The Social Roots Of Basque Nationalism

Alfonso Pérez-Agote

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780874176650
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Translated by Cameron Watson and William A. Douglass. Foreword by William A. Douglass. The Basque people have preserved their ethnic identity and sense of themselves as a separate community despite centuries of repression, diaspora, and economic and social upheaval—one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of the phenomenon we call nationalism. In The Social Roots of Basque Nationalism, sociologist Alfonso Pérez-Agote addresses the social mechanisms that Basques employed to sustain their ethnic identity under the Franco Regime and demonstrates how persecution actually encouraged the extension of Basque nationalist consciousness. He also reveals how state political pressure radicalized one element of the Basque-nationalist movement, resulting in the formation of ETA, an armed terrorist wing that itself became a mechanism for extending nationalist consciousness. Finally, he examines the subsequent changes in Basque nationalism following Franco's death and the extension of democracy in Spain, which resulted in the institutionalization of the movement into an autonomous political power. This work is based in part on interviews and polls with informants in the Basque Country and abroad, eliciting such data as the role that family, education, social contacts, and religious environment play in the evolution of political attitudes; the place of violence in the Basque world view and contemporary political culture; regional variations in Basque nationalism; and the factors that contributed to the resilience of Basque nationalism in adapting to new historical conditions. The result is a sophisticated discussion of the various ways in which Basque social reality is constituted and how this reality helps to create political culture. Because Pérez-Agote situates his discussion within the broader frameworks of ethnic identity, group dynamics, and the nature of nationalism, the book makes a significant contribution not only to our understanding of the Basques but to the broader study of the evolution of nationalism and the nation-state, political violence, and the complicated transition of any society from dictatorship to democracy.

PART ONE

Theoretical Questions

Chapter One

Collective Identities and Their Political Dimension

The General Problem of Collective Identity

Employing the concept of identity to unravel any social problem comes with serious risks. The broadest risk might be of raising more problems than one resolves. For the term identity is central to the history of Western thought in general and to any specialized area. In the human sciences one of the principal divisions of the past few centuries derives from the resort to essentialist thinking: that is, from the substitution of essence, or the identity question, for concerns with social functioning, dynamics, or change.

While within sociology the idea of personal identity consciousness, or the permanence of a dynamic “I” over time, is generally accepted, many social scientists see the notion of collective identity as open to the charge of essentialism. To the extent that such social scientists accept the notion of collective identity at all, they analyze it from the perspective of personal identity. Consequently, they either regard collective identity as but one of the dimensions of personal identity or treat the formation processes of personal identity as social. The critics who most adamantly equate collective identity with essentialism routinely attack (a misinterpreted) Durkheim when he speaks of collective consciousness.

If, despite such considerations, I broach the subject of collective identity, it is with two beliefs: first, that social definitions of reality (that is, those by the social actors themselves) constitute an important part of reality, independently of the scientific validity of the definitions; and second, that the dangers of invoking essentialist ideas in sociology, or of making them a by-product of psychology, can be avoided by specifying the problem (rather than the premise) of collective identity as an object of analysis.

That social definitions constitute an important part of reality is evident in many social phenomena. In modern society social problems are increasingly seen by the actors themselves as ones of social and cultural identity. African political leaders, for instance, speak of the need for a new African identity, defined by a unified African ideal—that of negritude. Social minorities demand political recognition of their national, cultural, and ethnic identity. Homosexuals demand the collective recognition and acceptance of their sexual predilection as central to their personal lives. Urban social movements seek to control a given social space by identifying residents as synonymous with that space. And so on.

Faced with these social phenomena, scientists normally adopt two different positions or strategies. The first consists of privileging one’s own interpretation over that of social leaders and their followers to ascertain whether social definitions are true or false—false in the sense that they are purely ideological or of questionable “scientific” validity. If the definition is of questionable validity, one tries to redirect the problem toward a more scientific approach. However, what normally happens in such cases is that social scientists lose a part (and by no means the least important part) of the reality they originally sought to analyze. In addition, they forsake the possibility of including social definitions and discourse in the very reality that is the object of their study. Furthermore, one should not overlook the capacity of scientific discourse itself to shape dominant social definitions. The social importance of this discourse depends on the type of cosmology specific to each society and, therefore, on the social importance and power of the scientific community within it. Those who embrace this strategy should recall Kierkegaard’s admonition that “they do not even use in science the precaution they use on a daily basis: listen attentively to the problem before trying to solve it” (1963, 14).

