| Objectives |
This research project understands itself is a contribution to the comparative cultural sociology of contemporary European society. The aim of the research is to examine the role of festivals as sites of trans-national identifications and democratic debate. Analytically, the proposed objectives are to: (1) Explore how festivals use aesthetic forms to symbolize, represent and communicate social and political life (European, national, sub-national) from the perspective of different actors, including programme directors, funding promoters, performing artists and the audience); (2) Study the way in which festivals frame the discourse of identity in relation to arts with particular attention to the local / European and local / global interfaces as well as the conundrum of difference (diversity) and similarity. (3) Analyze how festivals represent sites of competition for access to resources, status and power and how this competition impacts on debates about representation, openness and the public sphere. |
School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, UK
