ABSTRACT
The urban festival has always served as an occasion for affirming shared convictions and identities in the life of the city. Whether religious or civic in nature, these events provided tangible expressions of social, cultural, political, and religious cohesion, often reaffirming a particular shared ethos within very diverse urban landscapes. The enactment of a festival is often a symbolic representation of the political and social relationships that are played out within the everyday agon of civic life. The term agon in this context derives from the classical Greek word meaning ‘struggle’ or ‘contest’ often used particularly in relation to sport or debate. Turner argues for the interconnectedness between ritual or sacred action and the more banal stuff of life. This is crucial to understand festivals as a kind of hyper- ordinariness which can establish the social paradigm for the city on an annual basis.
