Description
| Product ID: | 9780253067166 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Title: | Catalonia's Human Towers |
| Subtitle: | Castells, Cultural Politics, and the Struggle toward the Heights |
| Authors: | Author: Mariann Vaczi |
| Page Count: | 280 |
| Subjects: | European history, European history, Folklore studies / Study of myth (mythology), Social and cultural anthropology, Extreme sports, Folklore, myths & legends, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Extreme sports |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating The building of human towers (castells) is a centuries-old competitive practice 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 suffering and overcoming, tension and release. Catalonia's Human Towers is an ethnographic look at the thriving castells practice—a symbol of Catalan cultural heritage and identity amid debates around autonomy versus subsummation by the Spanish state. While the main function of building castells is to grow community through a low-cost, intergenerational, and inclusive leisure activity, Mariann Vaczi reveals that this unique sport also provides a social base, image, and vocabulary for the pro-independence movement. Highlighting the intersection of folklore, performance, and self-determination, Catalonia's Human Towers captures the subtle and unconscious processes by which the body becomes politicized and ideology becomes embodied, with all the risks and precarities of collective constructions. |
| Imprint Name: | Indiana University Press |
| Publisher Name: | Indiana University Press |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2023-09-05 |