Abstract

CAPUCHA, Luís. Barrancos na ribalta, ou a metáfora de um país em mudança. Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas [online]. 2002, n.39, pp.9-38. ISSN 0873-6529.

During the autumn festivals in Barrancos, a small border town in the south of Portugal, bulls are sacrificed in honour of Our Lady of the Conception despite the existence of a law that prohibits bullfights in which the animals are killed. In the past the Barrancos festivals had been the object of occasional anthropological studies, but little was ever heard about them other than that a small group of people attended them year after year. Suddenly, one summer they became the central focus of both political and media attention. The recent history of Barrancos is a paradigmatic example of the way that in the modern world a small township’s local festival charged with a strong symbolism can be blown up and turned into a national phenomenon that touches on issues of symbolic power, cultural domination and cultural rights.

Keywords : Cultural rights; bullfight; the Barrancos case.

        · abstract in Portuguese | French | Spanish     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )