The Festivalization Of Culture

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The Festivalization of Culture explores the links between various local and global cultures, communities, identities and lifestyle narratives as they are both constructed and experienced in the festival context. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from Australia and Europe, festivals are examined as sites for the performance and critique of lifestyle, identity and cultural politics; as vehicles for the mobilization and cementation of local and global communities; and as spatio-temporal events that inspire and determine meaning in people's lives. Investigating the manner in which festivals are no longer merely periodic, cultural, religious or historical events within communities, but rather a popular means through which citizens consume and experience culture, this book also sheds light on the increasing diversity of contemporary societies and the role played by festivals as sites of cohesion, cultural critique and social mobility. As such, this book will be of interest to those working in areas such as the sociology, consumption and commodification of culture, social and cultural geography, anthropology, cultural studies and popular music studies.

Andy Bennett is Director of the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research at Griffith University, Australia, editor of Remembering Woodstock, and co-editor of Music, Space and Place, and Britpop and the English Music Tradition. Jodie Taylor is Research Fellow at the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research at Griffith University, Australia. Ian Woodward is Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research at Griffith University, Australia.

N2 - The Festivalization of Culture explores the links between various local and global cultures, communities, identities and lifestyle narratives as they are both constructed and experienced in the festival context. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from Australia and Europe, festivals are examined as sites for the performance and critique of lifestyle, identity and cultural politics; as vehicles for the mobilization and cementation of local and global communities; and as spatio-temporal events that inspire and determine meaning in people's lives. Investigating the manner in which festivals are no longer merely periodic, cultural, religious or historical events within communities, but rather a popular means through which citizens consume and experience culture, this book also sheds light on the increasing diversity of contemporary societies and the role played by festivals as sites of cohesion, cultural critique and social mobility. As such, this book will be of interest to those working in areas such as the sociology, consumption and commodification of culture, social and cultural geography, anthropology, cultural studies and popular music studies.

AB - The Festivalization of Culture explores the links between various local and global cultures, communities, identities and lifestyle narratives as they are both constructed and experienced in the festival context. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from Australia and Europe, festivals are examined as sites for the performance and critique of lifestyle, identity and cultural politics; as vehicles for the mobilization and cementation of local and global communities; and as spatio-temporal events that inspire and determine meaning in people's lives. Investigating the manner in which festivals are no longer merely periodic, cultural, religious or historical events within communities, but rather a popular means through which citizens consume and experience culture, this book also sheds light on the increasing diversity of contemporary societies and the role played by festivals as sites of cohesion, cultural critique and social mobility. As such, this book will be of interest to those working in areas such as the sociology, consumption and commodification of culture, social and cultural geography, anthropology, cultural studies and popular music studies.

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Investigating the manner in which festivals are no longer merely periodic, cultural, religious or historical events within communities, but rather a popular means through which citizens consume and experience culture, this book also sheds light on the increasing diversity of contemporary societies and the role played by festivals as sites of cohesion, cultural critique and social mobility. As such, this book will be of interest to those working in areas such as the sociology, consumption and commodification of culture, social and cultural geography, anthropology, cultural studies and popular music studies.

The festivalization of arts and culture in Morocco began early after independence from France in 1956. Three years later, King Mohammed V launched the National Festival of Popular Arts, which focused on traditional Berber folk dances and music, highlighting regional diversity in costume, instrumentation and oral tradition. The National Festival was first staged in the medieval ruins of Chellah, on the outskirts of Rabat, the capital. Meriem Aherdan, wife of poet and former minister Mahjoubi Aherdan, reprised the initial event in exotic terms:

We still remember with emotion those first evenings being prolonged to dawn, the public mixing with the groups of men and women come, for the first time, from all the areas of the country to celebrate with rediscovered independence, in a historical encounter, the return to authenticity. And the feast continued in the camps, after leaving Chellah, under the tents, behind the ramparts, because it was necessary to perpetuate this unique moment that allowed the North and the South to unite, the Ksourian and the nomad having crossed the mountains to meet the plains and the sea. [1]

Later, the festival was moved to the courtyard of the Badia Palace in Marrakesh, built between 1758 and 1794 as the diplomatic residence of the sultan Ahmad al-Mansour. Like the ruins before it, the palace courtyard became a national space where fixed ethnic identities and nationalist ideology mixed each year to embody Moroccan diversity. The festival proceeded according to a multi-cultural model, whereby ethnic and cultural groups were each consigned to their own regional space in the cultural map of Morocco. The Arab-identified state would recognize difference, but only in non-political terms: Berbers, for instance, were seen not as people with historical grievances against the state, but as people with striking dance steps, attractive clothes and jewelry, and beautiful casbahs. In this project, the monarchy relied on national Berber (Amazigh) figures such as Mahjoubi Aherdan.

Copyright: 2023 Rosin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The answers to these questions allow us to make causal inferences as to whether arts-based informal science learning activities, at least as exemplified here, have the potential to broaden participation in science, or whether such activities will mostly attract the science-interested subpopulation who happens to attend.