuralism and practice theory: “Structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” (Bourdieu 1972:72).
Too easily Sahlins brushes away the idea of a synthesis, positioning himself in the symbolist camp; his main opponent being the utility theory’s presumption that culture is the product of individuals pursuing their best interests through rational actions (Sahlins 1976:vii). Instead, Sahlins argues that although there might be a materialist “base” for culture, such as natural constraints, the quality of culture is that is always adapts to these constraints with a specific cultural scheme that is never the only one possible, never determined exclusively by material forces (Ibid.:viii). The reason why (Western) society believes itself based on material rationality is because our symbolic structure is hidden within consumption; a point Sahlins uses both a whole chapter and the conclusion to illustrate.
Marxism and Anthropology
Before formulating his main points and critique, Sahlins sees the need to outline the debate between anthropological analysis and historical materialism, doing so through the examination of the two schools of structuralism, British and French.
Sahlins argues that the materialist (that is, Marxist) view of culture and history cannot be transferred without friction to understanding tribal culture. Why? Firstly, if we could simply transfer the conclusions of Marx’ study on 19th century European culture to tribal societies, we wouldn’t have learned anything about human culture in our anthropological studies all around the world. There would have been no surprises in cultural variation and over a hundred years of thought and fieldwork wouldn’t have mattered:
On the contrary, anthropology (...) would reveal itself as a grand intellectual distraction, bourgeois society scratching its head” (Ibid.:2).
But we were surprised, there was cultural variety and tribal societies were difficult to describe with a materialist analysis. Even Marx and Engels themselves had their cautions about the universality of the materialist interpretation in archaic societies, when the producers were not alienated from the forces of production, but rather part of a “natural bonds of blood” governing economic action (Ibid.:2).
The main issue between Marxist materialism and British structuralism is precisely this:
The relevance of the Marxist analytic frame to a society that does not know an organizational distinction between base and superstructure; that is, where the two are formally the same structure” (Ibid.:3).
In tribal societies, since the “natural bonds of blood”, that is, kinship, structure production, how could we separate culture from material production?
Marxism and British Structuralism
In tribal societies, argues Sahlins, there exists a totality ordered by kinship. Economy, polity, ritual and ideology are not separate systems functioning autonomously as in the West. Social relationships are not assigned to a certain sphere, be it economical or political – they are totalized in one system (Ibid.:6). In primitive societies, there is no superstructure as there are no institutions. It is “multifunctional” and all activities, which in the West are ordered in institutions, constitute a holistic system among “the primitives”. Kinship is not is superstructure understood as a specialized institution. It is the sole design of tribal cultures and the main relations of production, jural-political and ritual relations all take place within this same scheme (Ibid.:6).
So, in using Marxist analysis, British anthropologists have tried to adapt and shape the logic of historical materialism to a generalized cultural order it was simply not made for. Sahlins argues that British anthropologists, citing Worsley as an example, try to fit Marxist analysis to tribal society by seeing kinship as an expression of economic activities. For example, as a practical measure for organizing labor in the fields, the sharing and dividing of food, determining demographic limits on household size and the like (Ibid.:8). The dynamics of the tribal lineage structure was seen as following obviously from objective conditions of production (Ibid.:8).
By fragmenting kinship into component systems, the totality of one society, the tribal, is “made to fit” the divisions of another, the West. Making kinship equal to practical reason is a logical transformation of Marxism, trying to fit a generalized cultural order (Ibid.:7). But this is seeing it all backwards and missing the totality of the tribal system, argues Sahlins:
Tallensi farmers are not related as father and son by the way they enter into production; they enter thus into production because they are related as father and son” (Ibid.:9)
