ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Social Anthropology and Basque Studies in Spain as they portray academic constructions of cultural selfness and otherness. Social Anthropology and Basque Studies have followed different paths in their making, for they are the outcome of separate historical circumstances. And even today they hold disconnected institutional frameworks and goals. Social Anthropology was initiated in the mid-1980s as a university degree in Spain. It has a very short life which is tightly fixed to nationwide guides and research policies coming from the Ministry of Education in Madrid. In contrast, a scholarly oriented Basque Studies Society was founded in Oinati, Gipuzkoa, as early as 1918. Local Basque associations, political parties and cultural institutions promoted the Basque Studies Society, which they did as a way to accomplish a three-bounded aim: first, to favour research and studies on Basque history, culture, society and language; second, to favour studies on decentralised politics promoting debates towards a Basque political autonomy; and finally, to favour the creation of a Basque University. Nonetheless, there was not a public university in the Spanish Basque country till the 1980s, and the Basque Studies Society stopped its activities in Spain in 1939 just after the fascist militaryAlzamiento Nacional triumphed over the previous republican government. However, the Basque Studies Society re-established its activities in 1974, precisely one year before the dictator Francisco Franco died and the democratisation process was taken up in the country.
