Carnivals

Function

The field of study pertaining to carnivals is characterized by Chris Humphrey as exhibiting a binary division across the dual frameworks of social protest theory and safety-valve theory. Broadly speaking, social protest theory views the carnival as a temporary space where participants can escape the prevailing social order and freely experiment with alternative ways of being, elements of which may be realized more permanently within the social order. Such arguments tend to focus on the homogenizing and democratizing aspects of carnivals: for example, the frequent use of masks to render participants anonymous. In other cases, such as the Carnival traditions of Trinidad and Tobago as studied by Max Harris, post–slave era blacks challenged the dominant social order by dressing as whites and representing them as violent and hypersexual. This is an example of “inversion,” or the exchange of social roles within the festival. Transvestitism is, perhaps, the most frequently cited example of inversion, but there are many others, including the medieval practice of selecting a bishop boy or electing a temporary king or queen “for laughter's sake” (Bakhtin 1965/1984, 5). Harris found that free blacks in [Page 147]Trinidad and Tobago also dressed as and imitated devils to embody the legacy of the past evils of slavery. The various acts use anonymity of the carnival as protection while making public “social transcripts” (i.e., culturally embedded ways of thinking and acting) that usually remain hidden because they challenge the assumptions of those in power (Scott 1992, 175). In some cases (e.g., the 1976 Nottingham Hill Carnival), carnivals have turned into riots, which have had more direct political consequences.

Safety-valve interpretations, on the other hand, tend to focus on the way in which carnivalesque transgression is appropriated by and integrated into the broader social order, relieving pent-up frustration and acting as an incentive for continued subordination. Humphrey (2001, ix) defines a safety valve as a “licensed and ultimately contained explosion of popular energies.” While the term and concept of the safety valve is frequently used in sociological literature pertaining to carnivals and other festive events, it did not originate as an analytic tool for scholars to describe these phenomena. There are many known references to this concept in the political discourses surrounding the Homestead Act of 1862, which sought to remedy industrial discontent by offering cheap frontier land to settlers: Frederick Jackson Turner found evidence of such political debates as early as 1634.

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