Kinship and lineage are not relations of objective cultures, but sui genesis and symbolic attributions: It is no more in the ecological nature of agricultural production that father and son cooperate than “mother and daughter, mother's brother and sister's son, or Don Quixote and Sancho Panza” (Ibid.9). It might be true that demographic economic forces act on societies in truth; but as Sahlins argues, the only effect of the pressure would be that the society had to act. The response could be intensification of production, segmentation or many other paths; different societies react differently, determined by culture:
“Economic force as such has no social significance or effect. There can be no predicative relation between the indifference of the material function to the form of its realization” (Ibid.:13).
We see here that the specifics of culture cannot be determined by counting social organization as a practical measure. There quite simply is not a 1:1 relation. Natural forces might account for movement, but they would not specify to where, with what means, how fast etc. This point is one of Sahlins’ main critiques of utility theory and ecologic anthropology.
Sahlins concludes that the use of Marxism by British anthropologists fail because the attempted use of historical materialism in analyzing a generalized tribal system morphs the analysis into economistic and technological determinism (Ibid.:17).
Marxism and French Structuralism
The issue of a lack of divide between super- and infrastructure is however only one aspect of the “deeper controversy” between Marxist materialism and French structuralism, what Sahlins is really interested in. He writes that the French see symbolic order in material activity, whereas a Marxist reading of cultural theory subordinates social norms to an instrumental logic of work (Ibid.:3). The main problem is outlined by Sahlins as the relation between productive action in the world and the symbolic organization of experience (Ibid.:3).
Structuralism is systemic thought; circumstances are given significance and effect by the system in place. Action takes meaning as examples of a cultural scheme, which forms the specific context for any action. Any event is a symbolic relation, between this context and the existing symbolic order (Ibid.:21). It's not that material forces are without real effect, but they have no specific effect beyond that of integration in a pre-existing symbolic scheme:
Change begins with culture, not culture with change” (Ibid.:22).
This is opposed to materialist theory, where the act in itself generates cultural form and significance through the process of man working on what is essentially ‘real’; “human self-creation trough labor” (Ibid.:22). Utility theory would have us believe that the construction of culture is the product of some concrete activity, shaping to adapt to the actuality of the material world we inhabit.
In a materialist analysis, then, the existing culture loses its constituting function, functioning only as what Sahlins terms a “dead hand”; the analysis positions itself in initial creation, the creation of culture from external forces, seeing history or existing symbolic schemes merely as residue. On the other hand, (French) structuralism tends to favor the conservative and paradoxical concept “that history begins with a culture already there” (Ibid.:23)– that every new act, force or situation is incorporated into existing schema. Sahlins argues this structuralist trait stems from the origin of the discipline: Created in meeting a so-called “primitive” society capable of perpetually absorbing new events without changing the existing system of cultural order – allowing for the persistence of structure (Ibid.:23).
The critique of structuralism by Marxists is precisely this immobility of the structure, ignoring any knowledge of change of events. But in structuralism, distinctions between infrastructure (the material) and superstructure (culture) don’t really make sense; “the so-called infrastructure is appears as the manifestation of a total system of meanings in action upon the world, a process that predicates also the meaning of practical experience as a relationship in that system” (Ibid.:39). In this, the infrastructure also embodies the superstructure as any cultural order produced by material forces also implies a cultural ordering of these very forces (Ibid.).
We must also bear in mind, that there is some dynamic in (structuralist) structure, argues Sahlins. Structural contradiction leads to slow, but sure change. The build-up of inconsistencies in the system from successfully incorporating new circumstances can lead to a change of structure from within, accommodating the future in the present: “Before a new [formula] has finished ousting the old ones, another new one is arising to supplant it” (Ibid.:46, quoting Hocart 1952).
Here again, Bourdieu was very aware of changes in structure, writing about his structuring structures 4 years before Sahlins. The habitus, or embodied symbolic structures of a society, shift and adapt to current life, producing and reproducing over the course of generations, turning history into nature (Bourdieu 1977:78). The structure might seem without history, but “each agent (…) is a producer and reproducer of objective meaning” (Ibid.:79). For Bourdieu, the structure might be solid, but never rigid. But Sahlins chooses to ignore Bourdieu in favor of older French structuralism.
