Output details

Performing Englishness: Identity and politics in a contemporary folk resurgence

This book is the first substantial text to offer a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary English folk arts. The text represents the culmination of a two-year AHRC funded project entitled ‘Performing Englishness in New English Folk Music and Dance’ (2007-9), although research in some areas continued up to the submission of the manuscript in 2012. It identifies and responds to a massive rise in the profile and popularity of English folk music and dance since approximately 2000, and considers the various ways in which this resurgence speaks to a broader increase in expressions and awareness of English national identity. Whilst recent texts have begun to acknowledge and explore particular elements of the growing English folk scene, this book is the first to consider in detail the various facets of the resurgence (e.g. including dance), and to relate those directly to issues of national identity. Englishness has been the topic of numerous recent texts in the political sciences, but the relation of expressions of English national identity to the English folk arts is a distinctive feature of this book.

The book is also distinctive in its collaborative approach, as it is co-authored by specialists in British cultural studies and ethnomusicology respectively. It draws on an unusually wide variety of research methods and data, ranging from ethnographic participant-observation and interviews to iconographic and discourse analysis of published materials (e.g. CD artworks, websites, etc.).

The publication of the book in mid-2013 means that indicators of impact are not yet available. However, the project’s research has been discussed in an interview with the authors on BBC Radio 3, and at a presentation to MPs, Peers, arts activists and academics in the House of Commons, Westminster (Jan 2010). Academic papers have been presented at six international conferences, and as part of five research seminar series.

A double-weighting request is made for this output on account of its engagement with an extensive body of primary resources: ethnographic material, ranging from participant-observational fieldwork to musical and iconographic analysis. As such, the book was reliant upon an extended period of data collection (2007-12). The extent of the fieldwork contributing to the book was noted as an exceptional feature of the publication by one of the publisher’s anonymous reviewers of the manuscript.