Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance by Max HarrisReview by: Kelly JonesFolklore, Vol. 118, No. 3 (Dec., 2007), pp. 369-370Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30035449 .

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Book Reviews 369

Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance. By Max Harris. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2003. 282 pp. Illus. L18.95 (pbk). ISBN 0- 292-70191-8

In this inspirational study, Max Harris navigates the reader through a variety of contemporary Christian festivals and celebrations across the globe to examine the folk theology that lies behind the vibrant masks and pulsating rhythms of carnival, depicted here in all its technicolour glory.

Harris divides his study into three sections, each of which explores a different context for festive celebration within the Christian calendar. The first portion of the book examines the specific days of celebration dedicated to the honour of a particular patronal Saint or Virgin, and in these chapters he describes and analyses those that are held in Catalonia and Aragon, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. The second section deals with the festivities that surround the Corpus Christi pageants of Catalonia, Castille-La Mancha, and Peru. Finally, he explores the carnivals of Galicia, Navarre, Belgium, Trinidad, and Bolivia. Dispensing with the views of previous scholars who have attempted to locate the origins of carnival in pagan ritual, Harris connects the mayhem of carnival rites to the topsy-turvy revelry of the Christmas period and the magnificent staging of a mock battle between the figures of Carnival and Lent.

As part of his participant observation, Harris formulates a series of heuristic principles to apply when studying festive practices. While Harris refrains from universalising the employment of these principles, what he says makes a lot of sense; and no doubt future scholars will find Harris's methodologies indispensable. These heuristic ethics both inform and enable his exploration of the relationship between the public and the hidden transcripts that surround the festive event. Appropriating the terms of James C. Scott in Domination and the Art of Resistance (Yale University Press, 1990), Harris strives to read the covert meanings and codes that lie beneath the surface of each celebration. In so doing, he abstains from imposing meaning upon a fiesta and he expresses a profound distrust towards automatically accepting the hermeneutic explanations of other scholars who have relied upon the authority of words to describe and elucidate. He holds steadfastly to the belief that the meanings that underlie a festive event can lie beyond words and that "while the public transcript may be safely recorded in a prescribed text, the hidden transcript generally finds expression only in visible signs of performance" (p. 10). He stresses, moreover, the importance of paying more attention "to the dramatic action of a fiesta and to the casual remarks of performers and audience than to the standard explanations offered to (and by) clergy, government agents, anthropologists, and other outsiders" (p. 10). Rather than serving as vehicles of hierarchical power, Harris believes that such festivals enact a form of negotiation between powers of hierarchical authority such as the Church or the State, and the body of the folk, the marginalised and the lowly. He argues that in many cases this alternative culture of folk theology can actually articulate a covert challenge to the powers of hegemonic authority and the oppressive tendencies of the dominant theology. Carnival, Harris observes, through its inversions of order and its promotion of the egalitarian spirit, "rejoices in a God whose inclination is to topple human power structures and to raise the downtrodden to a position of honor and feasting" (p. 141).

Harris examines the history that lies behind each festival, aware that the meaning of each celebration is subject to alteration and permutation across the generations. However, he recognises the degree to which the religious tensions between the sacred and the profane, Saint and Devil, Carnival and Lent, can often conceal an expression of deep- rooted cultural and political tensions that were once at war with one another, and perhaps, in some cases, continue to be so. Many of the fiestas, Harris observes, make either direct or indirect reference to elements of the country's violent history, with the carnival staging a battle between the country's indigenous culture and its colonial enforcers. Mock battles

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370 Book Reviews

between Spaniards and Moors, Indians and Spaniards, Jews and Christians expose issues entrenched within a hidden transcript of protest against a past of brutal repression and coercive religious conversion. Carnival licence, as Harris repeatedly demonstrates, gives vent to these tensions and the festivals can often complicate as well as celebrate the hegemonic institutions that promote Christian authority.

However, Harris's final heuristic principle resides in the need to appreciate that such tensions are often played out as a negotiation of hybrid elements that reach a form of syncretism and harmony finding its expression in folk theology. For many of the fiestas that Harris describes, the carnival spirit allows its participants to embrace both their Catholicism and their indigenous roots and to promote the convivencia-a harmonious relationship between the two.

Harris's study is a fascinating testimony to the role that carnival practices continue to play in contemporary Christian cultures around the world. The book is a tribute to the need to prevent the cultural vacuity of tourism and commercialism from obscuring the vibrant soul of carnival and erasing our appreciation of these hidden transcripts. Beautifully written and accompanied by a series of stunning photographs, this volume merits in a place in the library collections of anthropologists, folklorists, and performance scholars alike.

Kelly Jones, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales © 2007, Kelly Jones

South Asian Folklore: A Handbook. By Frank J. Korom. London and Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. 223 pp. L31.95 (hbk). ISBN 0-313-33193-6

This handsome volume is a combination of various aspects of South Asian folklore. It is organised into five chapters, each dealing with one of them.

The first chapter, "Introduction," introduces South Asia as a cultural zone-describing the variety of religions and the number of languages that make up this region. This chapter also discusses the concept of folklore as it has evolved not only in the definitions of folklorists, but also of anthropologists and sociologists.

The second chapter, "Definitions and Classifications," as the name suggests, discusses the definitions and classifications of folklore. Speaking in the overall context of theories and classifications of South Asian folklore as they have emerged in the works of western scholars, the chapter reveals another aspect of this particular book: that in South Asia the author's point of departure is the region of Bengal. This is an interesting twist, although not essentially better or worse than any other. The author pushes his discussion a little further back in time than is generally understood. Most chronologies of the history of South Asian folklore begin in 1868, but Korom takes the discussion back to the eighteenth century and the colonisation of Bengal. He discusses the institution of English-language education and the political history of the establishment of British rule in India. It is not clear how this is related to the study of folklore, because the societies and bodies under discussion were renowned for classical orientations. Korom derives a point by pointing to a single voice in those bodies that called for the study of the vernacular. This takes the chapter right up to the twentieth century and cultural movements in Bengal, which again do not deal directly with folklore.

The third chapter, "Examples and Texts," is an achievement in itself. Anyone with any idea of South Asia, or even a reader who has read the introduction to this same volume,

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