Summing up his views on the lack of history in structural analysis, he writes: “In the end, the principles of classification by which a society deals with events are themselves specific and historical; they cannot be read out directly from the given qualities of the world but must be empirically discovered” (Sahlins 1976:47). Sahlins here tackles the critique of structuralism’s lack of history; in no analysis will we be able to “read” history from a current society or culture. There simply is no general theory of cultural systems from which we can deduce history. Furthermore, Marx himself saw differences in the way bourgeois and primitive society react towards history and their mode of organization, argues Sahlins.
More specifically, primitive societies lacked the structural differentiations that give bourgeois society its dialectic movement, according to Marx. These differentiations are “the separation of the means of production from the producers, of the producers from the products, of production from the “needs” of the producers and of the individuals from the collectivity” (Ibid.:49, quoting Marx 1973).
To conclude using Marx’ own terms: There exists no alienation from the means of production or commodity fetishism in primitive societies, accounting for their stability. They are “natural”, without historical movement or natural forces (Ibid.:50).
Summing up
Sahlins concludes that the debates between Marxism and both British and French structuralism “imply cultural discontinuity. One structures itself by events and another structures events by itself” (Ibid.:50). The divide between British structuralism and Marxism is the lack of super- and infrastructure in tribal societies. The debate between Marxism and French structuralism goes deeper, however, touching on the key opposition between material action and symbolic order. Which one structures the other?
It seems Marxism and anthropology are destined to remain apart, as each is the truth of a different social order. We might also say very simply, that the analysis is centered on different societies, that anthropology and Marxism have different empirical objects.
Two Societies – Or?
According to Sahlins, Lévi-Strauss keeps to his side of the (struturalist) line, arguing that the class differentiations of “hot” (complex, moving) societies power movement and that the egalitarianism of “cold” (traditional, static) societies guarantee stability (Ibid.:51). To the West in general and to the social sciences, our society appears as a system giving people license to do the best with what they have, that we see the nature of man as a restless desire for power, society ordered only as an aggregate of individual action. In the west, “Organization is the socialized realization of desire” (Ibid.:52) and society is a set of relationships formed by the pursuit of private interests.
When comparing historical materialism to the two structuralisms, Sahlins sees a distinction between the West and the Rest, but he doesn’t agree (Ibid.:54). We see ourselves as radically different in the West because we ignore the symbolic qualities of our own institutions. We believe ourselves to be without a specific culture, instead thinking ourselves apart, above and beyond. Sahlins argues that the real issue between Marxism and anthropology is the relation between praxis and symbolic order, and that this issue is best studied through anthropology, because anthropology is a Western science of other cultures, in itself a contradiction.
Lévi-Strauss interestingly makes the point that practices do not follow directly from praxis, but that there is always a mediator; “the conceptual scheme by the operation of which matter and form, neither with any independent existence, are realized as structures, that is as entities which are both empirical and intelligible” (Ibid.:56, quoting Lévi-Strauss 1966).
Lévi-Strauss also stresses that anthropologists study superstructure, not infrastructure. But as Sahlins writes, in analyzing the organization of material production, we find ourselves in the economic base as well, dissolving the classic dichotomy of the “material” and the “conceptual” (Ibid.:56). Sahlins argues that the material causes must be the product of a symbolic system, since the general determinations of praxis are always subject to the specific formulations of culture (Ibid.:57). Moreover, since culture is a symbolic system, it maintains a fundamental autonomy.
Studying Culture
Sahlins uses a very lengthy discussion of the debate between materialism and idealism in anthropology to expose the lack of consensus in (his) present. It all comes down to a defense of symbolist analysis and focusing on culture in analysis. If we don’t study the symbols and the system in cultural practice, argues Sahlins, culture is eliminated as the anthropological object:

