New age travellers : vanloads of uproarious humanity / Kevin Hetherington.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hetherington, Kevin.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hippies--Great Britain.

Hippies.

Subculture--Great Britain.

Subculture.

Festivals--Social aspects.

Festivals.

Nomads.

New Age persons.

Great Britain.

New Age persons--Great Britain.

Nomads--Great Britain.

Festivals--Social aspects--Great Britain.

Physical Description:

x, 191 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Cassell, 2000.

Summary:

New Age Travellers offers the first major book-length academic study of new Travellers in Britain. New Age travellers are a hybrid phenomenon: part youth subculture, part alternative lifestyle and part social movement. Their cultural politics has had an impact on many young people in Britain at the end of the twentieth century. Drawing on first-hand research, this book describes the emergence and character of the Travellers' way of life over twenty years. With their origins in the free-festival culture of the 1970s. New Age travellers became one of the most notorious folk devils in Britain in the 1980s and early 1990s, notably when they tried to hold festivals at sites like Stonehenge. Despite the subsequent efforts of the Criminal justice Act to criminalize their way of life, they continue to adapt their lifestyle and retain a shadowy presence within the British landscape. The book looks at their history and lifestyle and discusses the significance of festivals, consumption and nomadism to their way of life. It also considers the identity they have created for themselves in relation to ideas of ethnicity and class, to questions of Englishness and contested representations of the countryside. New Age travellers are seen as blank figures who elicit a strong reaction wherever their presence is encountered. They move between being over- and under-determined, and around them emerges a politics of space that is contested and hybrid in character.

Contents:

1 Blank figures in the countryside 1

2 Free festivals: consumption, belonging and the carnivalesque 41

3 Life on the road 70

4 The idea of ethnicity 91

5 Visions of England 116

6 Stonehenge: a museum without walls 133

7 Panic morals 158.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0304339776

0304339784

OCLC:

41131762