In this significant intervention into the academic and institutional debate on European cultural identity, Monica Sassatelli examines the identity-building intentions and effects of the European Capital of Culture programme, and also looks at the work of the Council of Europe and therecent European Landscape Convention."

Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere provides the first major social scientific study of these festivals in the wake of their explosion in popularity over the past decade. It explores the cultural significance of contemporary arts festivals from their location within the cultural public sphere, examining them as sites for contestation and democratic debate, and also identifying them as examples of a particular aesthetic cosmopolitanism. The book approaches contemporary festivals as relatively autonomous social texts that need interpretation and contextualisation. This perspective,...

This volume is a major social scientific study of contemporary arts festivals. It will have appeal to a wide readership in cultural sociology, cultural studies and cultural theory.