“Without distinctive properties in its own right, culture has no title to analysis as a thing-in-itself. Its study degenerates into one or another of two common- place naturalisms: the economism of the rationalizing individual (human nature); or the ecologism of selective advantage (external nature)” (Ibid.:82)

For Sahlins, the real issue with theories aligning themselves along the lines of the
material, utility, practical reason etc., is the disappearance of culture as the distinctive object of anthropology (Ibid.:101). If culture does not warrant any special understanding distinct from a biological explanation, as in ecological functionalism, culture simply disappears from analysis, argues Sahlins (Ibid.:87). He sees this juxtaposition of praxis vs. cultural order as introducing schizophrenia to anthropological study: The rational individual driven by inner forces, acting to achieve his own ends in the face of constraining cultural conventions (Ibid.:85). Normative structure stands in opposition to pragmatic action, making culture merely the backdrop; a medium and environment for action:
“It is a medium in the sense of a set of means at the disposition of the subject, through which he achieves his self-appointed ends. And it is an environment, not merely as a set of constraints external to the individual, but as something upon which he works his intentions and in so doing orders the properties of his milieu” (Ibid.:85)
That is, we continually formulate and reformulate our cultural order according to our best interests and that society is the means and our individual lives the end. But a society build solely on individualism has never existed, as the individual itself lives on social ideas (Ibid.:87, quoting Dumont 1970).
Western Society as a Culture
In rebuking the basis of bourgeois society as rational individualism lies what I would argue is Sahlins most important point: That the West is no different from the Rest in the use of symbolic structure. When looking at the production and movement of items and goods from a strictly monetary perspective, as that of exchange-value, the cultural code of properties governing utility is ignored, the economy appears as the consequence of practical action rather than the product of social organization (Ibid.:166). That is, we’re forgetting Western symbolic order, the very rules and order that govern schemes of appreciation, value and production.
For us in the West, the perception is that the economy takes place in an arena of pragmatic action, the formal outcome being society itself, a rational pursuit of material happiness (Ibid.:167). However, as anthropologists, we know that the rational and objective schemes of a given group are never the only ones possible, and that cultural orders may vary even in very similar material circumstances (Ibid.:168).
Of course nature acts on us in objective ways, says Sahlins. We cannot neglect to produce food or shelter, to survive. But the point is, that we don’t merely survive, we survive in very distinctive ways, reproducing ourselves as specific types of people, social classes and groups - not just as biological organisms (Ibid.:168). Within the very vide limits of viability, that of physical-natural necessity, any human group has the potential for a great range of rational economic actions, the adaption being very specific and not pre-determined by environment alone.
So, argues Sahlins, production is not just practical logic with material effectiveness, it’s cultural intention. And the material process of human existence is made to be a meaningful process of social being, in short, culture. When giving a cultural account of production then, we must first note that the social meaning of an object and its value in exchange cannot be deduced from its physical properties, because it's culturally produced in a symbolic system. No physical thing has any being in society except by the significance, we give to it (Ibid.:170).
All production also requires consumption, else the object does not complete itself as a product – a house in which no-one lives is not a house, it’s a merely a building. Thus we must consider use-value, which cannot be natural, as humans do not produce “shelter” but different types of houses; a castle being different from a peasant’s hut, for example. This determination of use-value is a process of dialectically categorizing and defining objects in terms of ourselves and ourselves in terms of objects (Ibid.:169).
This leads to the understanding that bourgeois society also has a culture, arbitrary symbolic codes of objects and socially produced meaning (Ibid.:170. Totemic symbolism is still prevalent in capitalist society; we use the varieties of manufactured objects as totemic categories in social classification. In this, exchange and consumption have become our means of social communication (Ibid.:177). Because exchange-value and consumption depend upon utility in a capitalist economy, the social significance of the objects become highlighted, making them differentiated from other objects and thus useful as totemic categories. Also, in producing objects, we solidify thought; the object becoming a human concept outside itself "as man speaking to man through the medium of things" (Ibid.:178).
Sahlins novel and interesting argument is that goods are the object codes for valuation of persons, events and situations in capitalist society. Production becomes the reproduction of culture through a system of objects. When we produce, we objectify social categories and in so doing, we make them constituting categories in society: the differentiation of the category differentiates the social classes of the goods system. Therefore, capitalism is not just rational production. Bourgeois society also has symbolic order and specific cultural form (Ibid.:185).
Interestingly enough, the anthropologist Eric Wolf has made a somewhat similar critique, although from a decidedly Marxist point of view. He argues, through the use historical examples ranging from Greek mercenaries in Persian armies to Iroquois importation of British cloth, that we must not look at societies, cultures or populations as being isolated socio-cultural systems, but rather as being in constant dialogue and connection with Others in the world (Wolf 1983:5-6). He criticizes the capitalist and liberal West for writing its own history as unbroken line of progress from Ancient Greece to the expansion west of the US and the present, counting ourselves end products of rational action – having shed the proverbial yoke of irrational thought and cultural constraints.
For Wolf, the separation of social sciences from politics and economy, keeps us from studying interconnectedness and the “embeddedness” of social relations to only individuals acting towards other individuals: “they predispose one to think of social relations not merely as autonomous but as causal in their own right, apart from their economic, political, or ideological context” (Wolf 1983:9). Wolf opposes the dualistic, Western way of looking at us, the developed and free versus the Other, underdeveloped and in servitude. In this his argument is even related to the Orientalism of Edward Said (1979); namely the argument that the West sees and defines itself in relation to a culture of opposites, the quintessential Other being a gap or list of deficiencies. The west is rich, the east is not; the west is democratic; the east is not; in the west the people are free, in the east they are not. But as Sahlins attempts to show us, the divisions are not so clear.