Prudence dictates, then, that we “listen attentively to the problem before trying to solve it.” We need to accept social definitions as an object of study. In reality, when social actors define problems of collective identity in more or less explicit terms, sociologists are presented with social definitions of collective realities.

Such is the posture of the present work. This position is phenomenological but not entirely so, because the research does not end with treatment of the phenomenological moment. Rather, it transforms representation or belief into an object, but requires the origin of representation be further questioned. The sociologist needs to move both within and outside the social world. Examining the genesis of representation or the definition of reality is even more necessary when the defined reality is a collective one. For in this case one might face a process that can be termed performative, in that socially produced definitions may, according to how successful they are and precisely because of such success, gradually generate the defined reality.

However, one also needs a truly social phenomenology. This must be made explicit, because even those, such as Berger and Luckmann, who adopt a phenomenological position in their social analyses often have problems utilizing the idea of collective identity, although they do not hesitate to draw in the idea of personal identity. Berger and Luckmann’s denunciation of the idea of collective identity is, in this author’s opinion, especially vague and even inconsistent with their own approach. For example, in referring to identity as a key element of subjective reality and, as such, found in a dialectic relationship with society, they state that “if one is mindful of this dialectic one can avoid the misleading notion of ‘collective identities’ without having to resort to the uniqueness, sub specie aeternitatis, of individual existence” (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 159). Their assertion is less bold in the footnote corresponding to the above-cited passage: “it is inadvisable to speak of ‘collective identity’ because of the danger of false (or reifying) hypostatization. The exemplum horribile of such hypostatization is the German ‘Hegelian’ sociology of the 1920s and 1930s (such as the work of Othmar Spann). This danger is present in greater or lesser degree in various works of the Durkheim school and the ‘culture and personality’ school in American cultural anthropology” (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 191).

The ill-defined nature of this criticism is evident from a comparison of the two quotes; Berger and Luckmann refer to collective identity as a misleading concept (in the first) and as an idea to be avoided (in the second). The theoretical grounding of the criticism is also not entirely clear: that is, does using collective identity as a scientific or theoretical concept necessarily impede thinking of collective identity as a phenomenon, that is, as the representation of reality by social actors themselves? The following several observations will help to clarify the position of the present work.

Berger and Luckmann do not explain why using the concept of subjective identity does not entail the same risks of reifying hypostatization as using the concept of collective identity, nor why, in the event these risks become evident, the concept of subjective identity must still be employed. The criticism seems so uneven as to become psychologizing. These authors use the concept of subjective identity based on its existence as a phenomenon, which seems perfectly reasonable—just as it is reasonable to consider this “identity” “a phenomenon that emerges from the dialectic between individual and society.” Indeed, their underscoring of this last point continues to be, in this author’s opinion, correct: “Identity types . . . are social products tout court, relatively stable elements of objective social reality. . . . As such, they are the topic of some form of theorizing in any society. . . . Theories about identity are always embedded in a more general interpretation of reality; they are ‘built-into’ the symbolic universe and its theoretical legitimations.” Thereafter, and conscientiously following their reasoning, they add: “It should be stressed again that we are here referring to theories about identity as a social phenomenon; that is, without prejudice as to their acceptability to modern science. Indeed, we will refer to such theories as ‘psychologies’ and will include any theory about identity that claims to explain the empirical phenomenon in a comprehensive fashion, whether or not such an explanation is ‘valid’ for the contemporary scientific discipline of that name. . . . Psychology always presupposes cosmology” (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 160–61). However, just as a specific cosmology or objectified reality includes a psychology that explains the phenomenon of individual identity in a social group, this cosmology must also explain the phenomenon of a relationship, or relationships, of inclusion-exclusion produced within each group. In other words, the cosmology should explain the “I” and the “we,” and this same cosmology, as a phenomenon, is an objectified reality.

