La hispanidad. The Idea of Spanish National Primacy Cover Image

La hispanidad. Idea prymatu narodu hiszpańskiego
La hispanidad. The Idea of Spanish National Primacy

Author(s): Maja Biernacka
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: la hispanidad; collective memory; ideology; nation; multiculturalism; power; collective interests; symbolic compensation

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the process and mechanisms of constructing the concept of the Spanish nation on the territories of the multicultural Iberian Peninsula, accompanied by the ideology of its moral supremacy which entailed a civilizational mission expressed in the term la hispanidad, nowadays anachronistic and politically incorrect in Spain. This centralistic project had been constructed over centuries predominantly due to the pretensions of the dominant political agents, whose claims were based upon the imagery of the supremacy of Spanishness, i.e. la hispanidad and accredited by their self-portrayal as its veracious emissaries. Through the analysis of the interests of collective social actors, power distribution, exchange of benefits within the stratification system and the interdependence of culture and its material underpinning the article exposes shortcomings of normativism in sociology which implicitly objectivize moral norms.

  • Issue Year: 194/2009
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 109-134
  • Page Count: 26
  • Language: Polish