When objects form a scheme of communication based on unconscious codes, it is precisely the type of totemic thought normally reserved for primitive societies. In the West, we tell people apart from their appearance, making a cohesive society of total strangers where much information is available at a glance – as they say, clothes make the man.  Likewise, in totemic thought there is no time between observation and interpretation, no mental process other than that meaning follows sign (Ibid.:203, quoting Lévi-Strauss 1966). Rationality, on the other hand, implies time elapsed, thought-over comparison and the weighing of alternatives.
This implies, argues Sahlins, that even in the West, rationality takes a backseat to symbolic order and totemism.
Discussion
Sahlins maintains the symbolist ground firmly in Culture and Practical reason. Anthropologists must study culture and symbolic order in order to understand society and the people living in it. Material aspects cannot be separated from the social, as if the first referred to satisfaction of natural needs and the second referred to governing relations among people (Ibid.:205). We cannot divide cultural components into subsystems, but must look at that complex whole with the same holistic analysis. How else would we see the relations between analytical objects, we mark as distinct? The reason why we wish to analytically distinguish cultural domains such as symbol order and production builds on a model from our own society, that we cannot immediately transfer to others. There is a unity in cultural order based on meaning, which defies simple functionality: “[N]o functional explanation is ever sufficient by itself; for functional value is always relative to the given cultural scheme” (Ibid.:206).
This same point is argued by Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger, stating: “It is one thing to point out the side benefits of ritual actions, and another thing to be content with using the by-products as a sufficient explanation” (Douglas 1966 [2003]:30). This would be treating Moses like an enlightened public health administrator, rather than as the spiritual leader, he was. Ritual action cannot be sufficiently explained by rational action.
It follows then that no cultural form can be deduced from a set of material forces as a dependent variable. This does not mean however, that culture simply "walks on the thin air of symbols" (Sahlins 1976.:206), with no consideration to material forces and constraints. But the effects of these constraints cannot be read from their nature, since “the material effects depend how these constraints are integrated in culture. Any exterior force might be significant, but any social existence of this force is determined by its integration in the cultural system; there is no other logic than that of culture. The problem with historical materialism, argues Sahlins, is that it takes (individual) practical interest as the intrinsic starting point for analysis, as if it were inherent in production and inescapable in culture.
Sahlins concedes that the material process of production seems factual and fixed by nature - while symbolic logic is invented, flexible and by its very definition, arbitrary. But all material logic is practical interest and this interest in production is symbolically constituted: the material means of the cultural organization and the organization of material means are both cultural. Do use Sahlins’ own examples, why else aren’t dogs eaten in the West or skirts worn by men? (Ibid.:207). The material forces in production constitute only a set of possibilities, where humans decide what to make of them. So, argues Sahlins, there are not two logics in production; logic is the product of thought, itself informed by meaning and social content – material forces in themselves are lifeless and their motions and consequences are always social and symbolic (Ibid.:207).
Having so seen that material forces become so under the watchful eye of culture, Sahlins argues that ecology works in culture as a set of limit conditions. Material forces exist as negative determinations, stating only what can't be done and allowing anything that's possible: Nature is only raw material, given meaningful form and content by human minds - like a block of marble to a sculpture, argues Sahlins (Ibid.:210). Certain things you cannot do with a piece of marble - but it is more important, that the sculptor decides what the statue will look like.
In the same vein, Douglas maintains that culture mediates the experience of individuals, acting as a “textbook reference” for action: When deformed babies are born among the Nuer, this is a natural event. But the Nuer treat these babies as birth-mistakes, baby hippopotamuses born to humans. They are gently layed in the river “where they belong”, re-establishing social categories of how humans look. (Douglas 1966 [2003]:40). In this way, specific cultural form follows exactly from a natural event, and could not have been deduced. Seeing how Westerners react to the birth of twins, we could never have anticipated, for instance, that some West African tribes kill babies at birth, to maintain the cultural order that only one human may come from one womb (Ibid.:41).
Food on the plate is, well, food. But food on my shirt is dirt. It’s the same food, the same material, existing only in different symbolic contexts. Culture shapes and mediates the ways we interact with our environment, ordering experience and giving specific form to material events and forces.
Conclusion
In Culture and Practical Reason, Sahlins also objects to the presumption that the West is funded on material rationality. Objects and persons of capitalist production are also united in a system of symbolic valuations. Capitalism too is a symbolic process. In all societies functions a symbolic process that imposes a classificatory “grid” on culture in total (Ibid.:211). The only thing differentiating the West from the “rest” is our belief that we are unique; the illusion that Western economy and society are pragmatically constructed based on material rationale. It's just that the production of goods is the main site of symbolic production and communication in the West. It’s not that our economic system isn’t symbolically determined, just that we use economic symbolism in structuring our society (Ibid.:211).
The processes are the same in both primitive and complex societies; only the structures of symbolic integration are different.
In the West, the logic of production is a differential logic of cultural meaning. The grid is reproduced since 1) objects are different and 2) the goods must sell, so they must have a preferred utility, real or imagined for somebody. In this, by being different and always "for" somebody, they are classificatory. Bourgeois society produces social distinction through contrast in an object and differences in exchange-value.
Since economic relations permeate all social relations in bourgeois society, the economy “produces not only objects for appropriate subjects, but subjects for appropriate objects” (Ibid.:216), acting as the classificatory grid for Western society.
Material production is Western society’s symbolic grid, whereas kinship fulfills this role in primitive society. We are no less symbolic and use no less totemic thought in the West. If we as anthropologists want to understand society, we must study culture first and foremost, as it governs all other relations in society like a symbolic grid, forming a veritable key to understanding human action.
The myth of rational production is a lie; it is the production of symbols, classification – in short, the production of culture.

