The Basque Conflict Globally Speaking: Material Culture, Media and Basque Identity in the Wider World

This article explores the interplay between global and local determinants through the Basque conflict. It demonstrates that self-determination movements among the Palestinians and Irish Republicans are comparatively similar to the Basque cause in material expressions of political identity and by conveying their nationalist sentiments through the agencies of different mediums. In addition, the impact of 11 September on separatist struggles like the Basque one is discussed. Throughout it is argued that material culture as much as media are significant conduits to political relationships between objects and sentiment, as well as images and reality whereby these associations become modes of "political consumption" by political actors. As a result, political images and objects have "value potential" to transform society and are projected as material products in banners, posters, graffiti, jewellery and clothing or through varying mediums of communication such as the Internet, television broadcasts, video testimonies and other forms, in order to reinforce political ideology.