ABSTRACT
Historically, festivals, carnivals and fairs have been important forms of social and cultural participation, used to articulate and communicate shared values, ideologies and mythologies central to the world-view of relatively localized communities. In anthropological and historical literatures, festivals traditionally are conceived as ritualistic or recurrent short-term events in which members of a community participate in order to affirm and celebrate various social, religious, ethnic, national, linguistic or historical bonds (Bakhtin 1984; Falassi 1987; Gertz 1991; Turner 1982). The festival may retain this function in the contemporary setting, but it often takes on a variety of other purposes – particularly in relation to the expression of the cultural identities and lifestyle practices of its audience (Bennett 2004; McKay 2000). In a world where notions of culture are becoming increasingly fragmented, the contemporary festival has developed in response to processes of cultural pluralization, mobility and globalization, while also communicating something meaningful about identity, community, locality and belonging. For the most part, festivals balance the dual needs of representing the local within a broader context of rapid social change (Sassatelli 2008). The contemporary festival therefore becomes a potential site for representing, encountering, incorporating and researching aspects of cultural difference.
