Small Nation,Big Sport: Basque Ball – Its Past and Present Cultural Meanings for the Basques

Abstract

The Basques are a nation living in the Basque Country – a territory that is divided between two states – France and Spain. Isolated in the mountainous terrain they have preserved their original culture and collective identity. However, they still need to struggle for recognition, using some elements of their own culture to promote their identity and reject their status as a peripheral region of Spain or France. One of such elements is sport, especially so-called ‘traditional sports’ which this nation has preserved over centuries. The aim of this paper is thus to analyze one example of such a sport – Basque ball and its historical and present situation, connections with other elements of culture and its socio-cultural importance for the Basques.     

Coordination between vocalizations,gestures and prosody before the start of verbal communication: evidence from the Basque language / Coordinación entre vocalizaciones,gestos y prosodia antes del inicio de la comunicación verbal: evidencias desde la lengua vasca

There is a major debate in the scholarly literature on whether early vocalizations imitate the mother tongue (L1) and whether prosody is an emerging feature of intentional communication. This longitudinal study explores the combinatory patterns of gestures and vocalizations of four Basque children aged 0:7 to 1:1 in the protoconversational stage. A total of 1,043 communicative acts were labelled (noting the kind of communication, the eye contact and the type of gestures), in which a total of 581 vocalizations were pragmatically and acoustically codified (marking the length and tonal range). The results showed that before they produce their first words, the children show a predominant pattern, tending to combine the deictic gestures with eye contact with the interlocutor. Furthermore, the children are capable of choosing specific prosodic signals — such as length and tonal range — to expression the intentionality of their vocalizations. This suggests that some prosodic features work as procedural antecedents in the process of constructing oral compositions.     

以职业教育托起民族经济——浅议西班牙巴斯克自治区的职业教育

西班牙正在遭受经济衰退,公共开支大幅消减和平均25%的高失业率的重重压力,而位于其北部的巴斯克自治区却依旧保持着9%的失业率和经济稳定增长的活力,是什么让西班牙南北区域经济发展有着如此大的差异?是什么让这个人口仅两百一十万的地区成为西班牙主要工业区之一,对国内政治经济产生巨大影响?本文通过介绍和分析西班牙巴斯克地区的职业教育特色,旨在对我国正在不断探索和发展中的职业教育有所提示。     

Social identification and acculturation in the Basque Autonomous Community

Basque origin undergraduates in four universities of the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) completed the Host Community Acculturation Scale (HCAS) in three life domains: marriage, culture, and work. Undergraduates with a strong Basque identity (N = 308) and those with a strong dual Basque-Spanish identity (N = 219) completed the HCAS towards the co-national Spanish minority and “devalued” Moroccan immigrants residing in the BAC. Results indicate that (1) undergraduates have a preference for individualism and integrationism towards Spanish co-nationals and Moroccans; (2) Strong Dual identifiers endorse individualism and integrationism more than Strong Basque identifiers towards Spanish co-nationals; (3) Strong Dual identifiers favored Spanish co-nationals over Moroccan immigrants in their acculturation orientations, whereas Strong Basque identifiers endorsed more welcoming acculturation orientations towards Moroccans than towards Spanish co-nationals; and (4) undergraduates endorsed more individualism, integrationism, and assimilationism in the work domain, while they endorsed more segregationism and exclusionism in the culture domain. Results are discussed using the Interactive Acculturation Model.     

Co-operatives and education in the Basque Country: the ikastolas in the final years of Franco’s dictatorship

This article analyses the creation of the schools called ikastolas throughout the Basque Country from the 1960s onwards. The name ikastola refers to a unique school model whose major characteristic is to teach the majority of subjects in the Basque language, or euskera. It outlines the reasons why some of these schools took a co-operative organisational form and describes their major characteristics. The first part analyses the opportunities created under the Francoist regime for this kind of school, despite the repressive character of the dictatorship in other fields. The second part of the paper examines the important influence of the Mondragón co-operative movement, especially through its financial institution, in the creation of these educational co-operatives. The third and last part emphasises the role played by social mobilisation in defence of the Basque language in the creation of these schools and how this factor tied in with a co-operative governance system.     

Future Business Innovation in Minority Language Media

This article investigates innovation in the media business models that some European minority-language news organizations are implementing in these times of economic crisis. It entails a shift in the underlying business and service philosophy which interpellates the community and pleads for a change in their mutual relationship. The research is based on the case studies of two private media companies from the Catalan and Basque language media systems that were experiencing economic and financial difficulties. Conducting inspirational advertising campaigns, the news organizations issued a call for readers and non-readers to make a funding commitment to the project, a pledge to provide new revenues and liaisons, while retaining and enhancing the standard income streams. In brief, it is about going back to the basics of active community projects and involvement.