Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Pride Parades in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville in 2009 (although I have attended and studied Madrid Pride since 2006) and different in-depth interviews with the organizing associations and participants, I have presented two papers related with: the seduction of the difference, 1st Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network Conference, Lisbon, Portugal; identity re-construction in a globalized context in connection with the different and imaginative strategies of mobilisation that are displayed in contemporary Spanish LGTB parading, EASA 2010: Crisis and imagination Maynooth, Ireland; A third paper in Spanish and about collective action in the context of globalization: Between the construction of social movements and the mobilization’s outcomes, at the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology, 2010, Sociology on the move, International Sociological Association, Gothenburg, Sweden.
In Lisbon I discussed how, through exposition and exhibition of gendered bodies, difference is constructed in a shared space and a shared time. The construction of ‘Otherness’ in these conditions through sexuality and genders, the seduction of this difference, has proved to be highly appealing not only for participants but also for audience of LGTB parades. The ‘seductive’ difference displayed by sexual dissidents at parades, is stressed once one realizes that what is now exposed, was, not so many years ago, stigmatized and criminalized. This fact, as well as exaggerated markers of ‘otherness’ such as gender-crossing and hyper-gendered bodies displayed at parades (that will be analyzed in-depth) seduce and attract tourists, have an economic and social bias that have to be put into consideration.
In Maynooth, I consider that, in a context of increasing legal equality (including same-sex marriage) and depoliticization of public life, sexual dissidents and LGTB activism in Spain have had to face important changes in identity re-presentation and have adopted new strategies in identity-related practices. All these changes can be seen in LGTB parading. I studied the variations between discourses and practices through the analysis of the Madrid and Barcelona Pride parades in relation to the organizational aspects, institutional support and founding LGTB activism discourses in both cities, as they have adopted different discursive and organizational strategies. This bring to the fore issues related to re-presentation, sociality, consumption and, therefore, identity re-construction in a globalized context in connection with the different and imaginative strategies of mobilisation that are displayed in contemporary Spanish LGTB parading.