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Barandiaran at Sara Etxea. Ataun, 1987. Ángel Alonso. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

On 21 December 2017 we commemorated the 25th anniversary of the death of José Miguel de Barandiaran. Those of us who devote ourselves to ethnography as members of the Etniker (name created by Barandiaran to signify ‘ethnographic research’) groups certainly owe him a debt of gratitude. He not only founded the mentioned working groups but transformed a discipline which had until then been rooted in rather romantic and biased views. Barandiaran’s new approach to ethnography was based on scientific evidence. By adopting a systematic method and maintaining, first and foremost, such an open frame of mind, he put us on the broad European map. (more…)