PLENARY SESSION I

July 16 / 11 a.m. - 12.45 p.m. / Auditório Francisco Sampaio (ESTG/IPVC)

ITINERÂNCIAS ENTRE MINHO E GALIZA: ETNOGRAFIAS E TEORIA [Session in Portuguese]

Chair: João Vasconcelos (ICS–ULisboa)
Speakers: António Medeiros (Iscte–IUL), Luzia Oca González (USC), João Pina-Cabral (ICS–ULisboa), Paula Godinho (NOVA FCSH)

Nesta sessão de “conversas a norte”, convidamos quatro especialistas no Alto Minho e na Galiza a analisar conjuntamente as permanências e transformações que a etnografia lhes tem permitido acompanhar – na economia, na ocupação do território e na paisagem, nos processos migratórios e suas consequências, nas práticas culturais. Num território tradicionalmente marcado pela ruralidade, pelo minifúndio, pela centralidade da casa na reprodução social e pela preeminência das mulheres, o que mudou nos últimos cinquenta anos? E o que persiste? Um segundo eixo da abordagem diz respeito às continuidades e descontinuidades entre Galiza e Minho e à fronteira entre ambas as regiões, que tanto separa como estabelece uma permanente zona de contacto. Conversando sobre estes temas, desafiamos também os nossos interlocutores a refletir, a partir das suas pesquisas, acerca das itinerâncias dos olhares e da teorização antropológica sobre o Noroeste peninsular nas décadas recentes. Participam nesta sessão plenária Luzia Oca González (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela–Lugo), que aborda mobilidades e migrações através da diáspora cabo-verdiana entre Galiza e Portugal; João Pina-Cabral (ICS–ULisboa), que revisita os temas da terra, propriedade e género no Alto Minho e na teoria antropológica; Paula Godinho (NOVA FCSH), que nos traz a sua experiência de trabalho na raia, na Galiza e no Couto Misto para conceptualizar fronteiras, políticas de identidade e transições geracionais; e António Medeiros (Iscte–IUL), com um novo olhar sobre regionalismos, nacionalismos e fronteira.

João Pina-Cabral
Onde situar o Noroeste? Entre mediterranismo e feminismo nos anos 70.

Paula Godinho
E se falássemos do futuro? Couto Misto e outras possibilidades.

António Medeiros
No Noroeste: algumas imaginações da “terra”.

Luzia Oca González
Repensando género, transnacionalidade e colonialismo a partir das migrações cabo-verdianas na Galiza.

João Pina-Cabral is Senior Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and Emeritus Professor at the School of Anthropology and Nature Conservation at the University of Kent. He was co-founder and president of the Portuguese Anthropology Association and the European Association of Social Anthropologists. He was president of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Social Sciences (1997-2004) and director of the journal Análise Social (2011-2014). He was Director of the School of Anthropology and Nature Conservation at the University of Kent (2012-2015). He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Portugal, Macau, Mozambique and Bahia (Brazil). Among other things, his work has concerned: person, kinship and family; religion, symbolism and power; ethnicity and the post-colonial condition; ethnographic theory. Main publications: Filhos de Adão, Filhas de Eva (1989), Os Contextos da Antropologia (1991, 2nd ed. 2018), Aromas de Urze de Lama (1992, 2nd ed. 2008), Em Terra de Tufões (1993), O Homem na Família (2003), Between China and Europe (2002), Gente Livre (2013, co-authored with Vanda Aparecida da Silva), Transcolonial (2023). In his most recent publications - World: An Anthropological Examination (2017, Malinowski Prize), Metapersons:Transcendence and Life (forthcoming) - he develops the conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture, namely in its relation to personal transcendence. His most recent articles have been published in journals such as Anthropological Theory, Anthropology Today, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Social Anthropology, Social Analysis, Critique of Anthropology, Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology.