Bibliography
Bourdieu, Pierre
1977: Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.
Douglas, Mary
1966 (2003): Purity and Danger. New York, Routledge
Drummond, Lee
1979: Culture and Practical Reason by Marshall Sahlins [Review]. Ethnohistory vol. 26 (1), pp. 81-83
Sahlins, Marshall
1976: Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press
Said, Edward
1979: Orientalism. Vintage Books.
Wolf, Eric
1983: Introduction. In Europe and the People Without History. University of California Press
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Visca la Sardana? Catalan Folk Dancing as Failed Rituals

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A sardana perfomance in Plaça Catedral, Barcelona.
Author's photo
As you may or may not know, I'm currently doing fieldwork on Catalan national identity and separatist politics in Barcelona. In this vein, I did a short, non-empirical analysis of the traditional Catalan folk dance known as Sardana. Treat is as an analysis of ritual and one of those comparisons between cultures, we Anthropologists are often so fond of. Here I juxtapose Javanese burial rituals and European folk dancing in modernity. It was quite well-received by the "natives" I showed it to, although they didn't agree with my admittedly stretched conclusion. Here's the original text for your pleasure.

Introduction
In this paper, I attempt a small critical discussion of the traditional folk dance of Catalonia, the sardana. I trace the sardana historically, arguing that it was part of a process of invention of tradition in the 19th century. I further attempt to analyze the sardana as a so-called “failed ritual” that no longer inspires the national unity it once did. Here I use Geertz’ Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese example (1957) as the theoretical foundation for my analysis.
Methodology
This paper is mainly theoretical. I have been to two performances of Sardana at the Plaça de la Catedral in Barcelona, seen perhaps 4 more online, such as youtube, and I’ve sporadically talked to young catalans about the dance. As such, my empirical data is very limited and I rely mainly on texts to further my argument that the sardana could be considered a ”failed ritual”. A further empirical study would be a very interesting addition to this text.
Case in point: the Sardana
The sardana is a popular, traditional circle-dance in Catalonia, and is considered the unofficial national dance of the Catalan nation (Brandes 1990:25, Martí i Pérez 1994:39).
A sardana perfomance in Plaça Catedral, Barcelona.
Author's photo
The sardana is based on standardized dances and steps. It’s always accompanied by a “cobla”, a band of 11 persons and 12 instruments, the flautist also playing a small snare drum (Martí i Perez 1994:39). Sardana as a dance originated in a small area in the north of Catalonia from the rural contrapàs and sardana curta (Martí i Perez 1994:40), extending its popularity to the rest of Catalonia only in the last half of the 19th century (Ibid., Brandes 1990). During this period, there was a surge of Catalan nationalism and the sardana was transformed from being regarded as one of many rural, regional dances to the national dance of Catalonia, being a symbol of ethnicity (Martín i Perez 1994:41). The perceived foreign elements of the sardana, such as melodies imported from French and Italian operas, polka or pasodoble were purged from the dance to make it more “pure” and Catalan (Ibid.). The rapid spread of sardana through Catalonia in the 19th century was tied to nation-building actors, using sardana as a tool to solidify and strengthen Catalan nationalism:
“The main human agents of this expansion were the politically active circles, which later also founded the strongly nationalistic sardanes associations. Each and every village in Catalonia, so it was said, should have a song association, a library or a sardanes association and, when possible, all three” (Ibid.:42).
The dance had the interesting distinction of not being forbidden during the francoist dictatorship of Spain like other manifestations of Catalan culture such as the Catalan language and flags. Martí i Perez writes that by the dictatorship, sardana was considered a folkloric dance and a harmless tradition that did not cement the values of Catalan nationalism (Ibid.).
However, after the transition to democracy beginning with Franco’s death in 1975, the sardana was adopted as a potent national symbol for Catalans. It’s officially sanctioned by the Generalitat de Catalunya with 2 national cobles and dancing groups being maintained through government funding (Ibid.). The sardana today is a highly institutionalized dance with many organizations, although popularity and membership is rapidly dwindling among young Catalans in the face of more modern forms of dance such as hip-hop and pop music (Brandes 1990).
Ritual practice
Danish anthropologist Inger Sjørslev writes that ritual and performance transform persons and space (Sjørslev 2010:4), as well as performance can raise awareness to possible futures and transcend current time and place (Ibid.:13-14). Desfor Edles points out that popular (or folkloric) cultural elements and performances, such as the sardana, help to ritualize and thereby affirm national unity and cohesion in the building of Catalan identity (Desfor Edles 1999:321). This is not to be understood in a solely instrumentalist way; the process of affirming identity thr ough rituals and creating solidarity in performance when consensus is lacking can also be unconscious or emotive (Ibid.). The solidarity-generating perspectives of the politicized performance in my view supports the transcendental aspects of the ritual described by Sjørslev and mentioned by Desfor Edles (Ibid.). As such, I argue that there is a distinct symbolism and performance of identity at play during sardana dances. Dancing sardana is an assertion of national symbolism and identity:
“Since it is considered a national dance, every sardana performance can become an act of assertion of ethnicity” (Ibid.:42).
I will now go on to analyze more thoroughly the values implied in the sardana.
Values of Sardana
Stanly Brandes terms the dance a “symbolic act of ethno-cultural affirmation” (Brandes 1990:24). I argue that the semi-official status of the sardana and the institutionalized teaching of the dance (Brandes 1990:26), can be seen as an active invention of tradition - a constructed symbol of the nation of Catalonia (Ibid.:29). An invention of tradition is taken to mean a set of practices or customs seeking to promote certain values through repetition, implying continuity with the past or, well, tradition (Hobsbawm 2010:1). Brandes writes that the sardana has indeed been identified with what is regarded as Catalan values; fraternity, harmony and democracy (Ibid.:30). Martí i Perez even uses the terms sardanisme and Sardanista to describe the sardana as a socio-cultural complex:

[D]ancers who do not limit themselves to enjoying the dance but also believe strongly in what the dance means - music in the service of an idea (Martí i Perez 1994:44).

