Eliza, Herri-kultura eta politika. Besta-berri Ipar Euskal Herrian

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse links existing between “popular religion” and social construction of ethnic identity in the French Basque case. It tries to show how a religious/civil custom, the Corpus celebration, can easily become a political issue in a context of ideological polarization, as was the conflict between Church and State in the third French republic. It also shows that actual debates over the becoming of this celebration still ask the problematic of relations between the catholic church and local identities, as multiples as they are. This short work has to be replaced in a more general context of a reflexion about the incidence of secularization/laïcisation processes on development of ethnic identity in several western countries.