This paper sets out to plot the contributions of feminism(s) to the evolution of Basque anthropology, stemming from the development of the discipline in post-Franco Spain, and its establishment in the newly created University of the Basque Country.
I argue that women have been crucial to Basque anthropology, following pioneer, Teresa del Valle, pivotal in the promotion of the discipline as a whole and feminist anthropology in particular (see the documentary Pioneras, Mendioroz 2021). She laid the foundations for undergraduate and postgraduate anthropological studies, growing into a highly successful Masters and Doctoral programmes in Feminist and Gender Studies. A module in feminist anthropology, shared with students of a Social Anthropology Masters, gives us ground to consider change in the anthropological canon, however local.
Del Valle’s research (subject of a summer course in 2021, publication in progress) brought a feminist perspective to the androcentric study of Basqueness by iconic figures, José Miguel Barandiaran and Julio Caro Baroja, challenging the matriarchal theory and proposing new interpretations of a myth that essentialized women’s role and misinterpreted their power. Others would take up notions of agency and subjectivity in relation to sexuality and the body - including Mari Luz Esteban, one of Spain’s leading (feminist) anthropologists today – or latterly, decolonial epistemologies.
The situation of Basque feminist anthropology (see Bullen’s Basque Gender Studies, 2003, update in progress as Basque Feminist Studies) was evidenced at the I Feminist Anthropology Conference in Spain organized by the Feminist Anthropology Research Network (AFIT) in June 2022. An opportunity to reflect on feminist anthropology, to consider synergies with activism and with other areas of the discipline, in the Basque Country and beyond, in other parts of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and Latin America.