The Sardana implies certain values as a national dance, of community, brotherhood and as a traditional, moral and “pure” dance (Martí i Perez 1994). Consider this quote about the merits of sardana:

“En las danzas modernas, existen el contacto, la proximidad de los personas de distinto sexo avivando las pasiones carnales (…), en la sardana solamente se unen por las manos formando hermosacadenade amor nacional. Considerando también que cuando se desarrolla una costumbre honesta decrecen las inmorales, no podemos menos de reconocer su benéfica influencia en la sociedad” (Martí i Pérez 1994:44, quoting Monsalvatje and Aleu 1895).
Sardana was seen as representing conservative values such as the love of the homeland (Catalonia), platonic relationships and idealized rural environments as in the Catalan countryside (Ibid.). At the same time, the dance was seen as purely Catalan without foreign influence, extending as a tradition much further back in time than was actually the case of its late 18th century origin.
Brandes argues that the dance became a national symbol because it became identified with so-called “core” Catalan values, including “harmonia ("harmony"), germanor (“brotherhood” and democracia (“democracy”)” (Brandes 1990:30). Because sardana is a circle dance with no lead dancers, it implies unity and equality. Interestingly, writing over 20 years ago, Brandes asserts that dancers often cry “Visca![1]”, on the final step of the dance. One informant told him what this implied: Visca el poble nostre, Catalunya, las sardana, el germanor; totplegat![2]" (Ibid.:32). There seems to be very strong ties between the sardana and national symbolism and identity.

Brandes stresses the uniformity of the dance steps and the unbroken circle as examples of unity-generating symbols. He quotes the saying: "Tan ací com a Girona, l'anella ha d'ésser rodona" [Here as in Girona, the dance ring should be round] (Ibid.:33)
This implies not only that the circle should be unbroken, firm and united – but also that it should be so all over Catalonia.

Based on these examples, I argue that the values of sardana assume cultural homogeneity: A shared ethnic identity, the unity of the nation of Catalonia and the conserving of traditional, Catalan values.

Geertz and Failed Rituals
Geertz wrote Ritual and Social Change to show that rituals are not always integrative and do not always bring about unity and cohesion. Sometimes, they simply do not work. As his empirical example, Geertz uses the situation of a failed funeral rite in Bali, the so-called slametan. A young socialist has died, and social tension erupts when there is doubt about whether he should have a traditional Muslim funeral or not. The funeral rite fails to restore peace and instead bringing about tension as “a microcosmic example of the broader conflicts, structural dissolutions, and attempted reintegrations which, in one form or another, are characteristic of contemporary Indonesian society” (Geertz 1957:35) The clash stands between new changes in the social organization of the village, with ideological political parties forming rifts and links where there once were none, and traditional cultural traditions.
A 1907 photograph of a traditional Slametan.
Wikipedia Commons
Geertz’ primary point is that we must analytically distinguish between cultural and social processes: They are independent variables but interdependent factors (Ibid.:33). Geertz sees culture as the way in which we interpret our experiences and guide our actions; social structure is the form this action takes in reality, the net of lived social relations. A ritual is not only a pattern of meaning but also a social interaction. Therefore, social tension or conflict can easily be part of rituals. The social dynamics at play in society are also at play during rituals (Geertz 1957:52). Furthermore, changes in social organizations can affect the process of the ritual and the significance it carries. ). That is, the social organization and the cultural ideology (or custom), can be conflicting: Highly differentiated occupational structure and a multiclass society in opposition to traditional cultural symbols and ethic. This causes the rituals that are part of the “old” cultural system to fail in their effects, because they are not aligned with the present social organization. 

