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This paper takes as a case study the disappearance of maritime heritage. Specifically, it focuses on the schooners that dominated river trade along the estuary of the Saint Lawrence River (Quebec) until the 1970s, when they were literally abandoned on the banks. Up until then, the schooners had formed part of the familiar landscape of the river, which was the main transport route in the country, and had been considered the real national fleet of the French Canadians. However, testimonies describe the river trade on schooners as a hard, badly paid, risky job. With the development of land transport, coinciding with the Quiet Revolution, schooners were abruptly abandoned. The enormous wooden ships resting on the bank became part of the landscape of forgetting in one of the leading countries in museology and heritage. As context for the study, the paper examines the concept of maritime heritage and its situation in Quebec. We try to explain the disappearance of this heritage, using as a framework of reference the anthropology of time and an idea explored by several authors in which loss can be considered a factor that gives value to heritage. Starting from the burning in February 2015 of a schooner that was in its time considered a masterpiece of small-scale shipbuilding, this paper reflects on the conservation and destruction of heritage as a way to give existence to time or, according to Castoriadis, to socially establish time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great question remains unresolved: What is man? The limits of the Eurocentric techno-scientific worldview, and its theories and models of human nature are examined. An intellectual paralysis prevents progress in the examination of this issue. This paper presents a worldview committed to a specifically human biology that transcends the shortcomings of neo-Darwinian theory. We propose a theory of the essential elements that would allow us to advance in the study of what makes us human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I propose an anthropological framework for the analysis of sociocultural bounds between pleasure and whispering. To do so, I focus on the cultural practice of listening to online videos called ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) as an assisted sensibility that aimsto elicit pleasurable sensations through whispering and other light sounds. Although the pleasure in whispering refers to an individual experience, the attention to different sensory and sensual practices based on whispering reveals the implications of sonorities in contemporary culturalsensorium, their technological mediations and how they modulate identities, relationships and politics. The phenomenological, sensorial and vocal analysis of social practicesthrough this sonority gives us an account of pleasure as a sensorial disposition where intimacy and memory manifest themselves as sonorous affects and situated vibratory processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kantujira is an initiative which, once a month, convokes a substantial number of people in order to sing traditional songs in Basque in the streets of the Old Quarter of Donostia (as well as in different neighbourhoods in the city). There are similar initiatives in towns and cities throughout the Basque Country. In this paper, I analyse the multiple dimensions of the Kantujira, which is much more than a cultural event and a way of maintaining tradition, since it plays a significant role in sociability and in shaping collective identity, while at the same time it is a form of resistance and of protest; a resistance with a particular feature, that it is made up and expressed on the basis of shared pleasure, the pleasure of singing in a group in the street, so we can consider it as a playful form of resistance. My aim is to show that we cannot understand the satisfaction of group singing without alluding to all these other dimensions. In order to achieve that, I base the study on information gathered during my ethnographic participation in the Kantujira since early 2017 to present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Misteri or Festa d'Elx is the main festival of a town (Elche). Although it has survived from the Middle Ages, it was patrimonialised twice in seventy years to be preserved in a historical context of profound changes. Nowadays, the Misteri still is represented, nevertheless, the attitude of the local population towards this Festival shows a polarization that ranges from the indifference of the majority to the enthusiasm of a minority, committed to its maintenance and continuity. In other words, new ways of relating to the Festa have been generated, different from the traditional ones, which implies new cultural meanings. In this paper, we intend to point out these new meanings about this patrimonialised festival. To do this, we analyse discourses and practices of local social agents, especially those involved in their maintenance and safeguarding. We relate them to the historical context that gives them meaning and that is characterized by permanent sociocultural change, and by the influence of globalizing factors at the local level, such as tourism and UNESCO distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early days of anthropology as a discipline in the nineteenth century, evolutionism and diffusionism supplied anthropologists with 'global' visions. Anthropologists have always been involved with all-encompassing cosmopolitan notions such as humankind and culture. Many have thus endeavoured to explain the world as a whole, and how humans have developed in different historical moments. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the new label 'globalization' generated a field of scholarly preoccupations, anthropologists started to contribute to this growing body of literature. Their most valuable contributions are related to the tensions between local and global forces, and between forces of heterogeneity and homogeneity, as well as to the use of ethnography as a methodological tool. Anthropologists have borrowed notions from other related disciplines such as sociology, history, and geography. This paper situates the anthropological production on 'the global' within this diverse history of borrowings, internal disciplinary debates, and wider historical junctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the ways in which pregnant and breastfeeding women perceive the presence of chemical substances in food products. It also deals with how they reflect on the effects of those substances on their own health and that of the baby and the foetus when they think about processes of accumulation, transmission and elimination of those substances inside their bodies. Our first hypothesis is that women's discourses about the health effects of Persistent Toxic Substances (PTS) is related to the social distance of the social actors that reproduce these discourses. The acceptability of these discourses is more evident the greater is the trust in the social actors who transmit this information. This paper analyzes the discourses of health workers and the close social environment of these women, since both play an essential role in the transmission of these discourses. Despite the fact that the dietary advice received by women is strongly medicalized, the information provided on chemical substances in food in the medical environment is scarce and not homogeneous. Thus, this type of risk is made invisible in the doctor-patient relationship, and the responsibility for managing it usually falls on women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, our goal is to analyze trap music and its development in Spain in recent years. We try to understand its impact among young people, identifying their ethics and aesthetics and finding out how they are perceived among their consumers. Understanding youth cultures as metaphors for social and political changes, we study Spanish trap to find out what it tells us about our society and its recent transformations. Methodologically, we use the analysis of songs and videoclips, we develop interviews and focus groups with young consumers, trappers and producers, and we study representative trapper biographies. Appeared during the crisis that began in 2008 in impoverished areas as a song of the excluded and depoliticized youth, trap will become popular reflecting the concerns of a precarious youth. Trap, we conclude, is a contradictory genre that reproduces the logic of capitalism while opening up spaces for its response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an approach to the way in which the State takes shape in the margins of the Colombian nation. It also inquires about the way the law work in such spaces, in postpeace agreement contexts. It is based on the testimony of two men who were actors in the Colombian armed conflict. The information was collected under the methodological approach of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Our conclusion is that the so-called post-conflict is a stage where alternative legal orders emerge as embodiments of State institutions. This means that the margins are spaces where the State has not consolidated effective and stable forms of social regulation. This situation opens a space for the emergence of local actors who play a role as intermediaries and no formal personifications of the State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the observable consequences of the social and cultural change among the Huaorani (an Amerindian people from the Ecuadorian Amazon contacted in the late 1950s), has been the suicide, which since the beginning of the 21st century has been increasing alarmingly. This article focuses the attention on the case of Epaa, a 28-year-old woman, who unexpectedly and for no apparent reason took her own life away, leaving behind many unknowns. The ethnographic fieldwork on which this research is based lasted two months. Based on the data produced, this paper offers a brief approach to Huaorani suicide in the Toñampari area, to, after that, describe its two central objectives: 1) portray in detail the suicide of Epaa with the versions of the triggering motives; and 2) reflect, from a cultural point of view, on the deep factors that help to understand the protagonist's behavior. The conclusions highlight the practical sense of shamanism as an explanation and the possible influence of words, as an element of contagion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the creation of the Colombian Indigenista Institute, CII (1942), its institutional history, and its closure (1949). The CII, influenced by the Mexican indigenista movement, fought for indigenous peoples’ visibility for eight years. In the end, however, the CII failed due to a combination of internal factors such as ideological disagreements, and internal ones, including violence, scarce resources, and lack of awareness on the part of politicians and elites about the status, challenges, and even existence of Amerindian groups in Colombia. Three Colombian scholars created the CII. They attended the First Inter-American Indigenista Congress (Pátzcuaro 1940) where they got in touch with Manuel Gamio, then director of the Interamerican Indigenista Institute. Gamio´s ideas — that Indians have the right to govern themselves, to have tribal organizations, to elect their community leaders, and to maintain and assert their cultural identity — inspired the Colombians. In this paper, I trace the influences of the Mexican indigenista movement on Colombian indigenismo projects between 1940 and 1950. I draw on a variety of sources including Colombian newspapers and magazines, as well as letters of the indigenistas housed at the Colombian library Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá and the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. I conclude by explaining why Colombian indigenismo of the decade between 1940 and 1950 ultimately failed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of alternative forms of representation has been a key issue within the social sciences for a long time, as a postmodern response to the limits of positivist science. However, its use in the field of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences is scarce, as in qualitative research. In this paper, we present an ethnography fiction story that attempts to recreate prison life, particularly that in the sports hall. It is based on data from a two‐year ethnographic study in a Spanish prison that emphasizes the meanings participants assigned to sport and physical activity. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to claim the use of ethnographic fiction as a form of representation in qualitative research. Second, to create a new story to give voice to participants and provoke reader's emotions by evoking participants' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an invitation to reflect on the importance eroticism may have in the different stages of anthropological work (gathering information, analysis, writing, presenting to an audience…), starting from a definition of eroticism as potential and creative force, which includes but not be limited to the sexual sense of the term; an approach that may serve to capture the dynamic, sensorial intensity of both pleasant and unpleasant human experiences. In order to do so, I turn to classic texts by Audre Lorde, Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari and Georges Bataille as well as current authors such as Maria Livia Alga, Alba Barbé, Adriana Guzmán and Elisa Lipkau. But, above all, I take inspiration from Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation”, published originally in 1966 and applied to art criticism. Following a brief revision of anthropological research in the field of sexuality, I address different questions relating to importance of commitment and erotic affectation in ethnography, developed above all in certain fields such as visual anthropology and feminist anthropology. One question guides my entire reflection: What would an erotics of anthropological research be and in what sense could that be of use? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an ethnographic exploration of the current socioeconomic and political crisis of Spain from the case study of a Rural Development Group in Asturias (Spain). This group channels EU funds into a region undergoing dramatic economic decline and depopulation, while at the same time attempts to create a fictitious territorial identity for commercialization purposes. To do so, a Cultural Park project was planned but never implemented in reality, being replaced by a series of large infrastructure investments. The paper argues that in order to understand the Spanish corporatist neoliberalism, we need to increase our knowledge from an ontological perspective. This implies addressing the realities enacted and constructed by social actors in practice, halfway between traditional clientelist dynamics and neoliberal free market logics. This hybrid phenomenon is publicly criticized but largely unknown. In it, communities of complicity distribute public resources without public accountability. In turn, citizens ignore, tolerate or participate –either actively or passively– in the process. In addition, the paper presents a case study of the failure of knowledge transfer processes in Spain, showing that shortcomings are not due to wrong epistemological practices but rather to the internal dynamics of communities of complicity, which can do without knowledge and academia to reproduce themselves. Finally, it is argued that “politics" should be retained as an ethnographic concept instead of a ubiquitous self-explanatory universal category if we want to retain its critical capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the transformations undergone by the academic institution at global and European level, arguing that contemporary University is both neoliberal and eurocentric. First, we highlight the changes that have affected research practice, conceived as an increasingly "fast", individualist and depoliticized activity; the role (and the subjectivity) of the researcher, constantly pushed to accumulate academic merits and achieve "excellence" and "impact"; and the growing precaritization of both working and life conditions. Then, drawing on our experience of collaborative ethnography with "Stop Evictions Granada- 15M" (Spain), we propose possible "lines of flight" from this situation. Based on our fieldwork, we theorize collaborative ethnography as a way to decolonize research practices. We stress its potential to produce collective knowledge and promote (re)politicization processes and claim that collaboration can help overcome the (currently hegemonic) individualistic and depoliticizing logics in Academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue is meant to discuss the following issues: how can we collectively produce meaning? Whom should we research for/with? What should be the aims of our research? We are particularly interested in tackling the ways in which collaborative ethnographies are being constructed, from different perspectives, and how the multiple decisions affecting them are taken. With the aim of contextualizing the ethnographic experiences discussed in this volume, in this presentation we frame the historical emergence of collaborative ethnography and sum up the main contributions done by Anthropology. Then, we point out the main contents of the articles included in this issue, which is made up of six papers proceeding from ongoing researches, all of them collaborative, engaged and even activist in some cases, undertaken together with different actors in diverse scenarios. Our interlocutors have been Mexican women emigrated to New York, young Indigenous graduated at the Intercultural University of Veracruz, neighbors from marginalized neighborhoods in Lisbon, social movements and platforms for the right to housing in Spain. A great variety of contexts, perspectives and knowledge(s) emerge from this review: even though ethnography is central for all of them, it is accompanied by a plurality of knowledge(s) and practices -- ranging from radio series to ethnomusicology -- paving the way to diverse strategies of knowledge production -- story telling, collective workshops, conversations. A set of core-issues is emerging overall, and we hope it may contribute to the discussion on the tensions, dilemmas and potentialities of collaborative and engaged ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "peasantry" has historically been the subject of debate, where some question its existence and others recognize the role it currently plays in society. This article presents the case of the "neo-peasants" in Catalonia, a specific type of new peasantry linked to the political and environmental back-to-the-land movement. Our qualitative research performed between 2013 and 2017, analysed 29 cases of agricultural and/or livestock holdings in Catalonia, oriented to the production for self-consumption and to the marketing of agricultural products. In this paper we propose a typology of neo-peasants that tries to cover this diversity and compare their subsistence strategies developed in the context of the social and economic crisis that began in 2008. The analysis shows the importance of the social context in which these initiatives are embedded, which has influenced their transformation, precarization or even disappearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last years, new forms of commercialisation through short supply chains have been emerging and taking shape. In these new forms, the traditional economic agents act together with social agents. New citizenship is arising and begins to organise itself, carrying us to an interest in its forms of action, and on the nature of its propositions. One aspect of these renewed actions consists in the reconstruction of connection throughout food producers participating in "Short Food Supply Chains" (SFSCs). That implies multiple dimensions, such as those linked with productive activities, territorial articulation, and with the emergence of new social links based on trust. The present paper aims to highlight the intermediaries' strategies and the agency of SFSCs actors, analysing the social and economic dynamics they generate, and their role in the construction of consumer's new connections with the rural spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Quechua concept of larphay. In the Ch'isikata Quechua language the positions of subject, action, and object are not stable: the subject person can be transformed and for that, the action of larphay is relevant. In this text I will explain the notion of larphay through the narration of tales about the relationship between humans and non-humans. In many tales the non-humans (animals, vegetables, and objects) are transformed into humans in order to seduce and deceive, or to larphay -- to unload his non-human condition into the human. The «larphayed» people have been transmuted into the tian (double) of the non-human. Similarly, humans in certain circumstances can transform into vegetable, animal, mineral entities, or non-human supra-beings. This is possible due to the lack of boundary definition -- chawpi -- which allows for this exchange between beings of diverse conditions (cay). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I suggest the possibility of exploring -- diachronic and synchronic -- the evolution of the notion of humanity in the kharisiri's representations. Usually, this figure steals the fat from its victims, making them sick and leading them -- in the overwhelming majority of cases -- to an almost certain death. Through an analysis of historical and contemporary Andean ethnographies, as well as data collected in the department of Puno between 2013 and 2016, I will try to trace a history of the transformations of the notion of humanity between the Aymaras of South Peru, using the figure of the kharisiri as an example of these modifications. Described in the past as incorporeal and ghostly, the successive representations show that this figure has assumed an increasingly tangible character, until becoming so concrete that it can potentially be the neighbour himself. The article aims to demonstrate how the notion of humanity between the Aymaras of the Andean region of Bolivia and Peru is relational and can be better understood in its articulation with the production of identities and alterities that, while changing, do not eliminate the boundaries between the «we» and the «others». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the notions of humanity and territory present among the Kukama-Kukamiria people living on the Marañón's riverbank. Different ethnographical situations are presented, to show how social relationships between humans and no humans develop in the act of caring. Mothers take care of their medicinal plants, Shapingo is the master of all forest animals, and each lake has a Boa who cares for it. Caring means to nurture and protect; it is a continuous but not permanent activity that takes place in a delimited area (forest, lake, plant). Ontologically the being that cares is known as a subject, and therefore with a human condition. As a result, relationships of care here analyzed create and define Kukama-Kukamiria territory, leading us to talk about «territorialized» humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the field of health with the participation of social anthropology in Chile is scarce. On the other hand, studies in social sciences, whether funded by the state and / or universities, are usually not linked to concrete problems. In this context, this paper presents an experience of forming an interdisciplinary team that has tried to know the medical models of indigenous origin in the Chilean north and the strategies of attention to the diseases deployed by Aymara families. Its purpose is to address the problems faced by health and social sciences professionals, the constraints generated by specialized training to find solutions in specific situations, and the difficulties that arise for transdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital worlds have posed anthropologists