Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
113
of access to public spaces and, on the
other, the analysis of Kuchler and Lo
Conte on the apparently more tension-free
and unifying function of London festivals,
which is argued to enhance a unity of spirit
across different urban neighbourhoods.
The third part aims at moving
beyond the analysis of the institutional
dimension of festivals to explore also their
informal and autonomous expressions. In
this light, the work of Hernandez Sanchez
provides an additional perspective on the
much debated role of festivals in both
reflecting and constructing ethnic diversity
in urban Europe.
Overall, the book provides us with
timely insights on the changes that have
occurred in festivals’ organisation,
meanings and practices in contemporary
urban spaces. At the same time, however,
two important issues remain at the margins
of the analysis, despite the editors’
recognition of their relevance. The first is
to do with the relation between
contemporary festivals and the politics of
memory. While the editors claim that there
is a decreasing importance of community
‘remembrance’ at the level of festival
organisation and management, only minor
reflections are developed – particularly in
the Introduction – on how this strategy is
received at the level of consumption: that
is by those who participate in the festivals.
Given the rich ethnographies included in
the volume, it would have been useful to
include, in the Introduction, a more
comprehensive reflection on whether the
decreasing importance ascribed by festival
organizers to the ‘memory work’ of public
events is effectively met among festival
participants, and on how people’s
engagement with
festivals
reflects
processes of remembering and forgetting.
Recent studies in this field have shown
how ‘festivisation’ in contemporary cities
can become a setting for contested
memories, which in turn reflect sometimes
conflicting identities across ethnicity,
caste, sexual orientation or religion.
This brings us to a second
consideration; the use, that is, of the
concept ‘diversity’ as an analytical
framework. While the editors argue for the
need to unpack the ways in which festivals
both produce and reflect competing
projects of identity, the concept of
‘diversity’
remains
somewhat
undertheorised. The editors could have
perhaps engaged in a more critical way
with recent debates emerging in socio-
anthropological as well as geographical
literature on the role of religious festivals
in diasporic contexts like European, Asian
or American cities and on the role of
immigration
and
of
increasing
ethnic/religious pluralism in the process.
Secondly, as ethnicity and migration
emerge as a focal point in some of the
chapters, it would have been worth
engaging with recent debates on growing
diversity in European cities; one among
many being related to the concept of
‘superdiversity’.
This
would
have
enhanced the claim of the necessity to
locate shifting cultures of festivals within
the analysis of ‘new’ diversity in Europe.
Nevertheless, this remains a timely
and interesting collection. It will be of
interest not only to scholars and students
working in the fields of urban planning,
political culture, migration and religion
(among others ) but also to practitioners
and policy makers working in the fields of
