William A. Douglass

Beyond authenticity The meanings and uses of cultural tourism

This article argues that tourism performances, sights and sites communicate more than ‘truth’ about a ‘real’ culture. An examination and comparison of several touristic displays in the French and Spanish Basque areas suggest that the identity of European Basques is regularly transformed, articulated, contested and communicated in furtherance of cultural, political and economic goals.

On the Interpretation of Terrorist Violence: ETA and the Basque Political Process

Political violence, labeled loosely as “terrorism,” is a seemingly ubiquitous factor in twentieth-century world politics. Coping with it has become a major preoccupation of governments and is the object of considerable international cooperation among them. The purpose of this paper is to examine the case of ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna or Basque Country and Freedom) within the Basque nationalist movement in order to underscore several of the conceptual weaknesses in the literature on terrorism while also suggesting avenues for future research.

The Basque Stem Family Household: Myth or Reality?

Observers of rural Basque society have regularly contended that its basic social unit is the stem family household associated with the baserria system of agricultural production. The stem family household has long been an object of speculation, and its sanctity and preservation was a common theme in Basque literature. A close analysis of the population records of the village of Echalar in Navarre, making use of both synchronic and longitudinal analysis, suggests that the stem family household was indeed realized regularly in Echalar, and the fact of its statistical minority at any one point in time was due more to demographic limitations rather than to the presence of a competing family ethos.

The South Italian Family: a Critique

*The author received the Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago in 1967, and is at present Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Basque Studies Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Douglass’ most recent publication is Beltran, Basque Sheepman of the American West (1979). Under a two-year National Science Foundation grant, Dr. Douglass is now studying the adaptation of Basque and South Italian sugarcane cutters in North Queensland to Australian society. The Problem

Measuring Peasant Attitudes to Modernization: A Projective Method [and Comments and Reply]

A photographic test for attitude measurement (PHOTAM) based on the projective principle provides an effective means for evaluating objectively as well as subjectively attitude profiles of modernizing peasants as demonstrated in a study of agricultural change in Campeche, Mexico. PHOTAM involves ten steps: (1) reconnaissance to provide an empathetic overview of the peasant group, (2) a priori selection of attitudes postulated for resolving the research problem, (3) assembly of a set of photographs showing explicit scenes familiar to the group to serve as projective objects, (4) selection of a representative sample of subjects within the group, (5) standardized administration of the test photographic set to each subject, (6) translation and transcription of recorded responses, (7) coding of protocols, (8) objective an subjective interpretation of attitude profiles, (9) testing for reliability and conceptual validity of the a priori attitude structure, (10) (optional) cross-cultural testing and comparison of obtained attitude profiles. PHOTAM is a reliable, diagnostic attitude measurement device which should prove valuable in development planning and the testing of within-group and between-group hypotheses concerning peasant attiudes to modernization. A projective test can yield worthwhile, valid results if structured and applied with precision.

The Naming of Gaming

Abstract The naming of casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada, is an essential ingredient in the design of the citys entertainment landscape. More than 300 names have been used in the naming of gaming in Las Vegas since 1955. They occur in seven dominant patterns: 1) luck and good fortune, 2) wealth and opulence, 3) action, adventure, excitement and fantasy, 4) geography, 5) a certain moment, era, or season, 6) intimacy and informality, and 7) “power words” commonly used in the naming of businesses. The categories are described and analyzed from the perspective of the evolution of Las Vegas. Regional variations between the Las Vegas Strip, Downtown Las Vegas, and suburban Las Vegas are also discussed. The names provide a powerful means of evoking senses of place, images, and identities for the casinos. They underscore the interpretative subjectivity and plurality of the relationship between people and commercial urban environments.

Social Borders: Definitions of Diversity [and Comments and Reply]

Discovery of cultural diversity was catalytic for the development of anthropology, and diversity has remained a justification for anthropology as a distinct way of studying man. Paradoxically, a new kind of diversity in the range of societies studied by anthropologists is now a severe challenge to established concepts and methods. Much of this new diversity results from an increase in the numbers and kinds of social differentiation anthropologists observe and analyze. The diversity of ways to distinguish individuals from one another is the result of a universal human activity, the definition of social borders. The past successes of anthropology in seeing through diversity to structural universality suggest that the definition of social borders is not only a problem anthropology needs to face, but one it is particularly well-equipped to resolve. The first step in the search for the basic dimensions of border definition is a vocabulary for description and comparison of numbers and kinds of borders. However, social borders are not simply present or absent in different settings; they exist in many degrees of definition. This paper presents a framework for identification of degrees or levels of border definition and a set of propositions about (1) consequences of different degrees of definition for communication and contact across borders; (2) factors that stimulate an increase in degree of border definition; (3) conditions which promote redefinition of borders rather than their weakening through acculturation or assimilation; and (4) conditions under which most borders in a community are likely to be relatively sharply defined.

Iberian Family History

Throughout the 1970s there was a dearth of Iberian contributions to the expanding body of knowledge regarding European family history, but this is no longer the case. Studies carried out in the 1980s, as well as scholarship incorporated in the anthropological/ethnographic tradition and in the juristic tradition, provide contemporary as well as historical baselines against which the student of family history can compare and evaluate information gleaned from the analysis of population. The greater availability of primary sources in southern Europe portends the future proliferation of Iberian family history studies.

The famille souche and its interpreters.

This article examines the differing approaches of French and Spanish investigators to the study of the Pyrenean stem family household. In the French view it is either a bastion of social stability and harmony...or a pernicious inegalitarian institution in which some members exploit others....In the Spanish view the stem family household is a model of agrarian economic rationality...and a refuge of cultural distinctiveness....These differing approaches to and interpretations of the same social institution are analyzed as functions of Spanish and French history as well as the distinctive historiographic traditions of the two nations. (SUMMARY IN FRE AND GER) (EXCERPT)