The making of saudade. National identity and ethnic psychology in Portugal

Roots and rituals.The construction of ethnic identities, Ton Dekker, John Helsloot Carla Wijers editors, p. 267-268; Selected papers of the 6TH SIEF conference on 'Roots & rituals', Amsterdam 20-25 April 1998.

Saudade can be considered a successful 'invented tradition' in reference to some specific social and cultural milieus where a particular version of Portugueseness has developed. From this point of view, saudade should be regarded as an example of a more widespread tendency present in other processes of construction and circulation of national symbols and stereotypes: although directed towards the whole national population, they are in fact selectively appropriated by specific cultural and social groups who reproduce them as particular symbols of their own sense of a more general feeling: that of 'being national'.

Ministery of the Flemish Community