¡Viva Jerez! Enjeux Esthétiques et Politiques de la Patrimonialisation de la Culture by Hélène Giguère (review)

iViva Jerez! Enjeux Esthetiques et Politiques de la Patrimonialisation de la Culture. By Helene Giguere. (Quebec: Les presses de l'universite Laval, 2010. Pp. x +386, preface, illustrations, maps, annex, glossary).Flamenco and wine. One wonders what a dance and alcohol have in common. As far as their effects are concerned, the association may be obvious: both possess the power to incite the human heart to action. But they also share a location that provides the title of Helene Giguere's recent work of socio-cultural anthropology, iViva Jerez! In this book the author offers a rich and detailed insight into these two aspects of Jerez de la Frontera culture. Giguere is a social anthropologist and ethnologist who has studied Andalusian traditions extensively, attending particularly to the culture of Jerez. Overall, the volume, written in French and complemented by photos, explanatory charts, glossary, and a valuable bibliography, is an excellent ethnographic work. It worth noting, however, that the book is addressed to a rather narrow audience of aficionados sufficiently familiar with the subject to appreciate Giguere's original material and insights.The book is divided into three parts. First, since local traditions cannot be understood in isolation from their historical context, the author provides an ethnohistory of the area of Jerez de la Frontera. She documents concisely the historical, social, and cultural events that contributed to the identity of the territory. The second and third parts form the core of the book. These central sections constitute essentially a comparative research project focused on the major components of Andalusian heritage. By exploring the key symbols and practices that have become emblematic of the Andalusian region-namely, the bodega and its product, Jerez-Xeres-Sherry wine, and flamenco-Giguere examines the various ways in which local institutions have intensified their interest in immaterial cultural patrimony as expressions of collective identity, diversity, and creativity. The final focus of the study is a reflection on how heritage, when touched by entrepreneurship, commerce, or tourism, risks being transformed into a cultural product and so trivialized, with its originality and integrity undermined. In this context, Giguere discusses the struggle to preserve the integrity of the flamenco and the wine by means of preserving the duende, the trance-like spirit of the dance, and the crianza, Jerez's special wineaging process. She documents as well the institutional pressures on local producers to commodify, publicize, and market these local specialties, to make them more widely accessible by removing them from the private and local spheres.The second part of the book begins with a remarkable discussion of the constitutive features of flamenco. Giguere provides samples of cantes flamenco (flamenco songs) and describes the style, circumstances, and location in which performances occur. …

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