Borderline bodies

This chapter is about borders that are made and broken at gay pride parades. Specifically, I examine the discursive and material borders maintained in tourism discourse. Binary oppositions such as self/other, straight/gay, and tourist/host provide a focus for this chapter. I am interested in where these borders wear thin and threaten to break and disrupt social order. I explore the bodies of gay pride parades because it is bodies such as these that threaten the borders of corporeal acceptability

‘How many would the peaceful city quit, / To welcome him’?: The Earl of Essex on Parade

To date, there has been no in-depth investigation of the many contemporary depictions of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, on parade. This is an unfortunate omission because parades were an important part of Essex’s identity, especially his public self-presentation. The elements and implications of his parades provide insight as to how he presented himself and was understood by others, which in turn provides a more complete understanding of his impact on the collective Elizabethan imagination. Essex’s parades consistently and overtly highlighted deeply popular aspects of his public image. This public image could easily be seen as offering a comparison, often a contrast, to the queen’s progresses, the most famous Elizabethan parades. The fact that Essex offered a contrast to the queen underlines the potential problems of his presenting himself publicly in a manner that might suggest an alternative to the monarch. This aspect of his parades came into stark relief during the 1601 Essex uprising, which is instructively seen as a failed version of his previous parades

Independence Day 1866

The grand national holiday was a quiet one in Adams County in 1866. Gettysburg was a ghost town. No fireworks. No parades. No mass celebrations. In the woods around the county, small knots of citizens gathered for picnics. Escaping the hot, dusty streets of the towns was obviously a boon for anyone who, as the Adams Sentinel put it, “embraced the opportunity of rusticating for the day.” [excerpt

Eyewitness identification of multiple perpetrators

To date, research and South African case law has largely ignored the memory burden experienced by witnesses to multiple-perpetrator crimes and failed to address the challenges that arise when administering identification parades for such crimes. Empirical research suggests that eyewitnesses to multiple-perpetrator crimes achieve low identification accuracy, which worsens with the addition of each perpetrator to be identified. Witnesses to multiple-perpetrator crimes also experience a unique memory task of matching criminal actions to perpetrators. Preliminary empirical evidence suggests witnesses perform poorly at this task. Although some international research documents the difficulties that officers experience when conducting identification parades, there is little evidence of how South African officers administer parades in the field. This article presents empirical evidence from a sample of detectives in the Western Cape showing that in-field administration of parades for multiple-perpetrator crimes are not uniform, and officers risk conducting parades that would not be considered ‘fair’. The article concludes that the current South African guidelines may profitably be revised, so that difficulties associated with administering parades for multiple-perpetrator crimes are alleviated

Cultural Vitality in Communities: Interpretation and Indicators

This report introduces a definition of cultural vitality that includes the range of cultural activity people around the country find significant. We use this definition as a lens to clarify our understanding of data necessary, as well as the more limited data currently available, to document arts and culture in communities in a consistent, recurrent and reliable manner. Specifically, we define cultural vitality as evidence of creating, disseminating, validating, and supporting arts and culture as a dimension of everyday life in communities. We develop and recommend an initial set of arts and culture indicators derived from nationally available data, and compare selected metropolitan areas based on these measures. Policy and planning implications for use of the cultural vitality definition and related measures are discussed

Phantom German Air Raids on Canada: War Hysteria in Quebec and Ontario during the First World War

In late August of 1914, Canada entered the First World War following the unanimous vote of a special session of Parliament. This event occurred amid great exuberance and unanimity, and was marked by parades, decorations, cheering crowds and patriotic speeches. Canada was situated far from the European front lines, and its distant, vast land mass and cold climate also contributed to a feeling of insulation from attack or invasion. However, despite a general feeling of distance from the war\u27s unfolding events, there was a rapidly growing realization that German sympathizers and enemy agents might pose a more immediate threat

Letter: Equal Rights Supporter

A form letter from Edna L. Saffy , chairperson, Florida Parades for the ERA to Equal Rights Supporter inviting them to participate in “Florida Parades For The Equal Rights Amendment” in Tallahassee Florida. Date: April 14, 1975

Post-Katrina Suppression of Black Working-Class Political Expression

New Orleans politicians, with the aid of the federal government, used the destruction and displacement caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to implement policies that discouraged low-income and working class black residents from returning to New Orleans. Impacted communities felt the need to revitalize street parades (second-line parades), a traditional communal neighborhood activity, as an instrument of political protest. In response the City used minor municipal ordinances to more vigorously regulate these parades, doubling the fees imposed for street parades and effectively shutting them down. The City’s response raised important constitutional questions about government suppression of speech and freedom of association. This article is an examination of how the racially biased use of city permitting structures impacted working-class blacks in New Orleans post-Katrina. It is a cautionary tale about how cities can enforce social control by manipulating tiny details in municipal laws. It is a lesson for other diverse communities about what can happen to minority subcultures in the wake of recovery efforts after a natural disaster. The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and its aftermath dramatically impacted the City’s black working-class, almost half of whose residents were spread across the country (McKernan and Mulcahy 2008). The collapse of the levee walls flooding eighty percent of the city “not only caused immense damage to homes and public institutions... [it] also destabilized the culture of New Orleans, perhaps irrevocably ” (McKernan and Mulcah

Imagining a New Belfast: Municipal Parades in Urban Regeneration

This work highlights civic events and celebration as functional components of Belfast, Northern Ireland's ongoing post-conflict regeneration. Exploring the broad networks that fund and organize such events through a material semiotic approach, this dissertation sketches an outline of the process that produces parades, and examines the motivations and intentions behind them. It finds that parades function within a negotiated process of "place-making" to convey idealized visions of a peaceful "New Belfast". In particular the tropes of multiculturalism and European identity are repeated as aspirational ideals for Belfast's regeneration. The parades display, and in doing so reify these ideals as a temporary reality. Longer-term effects of the parades are difficult to determine, but they may potentially change public opinion regarding the social space of the city center, leading to more integrated and liberal use of the city center. In these events, issues central to Belfast's political life--from tourism, physical redevelopment, to European integration--are addressed through carnivalesque play and performance, as the events' producers and participants imagine Belfast's future urban identity