The commune of Sainte-Engrace extends along a mountain valley in the southeastern corner of Soule, one of the three Basque provinces in France. In The Circle of Mountains, Sandra Ott examines the importance of cooperation and reciprocity as the essential basis for the main institutions within this community. These French Basques visualize their community as circle, and their vision of living in the "circle of mountains," rather than in a valley, reflects their perspective on the society in which they live.The first half of the book incorporates material on history, ecology, and economy, and delves deeply into the domestic organization kinship, and neighborliness of this Basque community. In the second half of the book, the author introduces the males' customary roles as shepherds and cheesemakers. Following a detailed commentary on these vocations, Ott suggests that these seemingly prosaic activities represent the male attempt at symbolic fulfillment of the female procreative and nurturing roles.In a new afterword, Ott discusses developments that have impacted life in the pastoral community of Sainte-Engrace since the original publication of this book - including the construction of roads to nearly every home and the acquisition of telephones.The Circle of Mountains will be of interest not only to social anthropologists but also to those concerned with the Basque language and culture and to scholars and students of ethnology, international studies, and political science.

The Circle of Mountains: A Basque Shepherding Community

Politics & Social Sciences

Ott, Sandra

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

War, Judgment, And Memory In The Basque Borderlands, 1914-1945 (The Basque Series)

During the first half of the twentieth century, the French Basque province of Xiberoa was a place of refuge, conflict, and foreign occupation. With the liberation of France in 1944, many Xiberoans faced new conflicts arising from legal and civic judgments made during Vichy and German occupation. War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands traces the roots of their divided memories of the era to local and official interpretations of judgment, behavior, and justice during those troubled times.   In order to understand how the Great War affected the Xiberoan Basques’ perceptions of themselves, Ott contrasts the experiences of people in four different communities located within a fifteen-mile radius. The author also examines how the disruption during the interwar years affected intracommunity relations during the Occupation, the Liberation, and its aftermath. This narrative reveals the diverse ways in which Basques responded to civil war, world war, and displacement, and to one another.

War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914-1945 (The Basque Series)

History

Europe

University of Nevada Press

In this work, ethnographer Sandra Ott examines a pastoral French-Basque community to study the impact of modern day developments on their society.

The Circle of Mountains: A Basque Shepherding Community (The Basque Series)

During the first half of the twentieth century, the French Basque province of Xiberoa was a place of refuge, conflict, transit, exile and foreign occupation. At the Liberation of France in 1944, many Xiberoans confronted ongoing local divisiveness, rooted in the interwar years, and faced new conflicts arising from legal and civic judgments made during Vichy and German occupation. This book traces the roots of their divided memories to local and official interpretations of what constituted legitimate judgment, legitimate behavior and justice during those troubled times. In order to capture a sense of the diverse ways in which Xiberoan Basques responded to the Germans in their midst, the author explores and contrasts the experiences of people in four different communities located within a fifteen mile radius.

Living with the Enemy: German Occupation, Collaboration and Justice in the Western Pyrenees, 1940–1948

In post-liberation France, the French courts judged the cases of more than one hundred thousand people accused of aiding and abetting the enemy during the Second World War. In this fascinating book, Sandra Ott uncovers the hidden history of collaboration in the Pyrenean borderlands of the Basques and the Béarnais in southwestern France through nine stories of human folly, uncertainty, ambiguity, ambivalence, desire, vengeance, duplicity, greed, self-interest, opportunism and betrayal. Covering both the occupation and liberation periods, she reveals how the book's characters became involved with the occupiers for a variety of reasons, ranging from a desire to settle scores and to gain access to power, money and material rewards, to love, friendship, fear and desperation. These wartime lives and subsequent postwar reckonings provide us with a new lens through which to understand human behavior under the difficult conditions of occupation, and the subsequent search for retribution and justice.

Cambridge University Press

In A Book of the Basques, Rodney Gallop notes that, “one Englishman, and one alone, has lived long enough among the Basques to write with authority upon their character, customs and language: the Reverend Wentworth Webster.” Based on information that Webster collected from servants and other domestics in the closed world of the nineteenth-century Basque etxe (house, but with a meaning much more powerful and comprehensive than we expect from the English word), especially from Stephana Hirigaray, who he employed as a maid in the Basque Country. As a French Basque woman with rural roots, Stephana Hirigaray had more than stories to give to her employer. She had an insider’s knowledge of the culture in which those stories were embedded. Hirigaray belonged to a Basque moral community in which Basque master/servant relationships were notably equal. In rural Basque culture, servants ate at the same table as their employers, who considered them as members of the family. Thus, the master/servant relationship between Webster and Hirigaray is likely to have been influenced by that Basque emphasis on equality. First published in 1877, Basque Legends consists of more than forty-six stories (and variations thereof) that feature supernatural figures such as the Tartaro or Cyclops, the Seven-Headed Serpent, and Basque fairies known as lamiñak. In addition, Webster collected stories about witches and sorcery, animal tales (such as “Acheria, the Fox”), fairy tales, and religious tales. It also contains an original essay on the Basque language by Julien Vinson, an in-depth collection of Basque poetry, and a modern introduction by Sandra Ott.

Basque Legends: Collected, Chiefly, in the Labourd (Basque Classics Series)

Webster, Wentworth

Center for Basque Studies Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ott, Sandra. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ott, Sandra

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ott, Sandra. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Circle of Mountains: A Basque Shepherding Community

War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914-1945 (The Basque Series)

The Circle of Mountains: A Basque Shepherding Community (The Basque Series)

War, Judgment, And Memory In The Basque Borderlands, 1914-1945 (The Basque Series)

Living with the Enemy: German Occupation, Collaboration and Justice in the Western Pyrenees, 1940–1948

Living with the Enemy: German Occupation, Collaboration and Justice in the Western Pyrenees, 1940–1948

Basque Legends: Collected, Chiefly, in the Labourd (Basque Classics Series)