Catalonia's Human Towers
eBook - ePub

Catalonia's Human Towers

Castells, Cultural Politics, and the Struggle toward the Heights

  1. 282 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Catalonia's Human Towers

Castells, Cultural Politics, and the Struggle toward the Heights

About this book

The building of human towers (castells) is a centuries-old traditional sport where hundreds of men, women, and children gather in Catalan squares to create breathtaking edifices through a feat of collective athleticism. The result is a great spectacle of effort and overcoming, tension and release.

Catalonia's Human TowersĀ is an ethnographic look at the thriving castells practice—a symbol of Catalan cultural heritage and identity amid debates around national autonomy and secession from Spain. While the main function of building castells is to grow community through a low-cost, intergenerational, and inclusive leisure activity, Mariann Vaczi reveals how this unique sport also provides a social base, image, and vocabulary for the independence movement.

Highlighting the intersection of folklore, performance, and sport,Ā Catalonia's Human TowersĀ captures the subtle processes by which the body becomes politicized and ideology becomes embodied, with all the desires, risks and precarities of collective constructions.

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Yes, you can access Catalonia's Human Towers by Mariann Vaczi in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & European History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction: The Sisyphean Ascent
  8. Visual Glossary
  9. 1. From ā€œPeople of Farts and Burpsā€ to Crowning the Olympic Games
  10. 2. The Politics, Erotics, and Social Class of Touch and the Body
  11. 3. Risking the Fall in Political Rallies
  12. 4. Rivalry, Antagonism, and Identity among the Xiquets de Valls
  13. 5. Bones Have No Gender
  14. 6. The Grace in Every Child
  15. 7. At the Height of Death
  16. Epilogue: Rebuilding Towers in Messianic Times and the Global Pandemic
  17. Bibliography
  18. Index
  19. About the Author