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Outside the imagined community: Basque terrorism, political activism and the Tour de France

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 01:16 authored by Palmer, C
Since its publication more than a decade ago, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities has offered an enticing, if romantic, way of conceptualising nationalism. Fine-grained ethnographic analysis, however, of the ways in which local populations actually imagine their community raises some questions for the continuing viability of such a notion. In many places around the world, people consciously and conspicuously place themselves outside of the imagined community, and it is the social, cultural, and political consequences of such actions that this article seeks to explore. Drawing on a period of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in France in the mid-1990s, this article examines very public contestation and sabotage of the Tour de France by pro-Basque supporters. This specific case study of political activism through sport provides a compelling example of the ways in which a dominant symbol of French national identity is usurped and upstaged by a minority group so as to reinvent or re-imagine a new kind of community.

History

Publication title

Sociology of Sport Journal

Volume

18

Pagination

143-161

ISSN

0741-1235

Department/School

School of Social Sciences

Publisher

Human Kinetics Publ Inc

Place of publication

1607 N Market St, Champaign, USA, Il, 61820-2200

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Organised sports

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