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Blessed Bread, ‘First Neighbours’ and Asymmetric Exchange in the Basque Country
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
The ritual giving of blessed bread is a phenomenon that has been reported to take a variety of forms in time and space in western Europe. While recognizing these variations and the problem they ultimately present to social anthropologists, I shall examine only one particular form of the ritual in this paper; for, until we have understood the sociological and ideological basis of the practice in one community, we cannot begin to treat the more challenging problem of how to account for variations and transformations in the ritual that have occurred in several different European societies. The purpose of this paper is to show how one form of the blessed bread ritual was coherently and systematically linked with particular institutions and ritual obligations in the French Basque commune of Sainte-Engrâce.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , June 1980 , pp. 40 - 58
- Copyright
- Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1980
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