This does not mean that a group feels or possesses consciousness in the same way as an individual, but various relationships of inclusion-exclusion are produced in a group, and the self is one of these. Similarly, this does not mean that the explanation contained in a cosmology is necessarily scientifically valid. This explanation can, therefore, be essentialist, and it undoubtedly usually is since cosmological explanations explain anything that is socially necessary except themselves. One cannot explain the “from whence” one looks, interprets, and understands: for example, only after secularization could religion be converted into a scientific object and subjected to explanation, because until then everything was explained by religion itself. In this sense, from a theoretical point of view, all cosmology definitely has some essentialist content. It is akin to a point of view or, more precisely, the point from whence it is seen.

For the same reason, Berger and Luckmann could have just as mistakenly categorized the theoretical concept of personal identity as erroneous. However, as will be seen, this would imply casting doubt on the very representational bases of science that require a subject-object relationship and, specifically, the concrete relationship between each particular researcher and the object of study. For although researchers might conclude of their object that it has no subjects (as in structuralism, for example), they must also recognize that, in order to make this forecast, they are themselves subjects. This ultimately requires accepting nonreflexive premises, however much Berger and Luckmann might have postulated that the fundamental dimension of learning rooted in socialization is more a relationship among subjects than between subject and object.

In the same year that Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality appeared, the former also published an article entitled “Identity as a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge.” The result of his attempt to construct an all-embracing theory of the relationship between the individual and society is a vision in which the individual is converted into the fundamental focus of the relationship. In other words, Berger offers a somewhat psychologized vision of sociology. He concludes, “The purpose of these brief considerations has been to indicate what theoretical gains might be expected from an integration of the approaches of social psychology in the Meadian tradition and the sociology of knowledge” (1966, 114).

“Every society,” says Berger, “contains a repertoire of identities that is part of the ‘objective knowledge’ of its members. It is ‘known’ as a matter ‘of course’ that there are men and women, that they have such-and-such psychological traits and that they will have such-and-such psychological reactions in typical circumstances. As the individual is socialized, these identities are ‘internalized.’ These are then not only taken for granted as constituents of an objective reality ‘out there’ but as inevitable structures of the individual’s own consciousness. . . . Socialization brings about symmetry between objective reality and subjective reality, objective and subjective identity” (1966, 107).

This raises the central scientific problem of the existence of reality outside consciousness and of the social construction of its image, a problem whose resolution is beyond the scope of this work. However, it is very important to recognize with Berger that socially constructed reality—that is, the representation or arrangement of specific historical reality—is, for social actors, objective. The challenge of socialization is to internalize a vision of reality. Further, this vision exists objectively independent of its scientific validity and is socially constructed. Yet this internalization is not experienced by the individual as the assumption of one version of reality, but as learning about reality itself: for the individual it is the reality.

Understanding why an individual exits the socially constructed order is a central problem. Berger speaks of the fear of anomie, which occurs when individuals find themselves submerged in a world of disorder and are faced with an absence of meaning that is anomic, a nightmare par excellence (Berger 1967, 42). D. L. Carveth later led a furious assault on Berger’s thought, premised in part on his interpretation (somewhat restrictive in this author’s opinion) of Berger’s notion of anomic fear. According to Carveth, “The question concerns the reality status of what is experienced in anomy: Is it Nothing (Berger’s ‘irreality,’ chaotic emptiness) or is it Something (the return, say, of repressed impulses)?” (Carveth 1977, 85). I would argue that Carveth’s approach is mistaken in that, for Berger, “irreality” is not inexistent at all. Rather, he views it as a lack of feeling something. In other words, it is the confrontation with something that escapes the subject’s notice and, consequently, cannot be allocated a reality status by the subject in question. That said, when the issue (raised by Berger) is focused on the fear of homosexuality, Carveth is right in affirming that such urges are not “irrealities.” Instead, what emerges within the homosexual is “the growing consciousness of the existence of real, morally proscribed sexual appetites” (Carveth 1977, 85). In effect, the individual is confronted by these urges independent of their provenance, and, in this sense, they are real. However, Berger’s concept of anomic fear refers more to a void of meaning and sense that this confrontation produces.

