Andrew Snyder, researcher at INET-md, coauthors the introductory chapter of the book livro Festival Activism (2025, Indiana Universisty Press), which he coedited with David McDonald and Jeremy Reed.
Abstract:
Festivals have been have interpreted as celebrations of culture and tradition, as performances of the dominant social order, as brief moments of communitas, and acts of subversion. Only recently, however, have scholars sought to examine how, under what conditions, and to what effect, festivals may serve as tools and settings of direct action and political intervention. In this introduction, we develop our theory of festival activism, arguing that festival participants mobilize “key characteristics” of festivity (participation, pleasure, assembly, and appearance), transforming them into “tactics of intervention” (disruption, refuge, renewal, deliberation and futurity) through which they seek to forge new, more socially just worlds.