Description

Book Synopsis
In Dancing in the Streets Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. She discovers that the same elements come up in every human culture throughout history: a love of masking, carnival, music-making and dance. Although sixteenth-century Europeans began to view mass festivities as foreign and 'savage', Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greek's worship of Dionysus to the medieval practices of Christianity as a 'danced religion'. Exhilarating in its scholarly range, humane, witty and impassioned, Dancing in the Streets will generate debate and soul-searching.

Trade Review
Witty and quizzical ... Her lightness of touch is commendable -- Simon Callow * Guardian *
Dancing in the Streets is a genuine triumph of popular critical scholarship - the punchy elegance of her prose makes this an essential purchase * Independent *
A sparkling history of mass festivity, from Dionysian cults through ecstatic slave rites to rock'n'roll, it also, in sober vein, records its suppression and containment by disquieted elites and concludes with meditations on some deep-seated troubles of our own age -- Gareth Dale * Times Higher Education Supplement *

Dancing In The Streets: A History Of Collective

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    A Paperback / softback by Barbara Ehrenreich

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      Book details

      Publisher Granta Books
      Published 5 May 2008
      ISBN-13 9781847080080
      978-1847080080
      ISBN-10 1847080081
      Also in:
      Non Fiction Politics, Philosophy & Society Cultural studies Social and cultural anthropology Sociology

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      In Dancing in the Streets Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. She discovers that the same elements come up in every human culture throughout history: a love of masking, carnival, music-making and dance. Although sixteenth-century Europeans began to view mass festivities as foreign and 'savage', Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greek's worship of Dionysus to the medieval practices of Christianity as a 'danced religion'. Exhilarating in its scholarly range, humane, witty and impassioned, Dancing in the Streets will generate debate and soul-searching.

      Trade Review
      Witty and quizzical ... Her lightness of touch is commendable -- Simon Callow * Guardian *
      Dancing in the Streets is a genuine triumph of popular critical scholarship - the punchy elegance of her prose makes this an essential purchase * Independent *
      A sparkling history of mass festivity, from Dionysian cults through ecstatic slave rites to rock'n'roll, it also, in sober vein, records its suppression and containment by disquieted elites and concludes with meditations on some deep-seated troubles of our own age -- Gareth Dale * Times Higher Education Supplement *

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