Open AccessFROM DESIRE TO ENDURANCE: Hanging on in a Spanish Village
Author(s) -
WEISS HADAS
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
cultural anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.669
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1548-1360
pISSN - 0886-7356
DOI - 10.14506/ca37.1.07
Subject(s) - humanities , ideology , capitalism , livelihood , agency (philosophy) , sociology , political science , politics , art , history , law , social science , archaeology , agriculture
Comparing a Spanish village in the 1960s and 1980s, Jane Collier analyzed how the different ways of making a living in those decades generated distinct dispositions: from abiding by duty to pursuing desire. I revisited this village to explore the ideological contours of finance‐led capitalism and the livelihoods it enables in rural Andalusia. I found that villagers’ struggles to hang on, arrested in a present in which property carries over insufficient value from the past, and work offers no path to progress in the future, are redeemed by a discourse of endurance. I trace its material underpinnings to constraints imposed on work and property and demonstrate how it renders villagers’ struggles as an accomplishment rather than an affliction. I also use this ethnography to make a case for studying contemporary attitudes as reflections of ideology, rather than as expressions of political agency.