This research takes the sensory turn in academia and applies it to carnival studies in order to offer a “third way of learning” about carnival (O’Neal, 2001, p. 18). I argue that not enough emphasis has yet been placed on the sensory dimensions of carnival, and that the senses, and bodily experience, can help us understand the role of difference in carnival. I define difference as the various and sometimes contested ways in which people experience, sense, reproduce, represent, and understand carnival culture. With this in mind I examine the variety of positions adopted by people within the festival as a result of difference. Although in considering the role of the senses in carnival, I recognise the importance of language, I suggest that language is “just one of the ways we experience and represent the world” (Drewal and Mason, 2003, p. 333). My original contribution to this field lies in my examination of the experiential and of the senses, and how these might cast some light on the concepts of difference and positionality. Together with a reflexive approach this thesis uses autoethnography as it will provide an opportunity for me to explore my own personal experiences, weaving together the personal and the culture being studied, a way of bringing “multiple layers of consciousness” to the research (Ellis, 2004, p. 37). Thus I aim to gain an understanding of people and culture through the process of self-exploration, because autoethnography enables the researcher to use self “to get culture” (Pelias, 2003, p. 372). This research looks at difference at the level of individual experience, a level often unaddressed in social science orientated studies of carnival. I draw from a variety of disciplinary fields (for example psychology, anthropology, performance studies, dance and fashion studies), to shed light on the links between the “partially masked” aspects of carnivalist behaviours, dress and the body, and people’s impulses to dance, celebrate, express and share (Stern, 1998, p. 141). Some of the key theories I use to support my argument are: Paul Stoller’s (1997) “sensuous scholarship” or sense phenomenology; Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) phenomenology of perception; the function of the body as offering experience from an embodied position (Barbaras, 2001); Pierre Bourdieu’s (1990) habitus and the importance of cultural bodily knowledge; Daniel Stern’s (1977, 1995, 1998) psychological theory of attunement, which is concerned with bonding between infant and mother and which I use to understand bonding and harmonising in a cultural context; Stuart Hall’s (1992) positionality, which is used as a means of understanding the different ways in which people interpret information; Gernot Böhme’s (1993, 2013) theory of atmospheres, and Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold (2007) and Edward Bruner’s (1993 cited in Hallam and Ingold, 2007, p. 2) writings on the improvisatory nature of creativity. This thesis draws attention to how carnival is represented both by those who take part in it and those who study it. It examines the varying claims that research respondents make about carnival, why they interpret it in the way they do, and whether carnival is a means of empowerment or disempowerment. It examines carnivalists’ experiences of the Caribbean diasporic carnival in the United Kingdom (UK), from pre- to post-carnival. It considers how ideas of unity might be susceptible to change: either giving way to different concepts or taking on different meanings in a UK context. I consider how marginalised carnivalists confront, challenge, and embody resistance through craft production, which acts, in UK carnival, as a counterhegemonic response to contestation in the realm of the carnival. In addition I analyse the relationship between culture and hegemony with regards to the cultural politics involved in funding ethnic events, demonstrating the importance of the production and promotion of ideas, and how the ideas of the ruling class have been used to control and manipulate both the masses (who enjoy carnival) as well as carnivalists (who remake1 it). 1 I use the term remake because Caribbean diasporic carnivals are modelled on the Trinidad-style carnival and they are remade differently in diasporic spaces. The empirical research on which this thesis is based was conducted in the UK and data was collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews and informal discussions with fifteen carnivalists, as well as eighty face-to-face informal discussions with spectators/participants and revellers at carnival events and at mas’ camps, and with members of a steel pan band. Interviews and discussions took place in different locations in the UK: as part of the 2012 Carnival Tour I visited ten carnivals and travelled from south-east England to the Midlands, and on to the north of England. Respondents in the study were aged between 25 and 90 years old. My research also gathered information through participant-observation at a pan yard and at mas’ camps2 in south-east England, in order “to have a nuanced understanding of the world” from the perspective of the carnivalists “being studied” (Yanow and Schwartz-Shea, 2013, p. 196). The thesis begins with a literature review and a comparative study of Trinidad and UK carnivals, highlighting the ideas which I argue have been imposed on carnival by “people in position” that “assert their visions” of carnival (Green and Scher, 2007, p. 9). Consequently, I examine the varying ways in which carnival has been assigned, framed and interpreted. The literature review highlights that dominant meanings about carnival have been constructed mainly in the fields of history, politics and scholarly discourse. I then consider individual experiences, and look at how carnival is adapted, adopted and contested by individuals, focusing on the ways in which people become attuned to carnival, and exploring how the carnival experience is able to impose its unique stamp on people. Moreover, I look at how carnival can, in return, offer people the opportunity to put their own stamp or ideology on carnival. Finally, I look at contestation in carnival, highlighting that the festival is not ‘freely free’, despite the fact that carnivalists maintain that they are free to parade through the streets (Schechner, 2004, p. 5). Their chapter five of this thesis I explain the dilemmas carnivalists face when they attempt to replicate the Trinidad-style carnival in diasporic spaces. 2 Mas’ camps are an integral part of carnival it is where mas’ is made, sold, and bands are organised. It is also a place of learning and teaching and community participation. 3 In ‘The Anthropology of Music’ Alan Merriam (1964) describes syncretism as RdM 2014 8 experiences reveal that whilst they are attuned to ideals of liberation, within carnival’s varying forms of cultural expression, carnivalists experience conflict, constraint and dependency: the very opposite of freedom as it is presented in various discourses.

In this thesis, I contend that an increasing cultural and pedagogical interest in the world of the child, and an apparent curiosity for child art in the 1920s in Spain can be used as an interpretive guide to a well-known falling-out that took place in the mid-1920s between three key figures of the Spanish avant-garde: the poet and playwright Federico Garda Lorca, and two of his close friends, the scandalous artist Salvador Dali and the Surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel. It is my belief that this notorious falling-out among the spirited young men, who during the 1920s resided in the prestigious Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, was in fact more than a mere personal quarrel; it was, in my view, indicative of a budding rupture in aesthetic values. By engaging with both canonical and largely overlooked works produced during the rise of the Spanish avant-garde, throughout this thesis I demonstrate how their unique perceptions of childhood can be profitably used as a means of better understanding their take on modernity, barbarism, and ignorance at a time of constant social, political and cultural change.

This thesis focuses on the ways in which identity and ritual converge within the emancipatory performances of the Trinidad Carnival and the Caribbean inspired Carnivals of Notting Hill and Cardiff. The work looks as the ways in which Carnival performances can be interpreted in order to investigate how these interpretations can be practically utilised within art-making or art presentation. The thesis develops an innovative reading of the word mas' (masquerade/mask) offering new perspectives that can serve as a nucleus for ways of engaging with and analysing Carnival. The consideration of mas' as a performance activity with traits that can be manifested within and outside of the Carnival environment is highly relevant and has been applied in my practical art experiment called 'Mama dat is Mas'. The project also aims to analyse the ways in which re-interpretations of mas' can engage with issues of social anxiety and feelings of displacement.

Στην παρούσα εργασία επιχειρείται η περιγραφή ενός εθίμου μιας αγροτικής κοινότητας της Ηλείας, των Μακρισίων. Πρόκειται για τα χοιροσφάγια, έθιμο ενταγμένο στον εθιμικό κύκλο της αποκριάς στη συγκεκριμένη κοινότητα. Παράλληλα επιδιώκεται η ανίχνευση της παιδαγωγικής διάστασης που αυτό ενέχει, καθώς αξιολογείται ως σημαντικό γεγονός της πολιτιστικής και κοινωνικής ζωής των κατοίκων. Αρχικά παρουσιάζεται το θεωρητικό και μεθοδολογικό πλαίσιο της έρευνας. Δίνονται οι βασικές αρχές και η θεωρία της κοινωνικής και πολιτισμικής ανθρωπολογίας. Αναζητούνται τα χαρακτηριστικά εκείνα της ανθρώπινης συμπεριφοράς που την εντάσσουν στο πολιτισμικό κεφάλαιο μιας κοινωνικής ομάδας. Καθώς επελέγη η εθνογραφική μέθοδος, ως η πιο κατάλληλη για τη μελέτη μιας κοινωνικής σκηνής στα πλαίσια μιας συλλογικής και διαχρονικής πολιτισμικής εκδήλωσης, περιγράφονται οι βασικές αρχές και τα μεθοδολογικά εργαλεία που αυτή χρησιμοποιεί. Στη συνέχεια γίνεται προσπάθεια καταγραφής κάποιων διαχρονικών πτυχών του εθίμου όπως αυτό παρουσιάζεται στη βιβλιογραφία. Ανιχνεύονται οι γεωγραφικές και πολιτισμικές ιδιαιτερότητες, στη συγχρονία και τη διαχρονία, που καταδεικνύουν την πολυμορφία και την πολυσημία του. Ακολουθεί η περιγραφή του εθίμου, όπως αυτό καταγράφηκε στη συγκεκριμένη κοινότητα. Παρουσιάζονται τα εθνογραφικά δεδομένα που προήλθαν από επιτόπια έρευνα με συμμετοχική παρατήρηση και άτυπες συνεντεύξεις. Η ανάλυση των δεδομένων της έρευνας επικεντρώνεται στον παιδαγωγικό χαρακτήρα του εθίμου. Αναλύονται ο σκοπός, οι παιδαγωγικές πρακτικές, και οι παιδαγωγικοί στόχοι που κατατείνουν να δώσουν χαρακτηριστικά παιδαγωγικής δράσης σε μια εθιμική πολιτισμική δραστηριότητα. / The present paper attempts the description of a custom of an agricultural community of Ilia Prefecture, Makrisia. Specifically, it is about pig slaughter, a custom that forms part of the carnival customary practices, which take place in the aforementioned community. At the same time, it pursues the investigation of its pedagogical dimension, since it is considered an important event of the cultural as well as social life of the residents. Firstly, the theoretical as well as the methodological framework of the investigation are presented. The basic principles and the theory of the social and cultural anthropology are set out and the specific characteristics of the human behavior, which integrate the latter into the cultural background of a social group, are sought. Since it is the ethnographic method that was selected, as the most appropriate one for the study of a social setting in terms of a collective and classical cultural event, the basic principles and the methodological tools that it implements are described. Then, it is the effort to record some classical aspects of the custom, as the latter is presented in the bibliography, which takes place. Its geographical and cultural features, in synchrony as well as in diachrony, which demonstrate the polymorphy and the polysemy of the custom, are investigated. Afterwards, there is the description of the custom as it has been recorded in the specific community and the ethnographic data that derived from an on-the-spot investigation, which involved participative observation and informal interviews, are also cited. The analysis of the data of the investigation focuses on the pedagogical character of the custom. The purpose, the pedagogical practices, as well as the pedagogical goals that tend to offer a customary, cultural activity characteristics of pedagogical effect, are hereby analyzed.