Protest, Popular Culture and Tradition in Modern and Contemporary Western Europe

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiii

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2. Introduction: Looking Backward to Move Forward—Why Appreciating Tradition Can Improve Our Understanding of Modern Protest

   • Ilaria Favretto

   Pages 1-20

3. “The Modernity of Tradition”: Popular Culture and Protest in Nineteenth-Century Germany

   • James M. Brophy

   Pages 21-43

4. Charivari and the 1876 Italian Elections

   • Enrico Baroncini

   Pages 45-61

5. Peasant Resistance Traditions and the Irish War of Independence, 1918–21

   • John Borgonovo

   Pages 63-87

6. A Fight for the Right to Get Drunk: The Autumn Fair Riot in Eskilstuna, 1937

   • Stefan Nyzell

   Pages 89-102

7. Italian Anarchism and Popular Culture: History of a Close Relationship

   • Marco Manfredi

   Pages 103-123

8. Persistent Repertoires of Contention in Portugal: From Tax Riots to Anti-communist Violence (1840–1975)

   • Diego Palacios Cerezales

   Pages 125-147

9. Carnivalesque and Charivari Repertoires in 1960s and 1970s Italian Protest

   • Ilaria Favretto, Marco Fincardi

   Pages 149-183

10. Popular Justice and Informal Politics: The Charivari in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century France

    • Xabier Itçaina

    Pages 185-207

11. Tactical Carnival and the Global Justice Movement: The Clown Army and Clownfrontational Protest

    • Lawrence M. Bogad

    Pages 209-227

12. Conclusion: Popular Culture, Folk Traditions and Protest—A Research Agenda

    • Xabier Itçaina

    Pages 229-248

13. Afterwords: Old and New Repertoires of Contention

    • Donatella della Porta

    Pages 249-260

14. Back Matter

    Pages 261-273

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Mock funerals, effigy parading, smearing with eggs and tomatoes, pot-banging and Carnival street theatre, arson and ransacking: all these seemingly archaic forms of action have been regular features of modern European protest, from the 19th to the 21st century. In a wide chronological and geographical framework, this book analyses the uses, meanings, functions and reactivations of folk imagery, behaviour and language in modern collective action. The authors examine the role of protest actors as diverse as peasants, liberal movements, nationalist and separatist parties, anarchists, workers, students, right-wing activists and the global justice movement. So-called traditional repertoires have long been described as residual and obsolete. This book challenges the conventional distinction between pre-industrial and post-1789 forms of collective action, which continues to operate as a powerful dichotomy in the understanding of protest, and casts new light on rituals and symbolic performances that, albeit poorly understood and deciphered, are integral to our protest repertoire.

• Europe
• European history
• history
• social movement
• carnival
• charivari
• religion
• Italy
• Ireland
• Portugal
• Global Justice

“This sparkling volume renews our understanding of the character of popular protest, from left to right, across modern Europe.  The carnivalesque, the charivari, and other performative genres are drawn from the local past to try to overturn present injustice.  Kudos to Ilaria Favretto and Xabier Itçaina for bringing together these essays, whose drama deepens our vision of political movements and their possibilities, even in our own day.” (Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto, Canada)

“This finely crafted and very important edited volume by Ilaria Favretto and Xabier Itçaina, returns to the classic concerns of the New Social History of the middle and late twentieth century but with the advantage of employing the insights gained by a half century of New Social Movement theory, practice and studies. Thus the chiarivari and other so-called early modern and early industrial social phenomena never died. They are present in the industrial struggles of1970s of Italy and indeed in the Alter-Globalisation, Occupy and Square movements of the early twenty-first centuries. In a series of invigorating chapters, this volume proclaims that the division between the pre-modern, modern and contemporary supply too much heat but not much light.  Read and enjoy.” (Professor Carl Levy, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)

“The history of social movements has taught us how in the nineteenth century trade unions and progressive parties, wanting to rationalize and impose order on popular dissent, waged war on the insults, satire, rowdiness and carnivalesque behaviours that had been rooted in popular tradition. These practices seemed relegated to the margins of protest action. However, the contributors to this volume describe the reinvention of an armoury of sedition, placing great emphasis on ridicule. This nuanced and rigorous enquiry into the resurgence of burlesque forms of protest makes for enthralling reading.” (François Ploux, Université de Bretagne-Sud, France)

• School of Social and Behavioural, Sciences Kingston University, Kingston-upon-Thames, United Kingdom

  Ilaria Favretto

• Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences Po Bordeaux, Pessac, France

  Xabier Itcaina

Ilaria Favretto is Professor of Contemporary European History at Kingston University, UK. She has published on the British and the Italian Left after 1945; on memory and identity in post-war Italy; and most recently, on Italian factory protest in the period after 1945.

Xabier Itçaina is CNRS Research fellow-HDR in Political Sociology at the Centre Emile Durkheim, France, Sciences Po Bordeaux, France, and a former Marie Curie Fellow (2012-2013) at the European University Institute, Italy. His research focuses on the politics of Catholicism, social economy and local development, political anthropology and identity politics.

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