The Practices of Carnival: Community, Culture and Place. Submitted by Jonathan Freeman Croose to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography May 2014 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. …………………………………………………………………….. 1 Abstract: This thesis analyses ethnographic data gathered during participant observation within two vernacular town carnivals in East Devon and Dorset during 2012 and within the professional Cartwheelin’ and Battle for the Winds street performances which were staged as part of the Maritime Mix programme of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad at Weymouth. The thesis presents qualitative perspectives with regard to the cultural performance of carnival in the fieldwork area, in order to analyse the ‘performativity’ of carnival in these contexts: how it enacts and embodies a range of instrumentalities with regard to notions of community, culture and place. The thesis serves to unpack the ‘performance efficacy’ of carnival within the wider political and cultural landscape of the UK in the early 21st century, revealing the increasing influence of institutional policy on its aesthetics and cultural performance. By way of contrast, the thesis also asserts the value of vernacular carnivalesque street performance as a contestation of hegemonic notions of ‘art’, ‘place’ and ‘culture’. The ethnographies of both vernacular and professional carnival practice presented in the thesis show how the instrumentalities of carnival are employed as cultural performances and as symbolic constructions of place, power and policy. These ethnographies reveal the contradictory ‘efficacy’ of carnival: how it functions both as a symbolic expression of a progressive, rhizomatic sense of place and also as a normative performance of vertical symbolic power and place-identity. The thesis offers a cultural geography of carnival as praxis in the south west UK, locating it within specific geographical, historical and socio-cultural contexts which have developed since the late 19th century. The thesis also offers a productive contribution to the emerging dialogue between cultural geography and performance studies through its analysis of the performativities of 2 participants’ affective, carnivalesque experience: an analysis which articulates how people ritualise and perform the multiple boundaries between individual and community identities through carnival. Further, the thesis considers the means by which people present and enact particular symbolic representations of place and identity through their carnival performances, both in professional and non-professional contexts. In its conclusion and recommendations, the thesis seeks to frame these ethnographies within a critique of carnival practice which is considered through the contested geographies of the ‘creative economy’. It seeks to demonstrate how culture-led processes of policy enactment are increasingly critical influences within carnival and arts development in rural and small-town contexts and within place-based strategies of public engagement. Further, the thesis seeks to consider the effects that this hegemony has on ‘vernacular’ practices of carnival. The thesis adds a further voice to those cultural geographers who warn about the diminishing public space which is now available to people for spontaneous, ‘non-productive’ carnival festivity in the context of globalised late capitalism and ‘applied’ culture. Finally, the thesis offers a proposed remedy: a re-imagination of progressive structures of public engagement through culture; structures which support ‘vernacular’ practice alongside the instrumentalities of arts-development and public policies of place, in tune with a growing alternative discourse which seeks to ‘rethink the cultural economy.’ 3 Contents: Abstract. 2 Contents. 4 List of illustrations, figures and tables. 10 Abbreviations 14 Acknowledgements. 15 Chapter One: Introduction: 18 1:1 The situated researcher: conceptualising carnival and street procession. 18 1:2 Cultural democracy and the democratisation of culture. 23 1:3 Carnivals & the Jurassic Coast: research contexts and CDA development. 26 1:4 Carnival collaborations: University of Exeter and the Jurassic Coast WHS. 34 1:5 Researching carnival: the aims of this thesis. 36 1.5:1: Research Questions and Objectives 38 1:6 Thesis structure. 42 Chapter Two: Carnival, procession and the carnivalesque: contexts and discourses. 49 2:1 What is carnival? 49 2:2 The carnivalesque experience. 51 2:3: Geographies of Processional Culture in the UK 56 2.3:1: UK Processional Culture: A Brief Historiography. 58 2:3:2 Pageants and parades. 64 2:4 Carnivals in the south west UK: gunpowder, charity & the seaside: 69 4 2:4:1 Gunpowder carnivals and the illuminated circuits. 73 2:4:1a: Fieldwork locations: Demographic information 80 2:4: 2 Charity and seaside carnivals: 82 (i) ‘Hospital’ parades. 82 (ii) Parading philanthropy. 