Paula Godinho is an anthropologist, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of NOVA University Lisbon and a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History. She is the founder of the Ibero-American Resistance and/or Memory Network. Xesús Taboada Chivite Prize, 2008 (Galicia). She has carried out fieldwork in Portugal (Trás-os-Montes and Ribatejo), on the border, in Galicia and in Ceará. She has several publications in Portugal, Spain, Brazil and Argentina, including Memória da Resistência Rural no Sul (Couço, 1958-1962), 2001 (reed. 2025); O Leito e as Margens: Estratégias familiares de renovação e situações liminares no Alto Trás-os-Montes raiano, 2006; Festas de Inverno no Nordeste de Portugal: Património, mercantilização e aporias da cultura popular, 2010; ‘Oír o Galo Cantar Dúas Veces’: Identificacións locais, culturas das marxes e construción de nacións na fronteira entre Portugal e Galicia, 2011 (Portuguese edition in 2021); O Futuro é para Sempre: Experience, expectation and possible practices, 2017; Between the Impossible and the Necessary: Hope and rebellion in the journeys of landless women in Ceará, 2020; The Impossible Takes Longer: Anthropology for the future, cold currents of reality and warm currents of hope, 2025.

Luzia Oca González is an anthropologist who has been a professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela since 2022, after a long teaching career at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD). She is a researcher at the Institute of Studies and Development of Galicia at USC. She was president of the Galician Anthropology Association and a member of the Documentation Centre on Equality and Feminisms of the Galician Culture Council. Her fieldwork has mainly taken place between Galicia and Cape Verde, following the migratory flow between the island of Santiago and the town of Burela (Lugo). In Portugal she worked on gender and tourism in the Douro region and on violence against women from a feminist perspective. She has taken part in various social interventions with the Cape Verdean community in Galicia and within the framework of international cooperation in her home towns. Her publications include the book Cabo-verdianas na Galiza (1978/2008). Migrations, gender and social intervention (Vicente Risco Social Sciences Prize 2014), based on her doctoral thesis. Her most recent publication is a dossier on ‘Gender and care in the Cape Verdean transnational experience’, in the journal Etnográfica (2025). She is part of the group ‘Mulheres à Fronte’, which develops collaborative research projects on migration, gender, development and transnationality, dialoguing with creation through music, photography and audiovisuals, based on her long ethnographic experience. (https://www.mulleresafronte.gal/).

António Medeiros is an anthropologist, lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Iscte-IUL and researcher at Iscte's Centre for International Studies. He has been carrying out fieldwork in Minho and Galicia for a long time, focusing on nationalisms and regionalisms, the history of Portuguese ethnography and the politics of culture and heritage. His publications include the books A Moda do Minho: Um ensaio antropológico (2004), Dois Lados de um Rio: Nacionalismo e etnografia na Galiza e em Portugal (2006, transl. esp. 2007, transl. ing. 2013), Uma Imagem da Nação: Traje à Vianesa (co-authored with Benjamim Pereira and João Alpuim Botelho, 2009), and Outros Celtas: Celtismo, modernidade e música global em Espanha e Portugal (co-organised with Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco and Susana Moreno-Fernández, 2023), as well as the thematic dossier ‘Iberian entanglements: foods, rites, heritage policies’ (co-organised with Jorge Freitas Branco, Trabalhos de Antropologia e Etnologia, 2018).

João Vasconcelos is a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. In the 1990s, he carried out fieldwork in Alto Minho, especially in the Serra de Arga, on local Catholicism, pilgrimages and religious festivals, folklorisation and the heritagisation of culture. Since 2000, she has been carrying out historical and ethnographic research in Cape Verde on religion, identity practices and discourses and, more recently, on labour migration. His publications on Alto Minho include the text of the catalogue O Tempo da Festa (1997), vol. 2 of the book Romarias: Um Inventário dos Santuários de Portugal (1998), the articles "Tempos remotos: the presence of the past in the objectification of local culture‘ (Etnográfica, 1997), ’Aesthetics and politics of folklore‘ (Análise Social, 2001), ’Custom and costume at a late 1950s Marian shrine in Northwest Portugal‘ (Etnográfica, 2005), and the chapter ’O povo enquanto libido no folclorismo poético de Pedro Homem de Melo (1904-1984)" (in Vozes do Povo: A folclorização em Portugal, 2003).