Short abstract:

The session explores the role of reoccurring feasts and rituals in relations to a local or state based political or societal context. How do feasts in terms of enacted "traditions" become vehicles of political or societal projects and how do they recycle, mediate between and bring together various visions of pasts and futures?

Long abstract:

In classical social theory reoccurring feasts and cyclic rituals form the

basis of how social cohesion and common values are created, distributed and

upheld. Rituals and repeated orders of the feast and the festive can promote

elements of stability and change i.e. in terms of expressing old and

emerging cosmologies or political orders as constant and stable. This

session explores relations between specific reoccurring feasts of various

scales, in private and public life, with major political and societal

issues. How do the recreational potential of the cyclic feast process these

issues and contribute to the regeneration of society? How is this

regeneration related to continuity and change in specific cases? How does

the feast circulate and redistribute values attributed to various visions of

pasts and futures? What is generated, innovated or renewed in the seemingly

repetitive form of the feast?