83 (iii) Weymouth Carnival. 87 (iv) Seaton’s seaside carnival. 94 2:5 Resuscitations of cultural performance: the influence of UK alternative theatre post-1960. 98 2:6 Developments in cultural policy: from the fringes to the mainstream. 111 2:7 Conclusions. 127 Chapter Three:A Qualitative Methodology. 133 3:1 Why Qualitative Research? 133 3:1:1 Ethnography and Participant Observation 134 3:1:2: Attempting Grounded Theory 134 3:2 Access to the field 136 3:2:1 ‘Professional’ Participations 137 3:2:2 ‘Vernacular’ Participations 141 3:3 Research Practices . 143 3:3:1 Performance-as-Research 143 3:3:2 Interviewing 144 3:3:3 Programme of Research 145 5 3:4: Negotiating ‘role’ in research 146 3:4:1 Negotiating ‘role’ in vernacular settings 149 3:4:2 Professional challenges, professional compromises? 150 3:5 Exiting the Field 154 3:6 Practical methods of data recording and inscription. 156 3:7 Processing Fieldnotes: Coding, Data Analysis, Inscription and the ‘re-construction of reality 157 3:7:1: From Code to Inscription 159 3:8 Ethics. 163 3:9 Conclusions: Critiquing the method and the offer of the following empirical chapters 165 Chapter Four: The performativity of carnival: affects and emotions; events and stories. 169 4:1 Research questions 169 4:1:1 Carnival as liminality. 170 4:2 Theoretical frameworks: 172 4:2:1 Performativity 172 4:2:2 Affects, events, representations and stories. 173 4:3 Carnival affects: 177 4:3:1 The ‘energy’ of carnival. 177 4:3:2 Performative transformation. 185 4:3:3 Transgression. 193 4:3:4 ‘Fun with restrictions’: sanction, permission and structures of control. 199 6 4:3:5 Carnival and alcohol: sobriety, ‘good’ drinking and ‘bad’ drinking. 206 4:3:6 Affects of ritual in carnivalesque street procession. 212 4:3:7 Carnival as ‘social drama’. 219 4:4 Conclusions. 229 Chapter Five: carnival, place and identity. 233 5:1 Research Question 233 5:1:1 Theoretical frameworks. 234 5:2 Battle for the Winds: carnival and the cultural politics of place: 240 5:2:1 Performing the ‘identity’ of the S-West UK during the 2012 Olympiad. 248 5:2:2 Symbolic geographies of Battle for the Winds. 256 5:3 Place as a contested symbolic construction: 266 5:3:1 ‘In-place’ and ‘out-of-place’ vocabularies of carnival. 270 5:3:2 The Weymouth Carnival Conflict: 277 5:4 Progressive and carnivalesque notions of place: 282 5:4:1 Seaton Carnival Day: 284 5:5 Conclusions. 295 Chapter Six: Carnival and the symbolic construction of community. 299 6:1 Research Question 299 6:1:1 The conceptualisation of community. 301 6:2 Boundary, inclusion and exclusion. 306 7 6:3 Communion, togetherness and attachment. 318 6:4 Communities of practice. 323 6:5 ‘Community’ and ‘carnival’ as moral values. 331 6:6 Conclusions. 342 Chapter Seven: Towards a Vernacular Creativity: 347 7:1: Research Questions 347 7:1:1 Vignette: Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, 3.5.12 to 7.5.12. 348 7:2 Fieldnote, Westham Community Carnival Club, 14.8.12. 349 7:3 Theoretical frameworks. 350 7:3:1 Vernacular creativity and the creative economy. 353 7:4 The art and non-art of carnival: ‘creativity’ and ‘acceptable’ aesthetics. 358 7:5 The vernacular (non?) art of carnival. 371 7:6 Conclusions. 387 Chapter 8: Thesis Conclusions: 393 8:1 Responses to the Research Questions 393 8:2 Contribution to Knowledge 403 8:3 Recommendations 406 8:4 Last words 408 Bibliography 411 8 Appendix 1: Data Set (anonymised). 440 Appendix 2: Weymouth Carnivals: Schedule of resources at Weymouth Library. 448 Appendix 3: List of research participants (anonymised). 452 Appendix 4: Copy of Consent Form 457 9 List of illustrations, figures and tables. Fig 1 Illustration from a late 17th / early 18th century broadside ballad detailing the Gunpowder Plot and asserting the deliverance of James 1 by divine power. Source: EBBA ID: 20990, Magdalene College, Pepys 2.370. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20990/image accessed 27.3.13 Fig 2 Skeleton band members, Parliament in Flames. Milton Keynes (1978). Photo: Daniel Meadows. Source:http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/welfare-state-international/ Accessed 26.3.13 Fig 3 Map of the Dorset and East Devon (Jurassic) Coast World Heritage Site. Source: http://www.jurassicstudycentre.co.uk/webdocs/images/jc_map.jpg Accessed 27.3.13 Fig 4 Moving Tides procession, 2012. Source: https://en-gb.facebook.com/MovingTides2012?hc_location=timeline Accessed 27.3.13 Fig 5 Battle for the Winds logo, 2012 Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/d/t/512x288-battle-winds-logo.jpg Accessed 27.3.13 Fig 6 Cartwheelin’ publicity poster, Activate Performing Arts, 2012. Fig 7 Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle: Walking entrant, Weymouth Carnival, 2012. Fig 8 Frontispiece, Taunton Pageant pamphlet depicting the “presentation of Bible, sword and colours to the Duke of Monmouth by the fair maids of Taunton Deane, June 1685”.