For the past half-century economic anthropologists have been trying to come to terms with the obvious, recognised, indisputable fact that non-industrial economies “feel different” from industrial ones. How to express and communicate that difference? Some people thought they could do it sociologically, preserving as much as possible offormal economic theory, explaining deviation by invoking social influence on universalrationality, allowing the possibility that their evidence and insights might contributeto the proper development of a body of theory acknowledged imperfect and unstable (i). Others thought they could do it economically: they invoked distinct principles of integration and gave them an analytical status equal to rationality (2). For the most part different people took these rather different paths; they were academics and quickly engaged in controversy, tied labels to their opponents (formalist to the first, substantivist to the second) and held no truck with them. Firth alone tried to avoid entrenchment and was prepared to make propositions in both modes (3).

Ever since that time we have witnessed disturbances and we cannot but look forward with dread to even greater ones that we shall have to suffer for these and other reasons. An outbreak of violence is to be expected between our Empire and Hungary […] From Poland come news of lamentable discord between three brothers, the territorial princes. We hear of continuous battle among powerful lords in Lorraine. In our own country [i.e., Bavaria] the confusion of minds has become so abominable that robbery and arson throw everything into disorder not only on the ordinary days of the year but even on days of fasting and penitence, in utter disregard of divine and human law. So heavily are we burdened by the memory of past, the onslaught of present and the fear of future vicissitudes that we are fain to yield to the sentence of death which is our lot from the beginning and to tire of life.

The material which I will try to analyse is largely historical and relates to the initial period of Basque nationalism at the turn of the last century. Moreover, the historical material will be presented only cursorily since the main emphasis of the paper is theoretical. It is believed that the Basque nationalism of today is incomprehensible if there is no theoretical understanding of the factors which led to its emergence in the 1890s. Furthermore, this paper does not purport to prove its conclusions. It is rather a tentative exploration of one theoretical line which may or may not be eventually useful. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section presents the historical material. The second will give an analysis of the specific character of Basque nationalism. By modifying the theory of Ernest Gellner and illustrating with the Basque material, the third part will attempt to put nationalism into a general theoretical framework.

When Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society first appeared in English translation in 1933, it was greeted by a terse and scathing critique by Ellsworth Faris, who suggested that there was no empirical foundation to Durkheim's thesis, and that subsequent anthropological research—in the forty years since the publication of the book in French—had rendered the work redundant. In particular, Faris called attention to the fact that in primitive societies—in stark contradistinction to Durkheim's basic theme—there was much division of labor and very little repressive law.

One of the major areas of dispute among social scientists working with South Asian material has been over what criteria enable one to isolate and define those characteristics attaching to the phenomenon of caste by which it can be described and analysed. Some scholars posit a set of fundamental attributes pertaining to caste which are so constituted as to limit caste solely to a Hindu context, while other scholars postulate a series of primary principles which permit comparative undertakings. One of the most vigorous and sophisticated proponents advocating the limiting of caste to the Hindu social system is Dumont. Dumont denies the validity of applying the term caste to non-Hindu social systems because for him the essential structural principle underlying caste is the polar opposition of purity and impurity. Hierarchy arises because of and is structured by this polarity. In turn, the requisite condition permitting the development of pure hierarchy is that ritual status and secular power must be conceived as completely separate domains and that status be made superior to power, the priest taking precedence over the ruler (Dumont 1972, p. 114). Caste exists only where this necessary disjunction between status and power is present and, furthermore, this disjunction is only found within the Hindu social system.

“Last week it became apparent that the Soviet Union had determined to strike back with a diplomatic campaign of remarkably broad dimensions. Moscow's motivation appeared to be one of countering Peking's rising influence and increasing its own wherever possible” (Harrison Salisbury, The New York Times, Sept. 12, 1971).

In this paper I am concerned with the lack of consistency in the criteria embodied in the concepts used to identify social relations. There are two main elements: what we can call the indigenous ideology and the observer's characterisation. In the former case we are dealing with role definition, more or less formalised in different cases and with cultural norms which define the scope of a relationship; in the latter, regularities of observed behaviour and their politico-economic significance are the basis for classification. Examples of concepts based on the former are relations of kinship; of the latter, pairs of terms like leader and follower, patron and client. It is to the last of these that this paper is devoted, for it is precisely in those areas where the ideas of the actors are given least weight in our analysis that our ethnocentric perceptions cause analytical confusion.

This paper seeks to provide a sociological account of one aspect of a highly significant redefinition of the moral boundaries of English society: a redefinition which saw the transformation of insanity from a vague, culturally defined phenomenon afflicting an unknown, but probably small, portion of the total population into a condition which could only be authoritatively diagnosed, certified, and dealt with by a group of legally recognized experts and which was now seen as one of the major forms of deviance in English society. Where in the eighteenth century only the most violent and destructive amongst those now labelled insane would have been segregated and confined apart from the rest of the community, by the mid-nineteenth century, with the achievement of lunacy ‘reform’, the asylum was endorsed as the sole officially approved response to the problems posed by all forms of mental illness. In what follows, I want to focus attention rather closely on one centrally important feature of this whole process—and that is just how that segment of the medical profession which we now call psychiatry captured control over insanity; or, to put it another way, how those known in the early nineteenth century as mad-doctors first acquired a monopolistic power to define and treat lunatics. I shall begin, though, with some general remarks on the sociological importance of the issues I shall be raising here.

Definitions of insanity and the treatment of those identified as mentally ill have been more obviously subject to changes in social values and ideas of individual responsibility than any other category of clinically recognised illness. These changes have exercised a significant influence upon the relationship of psychological to physical medicine and, inter alia, the status of psychiatry as a scientific and authoritative source of medical treatment and social labelling. The present trend towards the integration and expansion of psychiatry within general and community medicine has resulted in the increasing involvement of psychiatry in the problems of social life. A wide spectrum of deviant and socially disturbing behaviour, previously considered largely as legal or moral problems, is now seen and treated as a symptom of illness and explained in medical terms.