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

Abstract

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'.