Furthermore, if conversation (a relationship with others) is perhaps the primary verification mechanism in our world and of our reality (already by speaking with another we take a certain “reality” for granted), homosexuals must confront a visibly and verbally approved objectified social order with an established sexual agenda. Their urges will not meet with approval in the social order in which they live, consequently reinforcing their fears. The social consequences, either merely anticipated or truly experienced, of fulfilling these impulses will reinforce their fears, because they will be persecuted and marginalized. Homosexuals will therefore try to find a compatible setting in which to be able not only to satisfy their urges, but also to construct and reside in an environment in which homosexuality has positive meaning and can be taken for granted and verified on a daily basis. They look for a structure of social plausibility wherein their condition might be considered normal.

Within Berger’s range of identities are some, termed collective identities, that specify for individuals their group membership. For example, in a given city where Catholics and Protestants coexist, a male Catholic is both a man and Catholic, but, further, he “belongs” to a church of which he is a known member. In most social environments there is a range of groups, objectified by being clearly recognized by members and nonmembers alike. Obviously, however, there is another kind of objectification, namely a politico-administrative one. For example, the state objectifies the nation as the political order’s basic community; consequently, current national conflicts within nation-states raise the interesting problem of two legitimating orders and two kinds of objectification competing for control of a fixed territory. This implies, at the very least, some confusion and loss of social obviousness. Furthermore, each of these two orders will have its own structure of social plausibility. There will be those, who, in relation to this single territory, affirm their exclusive membership in one of the two communities. This crisis of legitimacy and lack of obviousness reveal the struggle for absolute objectification within each social identity. That is, one social identity will struggle to establish the social obviousness of its politically objectified identity, while the other will seek to infuse a community rejected by the state with political objectification. Once the latter, in its own view, has sufficient political recognition, it might struggle to establish the social obviousness of the territory in its own terms. What is at stake, therefore, is the objectification of society’s symbolic center (Shils 1975; Eliade 1992; Eisenstadt 1969).

However, the struggle for objectification does not occur only in the realm of social identities. Many social groups, such as feminists and gays, struggle to change society’s objectified sexual agenda. Socially objectified reality is maintained through social life, through social relations among individuals that have internalized it. Within Berger’s (1967, 15 ff.) triple dialectical moment (objectification, internalization, and externalization), externalization explains both the maintenance and the transformation of symbolic universes. Within each society there exist groups, structures, and organizations (both formal and informal) that are especially relevant because of their specific weight in the processes of producing meaning in everyday life—that is, in the maintenance and transformation of objectified social reality. This means that sociology cannot give priority to the “human being” as the main “locus” of society. If a feeling of group belonging is the psychological projection of an objective feature, the outward expression of it—what here is termed collective identity—will be a psychological rather than a sociological concept. However, because the processes of socially producing and diffusing a feature’s meaning are social (socially constructed meaning), and because all actors are not equally situated when this meaning is produced, reproduced, and changed,¹ it is clear that the problem of collective identity cannot be removed from sociological analysis.

The most important consequence of Berger and Luckmann’s proscribing of the notion of collective identity is that it forces a debate on both the concept and its use in the field of sociology. This debate should, moreover, take into account that the meaning of collective identity is contested by both essentialist and psychological explanations. Logically, then, sociology is once more confronted, in establishing its objects of study, by essentialist thought and psychology, realms in which the term identity enjoys a scarcely debated natural status.

Thus the issue of collective identity once again highlights questions that in the human sciences have their own historical and philosophical precedents, above all in a metaphysical sense. The greatest difficulties the social sciences have faced when addressing the problem of the nation ensued from (and to a great extent continue to ensue from) considering it as a collective identity. In such contexts, identity is understood as, and equated to, essence. Identity thus evokes itself: it is a fundamental something that makes a particular thing and no other. It evokes substance and essence as opposed to form and accident. Furthermore, identity unequivocally reveals the impossibility of its own incoherence or discontinuity (there is permanence of the fundamental, change only in the accidental). This is the case with research that, either covertly or explicitly, starts from an a priori or objectiv...