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A History of Collective Joy
Metropolitan Books
January 2007
On Sale: January 9, 2007
336 pages
ISBN: 0805057234
EAN: 9780805057232
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian, a fascinating exploration of one of humanityβs oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy In the acclaimed Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich delved into the origins of our speciesβ attraction to war. Here, she explores the opposite impulse, one that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and βsavage,β Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeksβ worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a βdanced religion.β Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elitesβ fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired French revolutionary crowds and uprisings from the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent βcarnivalizationβ of sports. Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, Dancing in the Streets concludes that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and therefore able to envision, even create, a more peaceable future.
 Media BuzzTalk of the Nation - January 10, 2007
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