Discussion
I argue that this is also true of the sardana. I base this on the implicit values inherent in the sardana and the nation-building process that caused its rapid spread as part of a nationalistic project of inventing traditions. The sardana was “made” and exported with the purpose of strengthening existing Catalan ethnic and national unity or outright creating these identities where they didn’t exist. In this way, the sardana is like the Indonesian funeral rite slametan, part of a cultural pattern that does not fit new social differentiations in present day Catalan society:
The slametan remains unchanged, blind to the major lines of social and cultural demarcation in urban life. For it, the primary classifying characteristic of an individual is where he lives” (Geertz 1957:52).
The sardana implies unity and homogeneity for Catalans. But this homogeneity no longer exists and therefore the feelings of national unity are often lacking in sardana performances. During the two performances of Sardana that I witnessed, the mayority of spectators where in reality tourists and not Catalans. On both occasions, they were in the way of the dancers, crowding instead to look at the cobla, which they thought were the center of attention. They did not know what was happening, how they were supposed to react or what the sardana meant. The spectators in this way actually harmed the performance, preventing the dancers from forming new circles with fluidity and obscuring them.
On both occasions, there were likewise Catalans attempting to enforce a national sentiment to the performance. One man placed himself in several strategic spots where he could easily be seen and cried “Visca Catalunya[3]!” several times on the last step of a dance, obviously expecting replies. There were no response from dancers or spectators, no explicit manifestations of Catalan unity or nationality. The spontaneous outcries and grand feelings Brandes described 20 years ago, was certainly not applicable to my experience.
On another occasion, a man paced around the square with a small Catalan flag, seeking acknowledgement from both dancers and spectators, of which he received none. He was not able to instill any response or reaction.
Furthermore, all dancers were of highly advanced age, none were young or below retirement age. That sardana has a severe “age-crisis” despite being highly institutionalized is a point raised by several other texts on sardana:
Many performances suffer now from a worrisome lack of dancers, so that the main concern of the sardanamilieu is the winning back of the younger generations” (Martí i Perez 1994:44).
I argue that the values of sardana no longer bind Catalans together as before, because of a change in social structure. As Geertz put it, we might point to an “incongruity between the cultural framework of meaning and the patterning of social interaction” (Geertz 1957:52).
We might also call this differences between cultural representations and social organization. In modern Catalonia, the issues and ties important to the people living there are not only national. There has been a shift in feelings of belonging, communities being based on many other things than the simple national and geographical bonds of an idealized Catalan homeland. This is due to a process of modernization, argues Geertz:
Population growth, urbanization, monetization, occupational differentiation, and the like, have combined to weaken the traditional ties of peasant social structure; (…) structural changes have disturbed the simple uniformity of religious belief and practice characteristic of an earlier period” (Geertz 1957:37).
In modernity there has been a change of integrative ties; from bonds of geography and kinship to ideological communities, labor relations, student organizations etc. Furthermore, as for those for whom Catalan nationalism and independence are still very important issues, there are other, more potent channels of expression than folkloric rituals (Martí i Perez 1994:44).

Conclusion
Social class, political ideology, occupation, regional origin, religious preference, age, sex or place of residence are now important factors of modern Catalan identity. Because of this, the sardana is no longer integrating in the same way as before; Catalan people have many social ties and no longer only the geographical bond of being from Catalonia. The ritual, in this case the sardana, cannot function as before because it cannot unite all Catalans in the same values. Geertz’ point about the Indonesian funeral rite slametan is valid here as well: “The bonds they are strengthening (…) are no longer the bonds which most emphatically hold them together(Geertz 1957:52).
The sardana was envisioned as a nationalistic project, and this symbolic value given to the sardana was mainly responsible for its early boom and widespread dissemination (Martí i Perez 1994:44). But being part of this national symbolism similarly prevents the sardana from developing in terms of its organization or social meaning. The success and the “failure” of sardana are thus linked. The dance of course still works as an interesting dance and as a symbol of Catalan culture. But it no longer accommodates to current social realities and has lost much of its unifying power. The “crisis” of the sardana stems from a discontinuity between social structure and culture; the sardana represents a Catalan national unity that does not exists as such a salient issue in complex, class-segregated societies.
The social structure has changed and the ritual must as well – or fail.

Bibliography
Brandes, Stanley
1990: “The Sardana: Catalan Dance and Catalan National Identity.” The Journal of American Folklore 103(407):24-41. Retrieved November 22, 2010
Geertz, Clifford
1957: “Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example.” American Anthropologist, New Series Vol. 59(1):pp. 32-54.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. (ed.)
2010 [1983]: The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press
Laura Desfor Edles
1999: “A Culturalist Approach to Ethnic Nationalist Movements: Symbolization and Basque and Catalan Nationalism in Spain.” Social Science History 23(3):311-355. Retrieved November 22, 2010.
Martí i Pérez, J.
1994: “The Sardana as a Socio-Cultural Phenomenon in Contemporary Catalonia.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 39–46.
Sjørslev, Inger
2010: “The Material Subject: Style and Pointing in Public Performance.”




[1]Live long”!
[2]Long live our people, Catalonia, the sardana, brotherhood; all together!”
[3] Long live Catalonia!
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