ABSTRACT
Around the world, in the public spaces of cities that are gateways to immigration, festivals are created or re-created by people whose cultural practices seem ‘exotic’ to the majority population. Some street festivals attract large audiences. A few of them grow into major international events that raise the profile, not only of the neighbourhood where they take place, but also of the city as a culturally diverse and vibrant place to be. In areas known to outsiders as Chinatown, Little Italy, Punjabi Village and so on, processions and other rituals, performances of music and dance, together with more quotidian events such as street markets, delight urban ‘tourists’ who ‘discover’ inner city and inner suburban areas that they might otherwise avoid or even fear. Intentionally or not, the event appeals to the visitors’ taste for agreeable Otherness. The spectacle may also attract publicity and media attention that influences wider public perceptions of ethnic minorities, as well as the spaces and places where the events are staged. The chapter examines the somewhat polarized interpretations of the social and cultural dimensions of interaction between the spectacle and the spectators in ethnic minority neighbourhoods that are re-presented as ‘cosmopolitan’. The author argues that there has been a marked tendency, especially in the literature of leisure and tourism studies, to over-generalize this relationship. The work of Arjun Appadurai (1997, 2001, 2003) on globalization and the production of ‘translocalities’ provides a more insightful conceptual framework that addresses full square the apparent contradictions between cultural homogenization on the one hand, and cultural heterogeneity on the other. The second section adapts and applies Appadurai’s thesis to the development of ‘eventscapes’ and their ramifications for culture and society in cosmopolitan cities. Examples are drawn from North America, Australasia, Asia, and Europe.
