Paper Short Abstract:

Focusing on the Galician verbena, this paper explores the connections between the materiality of popular festivals and the changes in the social, cultural and economic ecosystems in which they operate.

Paper Abstract:

The so-called verbenas populares are popular festivals that take place on the occasion of local patron saint's festivities in villages Galicia, a region located in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. These popular festivals are deeply ingrained in the annual life cycle of the places in which they are held, for its organization is the responsibility of local grassroot associations who devote months to raising money, hiring the best orchestras and arranging the physical space for the festival.

This paper analyses the craftsmanship and practical knowledge involved in the organisation of these popular festivals. In particular, it focuses on the bandstands that frame the campo da festa, a type of vernacular architecture built by local residents according to their own aesthetic tastes and financial resources. Although these structures - most of which are now obsolete due to the advent of mobile stages - are often neglected in local heritage debates as examples of architectural 'ugliness', this paper argues that an analysis of their material, morphological and functional evolution will allow us to better understand the changes in the social, cultural and economic ecosystems in which these popular celebrations are embedded.

Paper Short Abstract:

The paper examines the transformation in the materials used in crafting the costume for the leading figures in a carnival in the Venetian dolomites. It does so examining the social transformations which caused the change as well as the impact the change had on the atmosphere of the festivity.

Paper Abstract:

Every year, in February, a traditional carnival takes place in Dosoledo, a village in the Venetian Dolomites. The centre stage of the festivity is taken by Laché and Matathin, two figures who dance uninterrupted from the very early morning to midnight in multiple spaces in the village. The two figures are dressed with multicoloured handkerchiefs sewn to a white shirt. They also wear a tall cylindrical headdress with one hundred multicoloured ribbons flowing from the top and decorated with jewellery. In a previous publication I have examined how in the past these materials were borrowed by the dancers from female agnatic and spiritual relatives, often living in neighbouring villages, strengthening family and inter-village relationships in the process.

This paper looks at the transition, which happened in the 1980s, from the use of borrowed silk handkerchiefs and ribbons, as well as jewels, to the use of nylon textiles and bijouterie bought by the organisers of the event. On the one hand it does so focusing on how this shift was intertwined with certain social transformations which interested the community during that period, particularly changes in women's attire and a decline in the strength of familial and inter-village relationships. On the other, it examines the distinct impact of this transition. The introduction of new materials enabled the craft women to create the costumes over a longer time and allowed for different sewing techniques. Concurrently, these materials are noted for reflecting light differently and are generally perceived as less awe-inspiring.

Paper Short Abstract:

Once a year, a Spanish village celebrates a multisensory transhumance festival, enabling its participants to discover landscapes as public goods and enjoy costumes as vital ingredients for engendering alternative ways of social and spatial belonging.

Paper Abstract:

Siruela’s annual transhumance festival celebrates the village’s pastoral heritage. At the heart of the celebration lies a collective walk of inhabitants and visitors across a livestock trail of 10km length that connects Siruela with its neighbouring village. The transhumance festival holds some distinctive qualities: First, the participants of the walk join a flock of several hundred sheep and goats, turning the crowd into a more-than-human collective. Second, moving across the livestock trail between oak-layered pasture plots and attending to landscape features along the way, participants heighten their embodied and sensory perception of their surroundings. Third, walking together is a political act in which substantial dimensions of landscapes as public goods are reinvoked. Fourth, two neighbouring villages whose sense of connection is usually shaped by a car ride on the main road are now experienced as contiguous places. Staged and decorative elements play a vital role throughout the walk and in the programme framing it, such as the performance of the local dance club. The scents of scurrying sheep bodies, the sensation of tired legs after performances of hikes and exuberant dances, and the flood of colours that spring from both natural environment and the costumes for humans and horses incite a sense of social and (alternative) spatial belonging. In other words, costume revindicates custom (Hobsbawm 1983; Olwig 2008) that engenders a collective sense of entitlement to landscape’s shared usufruct.

