Basque ethnography at a glance

Dawn and sunset. Henry Peach Robinson. Postcard. Author’s personal archive.

We humans are surely influenced by geographical structure, social context and historical time, all personal or collective activity within the cycle of everyday life (be it a working or a non-working day) being marked by a set of rituals meant to promote its success. Traditionally conceived as cyclical processes, they are repeated endlessly and susceptible to a number of unchanging regularities or constants which have been observed and transmitted by generations.

Rituals of passage[1], and more particularly initiation rituals, are associated with the different age categories[2] and their evolution in the living cycle of a person, establishing a series of stages which shall be necessarily fulfilled in life. Individuals follow the perspective marked by the community, and the group will effectively control or sanction possible personal adjustments or imbalances regarding social demands at each stage.

That being so, newborns and small children are made passive subjects of manifold learning activities, promoted from their most immediate environment and conceptualized as susceptible to maximum protection and celestial innocence. Schoolchildren would undergo a process of incipient and progressive socialization which allowed them to gradually leave the family, as a socializing agent, and diversify into other institutions (school, religious doctrine or the group of equals itself), thus strengthening their social relations.

Wedding processional, 1889. Mamerto Segui. Postcard. Author’s personal archive.

The youth period is based on a very strong social awareness, active participation in groups and loyalty or group unity being increased. Youth groups are characterized for being variable in number and in the physical and social categories of their constituents, membership might be of relative permanence, their personal sedentary interrelations are frequent, and their purpose is defined in multiple manifest (fun, friendship, cooperation…) and latent (informal socialization) functions. New marriages or newlyweds were considered as the essential potential means for the perpetuation of the community itself, in terms of fertile marriages and population regeneration.

With the birth of the first offspring, the youth stopped being young and entered adulthood and the world of social responsibility. They truly are the driving force of the community and the main agents of economic and social control. This age category is responsible for maintaining and enhancing through diverse social institutions a series of guidelines and philosophical action which oblige the entire community and fit in with the historical contexts or generational visions of each moment.

Widows and widowers were submissive to community self-regulation on the issue of new marriages. Such behaviour would be regarded as a deviation from the collective norm and therefore denounced, sanctioned or constrained by social control through various practices.

Visiting the graves. St John the Baptist’s Church in Orozko (Bizkaia). José Arrue. Postcard. Author’s personal archive.

Elderly people were credited with the highest level of knowledge or wisdom in traditional society, having social control and being the guarantors of collective customs and traditions. In other words, they were the bearers of the experience and fair authority or judgment conferred by age.

All cultures devote special attention to their deceased or ancestors (cult of the dead), who might inspire folks with a sense of fear because of their relationship with underground or beyond the grave worlds, and at the same time, were cherished as protective celestial members who intercede for their own.

Josu Larrinaga Zugadi – Sociologist

Translated by Jaione Bilbao – Ethnography Department – Labayru Fundazioa

[1] Arnold Van Gennep. Los ritos de paso [Rites of passage] . Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2008.

[2] André Varagnac. La civilisation traditionnelle et la notion géographique de genre de vie [Traditional civilization and the geographic notion of genre de vie ‘lifestyle’]. Paris: Albin Michel, 1948.

The text is also accessible in Basque and Spanish, either by changing the language of the website or by clicking on the following links: Bizitzaren zikloa and El ciclo de la vida.