Linfield Authors Book Gallery
The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life
Files
Description
This book explores the various ways in which individuals use music and culture to understand and respond to changes in their natural and built environments. Drawing on over 15 years of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and participant observation, the author develops the thesis that the relationships, networks, and intimate forms of social interaction in the “portable” community cultivated at bluegrass festival events are significant cultural formations that shape participants’ relationships to their localities. With specific attention to the ways in which the strength of these relationships are translated into meaningful sites of community identity, place, and action following devastating local floods that destroyed homes and businesses, displacing residents for years, The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life sheds light on the strength of such communities when tested and under external threat. A study of the central role of arts and music in grappling with social and environmental change, including their role in facilitating disaster relief and recovery, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in symbolic interactionism, the sociology of music, culture, and the sociology of disaster.
ISBN
9781138496378
Publication Date
2020
Publisher
Routledge
City
Abingdon, Oxon
Disciplines
Civic and Community Engagement | Ethnomusicology | Music | Place and Environment | Sociology
Subject Areas
Bluegrass music -- Social aspects; Folk music festivals -- Social aspects
Series Information
Interactionist currents
Links
Recommended Citation
Gardner, Robert Owen, "The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life" (2020). Linfield Authors Book Gallery. 99.
https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfauth/99
Comments
Description and cover image courtesy of Routledge.