Articulations in the Caribbean Diaspora: London’s Carnival Arts Scene and the Cultural Politics of Space, Place, and Value

Abstract

This dissertation is an ethnomusicological study of value and diaspora, centered on the cultural production of carnival in one of the Caribbean’s largest overseas communities: London. While acknowledging the significant economic contributions of the Notting Hill Carnival street festival to the British economy, which generates an estimated �100M during its annual production, the principal aim of this dissertation is to illustrate how non-economic forms of value are produced through carnival that are (or may be at times) external to its market value. This is done by integrating anthropological theories of value with my ethnography of London’s carnival arts scene to better understand how music, cultural practices, festival performances, and even social spaces have come to acquire significance and value among black Britons of Caribbean heritage in particularly meaningful ways. Additionally, considering that Caribbean Britons are an underrepresented, dispossessed, and historically exploited social group, this dissertation argues that attention must be given to the specific ways that structural inequality and asymmetrical power relations in Britain impact the lives of racialized peoples, which also affects how value and meaning are assigned to particular things, activities, spaces, and places by members of marginalized groups. Drawing on 18 months of field research in London between 2013 and 2017, this dissertation illustrates: 1) how carnival art, music, and festival performances in London have been mobilized as a community-oriented, space- and place-making initiative for marginalized black groups in post-WWII Britain; 2) how London-based carnival arts practices help to facilitate sociocultural interconnections between disparate communities within the African/Caribbean diasporas; and 3) how distinct kinds of value (economic, social, cultural, symbolic, and political) are produced and disseminated through carnival-related activities in London.

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