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper considers whatever changes have occurred in the materialities of a fundamental religious practice in a rural, indigenous island of southern Chile in the last two decades.

Paper Abstract:

In the remote, rural island of Apiao, Chiloé (southern Chile), people relentlessly gather to attend novenas organised in honour of a little statue of a miraculous saint, San Antonio de Padua. The statue is brought to a private household, where an elaborate praying ritual, interspersed with food and drink consumption, music and dance, takes place during nine consecutive evenings. This paper describes the complex sections of this fiesta and its dense materiality, considering what has changed in the last twenty years of ethnographic observation, highlighting how all the elements comprising the celebration are condensed representations of local social values, indigenous identity, resistance, and adherence to modernity.

The materialities that will be considered include the ornaments of the saint's altar, originally crafted in every novena; the food and drinks offered to the participants; the presents gifted to the saint; the singing and dancing practices; the embodied demeanour that govern interaction in this highly ritualised and crowded religious festival.

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper discusses the Straw Bear procession held in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire (UK), where a bear-like costume made from dry straw stomps about town and parades along with traditional dancers, discussing the rediscovery of the festival's sensuous aspects and its socioeconomic realities.

Paper Abstract:

Across the UK, masked processions with zoo-anthropomorphic figures have been revived. This paper presents one-year fieldwork results on the Straw Bear procession held in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire–a market town in the marshy East Anglian Fens (Frampton 1989) where a bear-like costume made from dry straw stomps about town and parades along with traditional Molly dancers (Needham/Peck 1933) as the celebration is accompanied by drums, fiddles, melodeons, and pipes. Drawing on anthropological conceptualisations of “ritual” (Turner 1969, Ackerman 1991, Quack/ Töbelmann 2010) and on studies on British and Whittlesey’s folk revivalism (Boyes 1993, Cornish 2016, Irvine 2018), this paper interrogates the material and sensuous festive realities of the revival as well as their socio-economic coordinates, from three perspectives. First, I focus on the material “rediscovery” of the festival by non-Whittleseyan “mastermind” Brian Kell in the 1980s, involving the material re-engineering of a straw costume that the local community had failed at preserving, and the process of reconstruction of the elements that underpin performances. Second, I focus on the everyday realities of the festival’s steering committee, on the labour challenges of participants and activists working towards annual iterations. In the Straw Bear, continuous reinvention is subject to intergenerational disruptions due to ageing residents, as youths leave town to pursue employment. Third, I focus on the economic dimension of the festival, interrogating the insider/outsider dynamics of my presence in Whittlesey and the assumptions that informed my initial engagement with communities through the inescapable academic requirements of “impact” and "innovation" that facilitated my fieldwork.

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper addresses the interplay of the festive culture and the socioeconomic success of the Peruvian Altiplano population. It shows how Andean people engaged in trade and production business (re)create festivities providing opportunities to invest and generate diverse capitals.

Paper Abstract:

Through ethnographic work and a longue durée perspective, this paper analyses the festive culture expanded by migrants from the Andean Altiplano, particularly of Aymara origin, settled in large cities such as Lima and Puno. This festive culture is a space where values, symbols, practices and capitals are created and circulated, strengthening cultural-regional ties and identities as well as shaping a reciprocity system. This system has developed historically in the Altiplano through experiences of mobility, exchange and support networks into its current form intertwined with urban and capitalist dynamics. The festive events are seen as investment to increment economic capital then redirected to their enterprises, as an asset for their social mobility.

Based on reciprocity practices to access different material resources, the making of fiestas is a collective effort. Ensuring the participation of other people is crucial. Ritual kinship relations (compadrazgo and padrinazgo), reciprocal bonds (aynis) and the act of giving festive gifts (apjatas) are set up as commitments that reinforce mutual support even beyond the fiestas. Social relations must be cared for and strengthened by offering a good organization and personalized attention. All this shapes a kind and caring treatment highly valued and mostly stressed by the notion of cariño. Overall the fiesta is a multiple investment encompassing social relations, cultural values, emotional bonds, and money among the Altiplano population.