Performing Englishness

Identity and politics in a contemporary folk resurgence

Authors:
Trish Winter
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Simon Keegan-Phipps
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This book looks in detail at the growth in popularity and profile of the English folk arts in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Based on original research within English folk culture, it is the only ethnographic study of its kind. The book first examines the salient characteristics of the twenty-first-century English folk resurgence. Then, it looks at the development of a 'folk industry', beginning with a broad analysis of the historical context of the first two folk revivals. Taking the emergence of folk industry conferences as a case study, it traces the folk industry's web of intersecting institutions and discourses. Its second case study of the new folk club the Magpie's Nest examines further the coming together of commercialisation and professionalisation with the folk ethos. The book also discusses the actual music and dance being performed within the English folk arts, and considers the ways in which these texts are engaging with both popular and high-art cultural products and processes. It gives a brief contextualisation of the wider cultural interest in Englishness within which the folk resurgence is situated. Following on from the exploration of England, the book analyses the versions of Englishness that can be found within the work of contemporary English folk artists. The book codifies a range of English identities under construction in the resurgence, and examines their politics. It concludes with a consideration of some broader theoretical issues raised by the author's findings.
eISBN:
9781526103543
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526103543
Online Publication Date:
01 Nov 2015
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Subjects:
Film, Media and Music
Keywords:
commercialization; contemporary English folk artists; dance; England; English folk arts; English folk culture; English identities; Englishness; folk resurgence; high-art cultural products; music; popular culture; professionalization
Page Count:
196
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Series: New Ethnographies

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Cover Dance and politics

Dance and politics

Moving beyond boundaries

Author:
Dana Mills

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
21 Nov 2016
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
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Dance has always been a method of self- expression for human beings. This book examines the political power of dance and especially its transgressive potential. Focusing on readings of dance pioneers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, Gumboots dancers in the gold mines of South Africa, the One Billion Rising movement using dance to protest against gendered violence, dabkeh in Palestine and dance as protest against human rights abuse in Israel, the Sun Dance within the Native American Crow tribe, the book focuses on the political power of dance and moments in which dance transgresses politics articulated in words. Thus the book seeks ways in which reading political dance as interruption unsettles conceptions of politics and dance.

Cover Tony Garnett

Tony Garnett

Author:
Stephen Lacey

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
19 Jul 2013
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
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This is a book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the ‘must-see’ series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Tony Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts his career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions, focusing on the ways in which he has helped to define the role of the creative producer, shaping the distinctive politics and aesthetics of the drama he has produced, and enabling and facilitating the contributions of others. Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic is also examined, through the documentary-inspired early single plays to the subversion of genre within popular drama series.
Cover Theorising Media

Theorising Media

Power, form and subjectivity

Author:
John Corner

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
19 Jul 2013
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
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This book explores how issues of power, form and subjectivity feature at the core of all serious thinking about the media, including appreciations of their creativity as well as anxiety about the risks they pose. Drawing widely on an interdisciplinary literature, the author connects his exposition to examples from film, television, radio, photography, painting, web practice, music and writing in order to bring in topics as diverse as reporting the war in Afghanistan, the televising of football, documentary portrayals of 9/11, reality television, the diversity of taste in the arts and the construction of civic identity. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, three big chapters on each of the key notions provide an interconnected discussion of the media activities opened up for exploration and the debates they have provoked. The second part presents examples, arguments and analysis drawing on the author's previous work around the core themes, with notes placing them in the context of the whole book. The book brings together concepts both from Social Studies and the Arts and Humanities, addressing a readership wider than the sub-specialisms of media research. It refreshes ideas about why the media matter, and how understanding them better remains a key aim of cultural inquiry and a continuing requirement for public policy.