Authors: Ravenscroft N.¹; Matteucci X.²

Source: Tourism Culture & Communication, Volume 4, Number 1, 2003 , pp. 1-15(15)

Publisher: Cognizant Communication Corporation

Abstract:

Using empirical data from a questionnaire survey of residents and visitors attending the 1998 San Fermin fiesta in Pamplona, Spain, this article offers a critique of the contemporary construction of festivals as interpretive devices. Informed by the work of Bakhtin, this article makes the case that festivals should be understood as carnivalesque inversions of the everyday, deployed to maintain and reinforce social order and, thus, the discipline of bodies. This is achieved, it is argued, by creating “liminal zones” in which people can engage in “deviant” practices, safe in the knowledge that they are not transgressing the wider social structure they encounter in everyday life. It is suggested that the attraction of visitors is crucial, in providing a “cover” for this activity, as well as a conduit for the gradual legitimation of new and revised social values. The article concludes by arguing that this need for tourists (local and outsiders) is both recognized and embraced by residents and visitors alike, with neither fraction naive enough to believe that authenticity resides in representation, or even cultural (re)production.

Keywords: Festivals; Social relations; Interpretation

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Brighton, UK 2: Canada

Publication date: 2003-01-01

More about this publication?

• Tourism, Culture & Communication is international in its scope and will place no restrictions upon the range of cultural identities covered, other than the need to relate to tourism and hospitality. The Journal seeks to provide interdisciplinary perspectives in areas of interest that may branch away from traditionally recognized national and indigenous cultures, for example, cultural attitudes toward the management of tourists with disabilities, gender aspects of tourism, sport tourism, or age-specific tourism.

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