Masquerade Politics

Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements

Abner Cohen

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520078383
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520912571
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Carnival, that image of sensuous frivolity, is shown by Abner Cohen to be a masquerade for the dynamic relations between culture and politics. His masterful study details the transformation of a local, polyethnic London fair to a massive, exclusively West Indian carnival, known as "Europe's biggest street festival, " which in 1976 occasioned a bloody confrontation between black youth and the police and which has since become a fiercely contested cultural event. Cohen contrasts the development of the London carnival with the development of other carnivalesque movements, including the Renaissance Pleasure Faire of California. His valuable analysis of these relatively little-explored urban cultural movements advances further the theoretical formulations developed in his previous studies.
Carnival, that image of sensuous frivolity, is shown by Abner Cohen to be a masquerade for the dynamic relations between culture and politics. His masterful study details the transformation of a local, polyethnic London fair to a massive, exclusively West

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 A Resurrected London Fair
• 2 Corporate Organisation and the Trinidad Conventions
• 3 Youth Rebellion and the Jamaican Connection
• 4 The Carnival is Contested
• 5 The Carnival is Contained
• 6 Communal Organisation
• 7 The Political Dimension of Art and Music
• 8 The Leadership Process
• 9 The Politics of Joking Relationships
• 10 The Aestheticisation of Politics
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index