Dancing to belong

Discover the fourth session of the 2024-2025 Americanist Anthropology Seminar: Dancing to belong. Patronal festivals and identification processes in the Peruvian Andes.

"This presentation looks at the link between dance in the patronal celebrations of Andean communities in central Peru and the local construction of belonging. Based on an ethnography conducted between 2016 and 2019 in the province of Cajatambo, the aim will be to understand, from a contextual, interactional and multiscalar perspective, how festive and dance practices constitute a dynamic space where modalities of identification, self-representation, differentiation, interaction and power are played out. The mobilization of a musical and dance repertoire, claimed as specific, constitutes an essential resource for identification and categorization in the Andes. As bodily, kinesthetic and emotional experiences, dance and ritual act on the individual and his or her self-identification. But festive practices are also central to the way in which groups form and position themselves in relation to one another. Belongings are multiple, and the processes of identification, distinction and categorization are played out differently depending on whether we consider the peasant community, the village, the district, the province or the country. The aim is therefore to consider belonging as a complex, dynamic, shifting and contextual process."

• Flora Baudry (URMIS)
• Discussant: Michael Houseman (EPHE)