Each year, thousands of communities across the United States
celebrate their ethnic heritages, values, and identities through
the medium of festivals. Drawing together elements of ethnic pride,
nostalgia, religious values, economic motives, cultural memory, and
a spirit of celebration, these festivals are performances that
promote and preserve a community's unique identity and heritage,
while at the same time attempting to place the ethnic community
within the larger American experience. Although these aims are
pervasive across ethnic heritage celebrations, two festivals that
appear similar may nevertheless serve radically different social
and political aims. Accordingly, The Dutch American Identity
examines five Dutch American festivals-three of which are among the
oldest ethnic heritage festivals in the United States-in order to
determine what such festivals mean and do for the staging
communities. Although Dutch Americans were historically among the
first ethnic groups to stage ethnic heritage festivals designed to
attract outside audiences, and despite the fact that several Dutch
American festivals have met with sustained success, little
scholarship has focused on this ethnic group's festivals. Moreover,
studies that have considered festivals staged by communities of
European descent have typically focused on a single festival. The
Dutch American Identity thus, on the one hand, seeks to call
attention to the historical development and current sociocultural
significance of Dutch American heritage festivals. On the other
hand, this study aims to elucidate the ties that bind the five
communities that stage these festivals together rather than
studying one festival in isolation from the others. Creatively
combining several methodologies, The Dutch American Identity
describes and analyzes how the social, political, and ethical
values of the five communities are expressed (performed, acted out,
represented, costumed, and displayed) in their respective
festivals. Rather than relying on familiar, even stereotypical,
notions of "the Midwest," "rural America," "conservative America,"
etc., that often appear in contemporary political discourse,
Schoone-Jongen shows just how complex and contradictory these
festivals are in the ways they represent each community. At the
same time, by placing these festivals within the context of
American history, Schoone-Jongen also demonstrates how and why each
festival is a microcosm of particular cultural, social, and
political developments in modern America. The Dutch American
Identity is an important book for sociology, performance studies,
folklore, immigration history, anthropology, and cultural history
collections.
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