Living Boundaries: Frontiers and Identity in the Basque Country

In Living Boundaries, Zoe Bray studies the construction of identity in Bidasoa-Txingudi, a small Basque region straddling the international frontier between France and Spain and comprised of the towns of Hendaia, Irun and Hondarribia. Taking as a focal point a cross-frontier cooperation project designed to transcend national, cultural, social and political differences in a context of disappearing frontiers and attempts to promote European integration, the book analyzes the way politicians draw on ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ for popular legitimacy and the obstacles that impeded the development of a sense of common togetherness. Following the tradition of social anthropological research, the book is laced with rich ethnographic accounts tied to contemporary socio-political issues. It challenges ideas of fixed identity among people who belong to apparently homogenous groups and suggests rethinking the concept of identity in terms of a configuration of boundaries that constantly drawn, crossed and reinterpreted in the course of everyday social interaction. For this new edition, the author presents a new preface and afterword discussing the evolution of the area and of the research project since the book’s original publication in 2004 and leading to the conclusion that as old boundaries disappear, human beings erect new ones, providing a rich and changing landscape of identities in this singular region. Zoe Bray is a researcher and artists based in Reno, Nevada. She obtained her PhD from the European University Institute in 2002. She has published numerous articles in academic journals and newspapers and has been active in grassroots initiatives in the Basque Country and in the European Union.