for the last two decades a whole set of methodological challenges that according to the traditional tale of the field has forced ethnography to adapt, transform or renew. In this paper I reframe this question to argue that the key issue when we study digital worlds is not just how to proceed but how to find the appropriate account to describe ethnography in these particular encounters. Drawing on three of my fieldworks focussed on different expressions of digital cultures, I describe how one of my ethnographies on digital media is re-mediated, and how other ethnography on prototypes is prototyped. Two instances leading me to argue in the encounter with digital worlds anthropology has the opportunity to re-learn its methods in the company of others and re-describe it drawing on the conceptual vocabularies that discovers in its empirical encounters. I will call it a relation of methodological recursivity in which the ethnographic object turns into the source to re-describe the ethnographic method. Methodological recursion evinces a twofold effect: The incorporation of vernacular practices as part of our method, and the re-description of ethnography drawing on the conceptual vocabulary of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in a Scandinavian private sperm bank that operates independently of assisted reproduction clinics. The fact that it is openly run as a business has consequences for the perspective from which the genetic material is offered. It also mediates the relationship with individual recipients of the sperm. The existence of this sperm bank conflicts with the views of Spanish biomedical professionals, who argue that it is only possible to offer health and safety guarantees regarding samples and traceability of donations in authorized clinics in order to avoid the risks of incest and consanguinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic anthropology studies offer evolutionary and migratory narratives to characterize individuals and human groups based on genetic traits. From the analysis of genetic information, these studies construct genealogies that connect body characteristics with geographies and stories of origin. In recent years, an international group of researchers worked in a project focused on Latin American populations. In this paper, we present the results of our ethnographic work and interviews with participants in this project. Based on this material, we show that Mexican participants tend to use their physical appearance, typological ideas of human difference, family stories and family names to give meaning to scientific terms such as genetic ancestry. Participants rely on shared visual habits to interpret their own and others' appearance and to negotiate their belonging to racial, ethnic and family groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the Spanish translation of the article How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagement, published ten years ago by the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn in the journal American Ethnologist. As a result of the ethnography developed among the Quichua-speaking Runa in Ecuador's Upper Amazon, the work represented a turning point in the discipline by moving the anthropological analysis to a scope beyond human, breaking the perimeter of the object of ethnographic study by expanding the view on the interactions that humans maintain with other beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the ways in which the dominated collaborate with their own domination, and it does it based on the ethnographic work of an investigation about the discursivity and the practice of the correctional pedagogy in an educational centre of Spanish juvenile justice. Establishing a dialogue between the concepts of symbolic violence by Bourdieu and that of moral career by Goffman, the article presents a double analytical approach that, first, elucidates the behaviours and staging of the inmates from a situated point of view and, secondly, inquires about how they somaticize the dynamics of subjugation of the prison regime. In this way, the paper explores the ways in which young people interpenetrate, or pretend to do so, with the perspective of themselves that confers the institution, in this case, one that expects to attend dangerous and violent individuals. That one labelling as a «young delinquent? seems to adopt the identity attributed to him and (re)presenting himself from that stigma. But other forms of obedience or participation are also discussed. Those forms that remain within the margins of control and the will of the inmates, and which respond to the coercive system of the total institutions. And others that insinuate a kind of subjection that attends to more subtle, continuous and inadvertent coercion: those unconscious dispositions that compel the dominated to unconsciously participate with their subjugation as an incorporated effect of the dynamics of domination itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La Cañada Real is an informal settlement of about 15 kilometers long at the south-east of Madrid. This paper examines forced evictions in this settlement between 2007 and 2012 in connection to the media and political construction of La Cañada as a 'problem'. Taking the case of people who were displaced in situ by the evictions, it shows the consequences of evictions in terms of vulnerability and questioning of citizenship. Forced evictions in La Cañada Real could also be part of a larger process of population displacement and accumulation by dispossession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acts of armed violence can pour a new sense over the spaces where a community build its social identity. In Nueva Venecia, a small pile-dwelling village in Magdalena (Colombia), three different armed actors (the guerrilla, the right-wing paramilitaries and the Public Force) gathered the local people, at three different times, on the same social space: the main square. In the first meeting, people was warned, by the first one of the three groups, about the possibility of a slaughter that could happen there. In the second occasion, local people was both victim and witness of the way that the second one carried it on. In the third meeting, the third group offered excuses for what happened. The paper analyses the way in which these three acts determined three marks of the continuum of violence over the local nodal space of memory. The article is organized around the last act, when national Army and Police representatives organized a public ceremony of forgiveness because of the paramilitary massacre. The study of such a ceremony shows it as a stage where agents of confronting memories are trying to achieve social legitimacy rather than a true act of symbolic reparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the beginning of the XXIth Century, biomedicine and biotechnology have become two defining characteristics of our every day. Doubtless, one of the main authors referenced in the analysis of this impact has been Michel Foucault and his notion of biopower. More recently the Nikolas Rose’s idea of ethopolitics has acquired a similar relevance and has received a substantial attention in Social Sciences. Our paper puts forward that the proposals of both about life should be included in a device of management and government that turns the biotic into a trajectory or flow of movement. We have called this new dispositive kinepower. We will illustrate the characteristics of this dispositive through a case study focused on the European Union practices and discourse about biosecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attempt of this paper is to contribute to the ethnology about Gypsies, and social anthropology in general for present and future of studies on Gypsies. The article makes an analysis of the social and familiar organization of the Catalan Gypsies (Calós) of Mataro and presents some clues of research and conceptual orientations. The flexible functioning of bilateral kinship networks, the categorizations in kinship terminology and anthroponymy, the forms of individual and family nomination, and the alliance systems provide critical knowledge regarding genuine principles and categories with explanatory power of anthropology in general. Thereby, I try to clarify some productive ambiguities in the ethnography about the social organization of the Gypsies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a case study -- the recent Mapuche movement in Chile -- this paper portrays the figure of the global indigenenous. In order to do that, the Mapuche's case study will be discussed in relation to other indigenous experiences worldwide, in the midst of the current debates within the field of Indigenous Studies. The thesis defended here is that indigenous policies are trapped today in three paradoxes, constitutive of indigeneity itself. These paradoxes are concerned with how indigeneity is constituted in time and space. In this context sovereignty, cultural and physical authenticity are at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the most important findings of a research project on the expert processes that mediate in the construction of a sense of belonging through cultural heritage. The research was carried out in the Basque Country (Spain), using a qualitative methodology (personal interviews and participant observations). This led to a map of the main expert processes involved in the construction of a relationship between cultural heritage and the community, group or society that consider it as part of their own identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based an ethnographic study on the periphery of the largest and most important irrigated area in central-western Argentina, this paper analyzes the role of persistent ethno-racial and environmental representations that delineate irrigated areas and social groups that possess water and land. The groups located on either side of the most distant irrigation canals are interpellated from modernist paradigms that link water rights, private property, and wine production to European heritage and the idea of progress, while in the non-irrigated area, communal land ownership and pastoralism is associated with indigenous groups of Huarpe descent and the idea of backwardness or regression. Given the fact that both groups are represented as supposedly independent, opposed and separated by the last irrigation canals, this article conceptualizes the latter as an irrigated border. This border, despite being regarded as natural and fixed, is on the contrary artificial and dynamic. It is the product of social and symbolic struggles for water and legitimacy as the socio-cultural group capable of obtaining and controlling water. In this way, not only is the presence of liminal actors who are neither of Huarpe nor European origin highlighted, but also alliances that may lead to the reconfiguration of irrigated areas and sociocultural groups capable of fighting in disputes over natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association Moinho da Juventude has organized Cape Verdean immigrants in Cova da Moura during the last thirty years. In this district of the Lisbon outskirts, which is seriously affected by poverty and social exclusion, the association has managed to accumulate a strong reputation among the neighbors, to occupy a central place in their relations and alsoto mediate their interests and demands towards the whole society. In this paper we investigate the factors that explain the success of this peculiar experience of immigrant associationism. We analyze the development of this organization, its relations with the neighbors and the neighborhood itself from the mid seventies until today. Based on ethnographic data we go through the major changes and continuities that took place in the neighborhood, contextualizing the different roles played by the association in every moment. This way, we propose a longitudinal approach to the associative process, and stress the importance of framing associative practices of immigrants in its socio-historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]