joey_schafer's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
mauxbs's review
4.0
This was a dense listen, but it gave me a lot to think about. Like most non-fiction, it aims to explain a lot of things with one universal idea - in this case, the ways the world changed as the powers that be suppressed ecstatic celebration. I wouldn't say it did quite that much, but the book definitely gave me a different way to think about various facets of life and how things have changed over time.
cloudss's review against another edition
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
4.0
wish it went all the way to today! (not just to 2006 when it was written lol) p much anything w dionysius / bacchas in it is fascinating to me & this book is no different. very interesting to bring it to modern day sports
bookshelf_from_mars's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
dreamofbookspines's review against another edition
3.0
Went into it expecting Ehrenreich's style of memoir and also here's some sociology lite. Alas, this is a VERY heavily academic book, so it's not as light reading as the title implies. It's not bad, just not as frothy as her other books of Nickel and Dimed and Natural Causes. If you're prepared for it to be an academic book, it's great. Totally fascinating history of collective effervescence and how Calvinists stole it from the western world.
emiged's review
3.0
Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing in the Streets is less a history of collective joy, as the subtitle states, than it is a history of the restriction, suppression and de-legitimization of collective joy. It speaks to the increasing isolation many people across the globe, and particularly in the first world, experience.
Collective joy is a term, and an experience, that is fairly foreign to most of us today. Dr. Ehrenreich describes ecstatic rituals, bacchanalias, festivities, and group dancing from cultures such as the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and various indigenous tribes around the world, including vestiges such as Carnival that survived until the Middle Ages. In the past, these experiences bound groups together in expressions of community and commonality. They provided opportunities for individuals to synchronize their goals and actions with the group, to reach a state of communion with the Divine, to escape from the sometimes almost unbearably stress of daily life.
Dr. Ehrenreich finds strong connections between social and religious hierarchy, especially those imposed by colonial imperialism or church structure, and the suppression of expressions of collective joy. For example, in response to "dance manias" that took place in the late Middle Ages, interpreted now by some historians as a physiological response to the extreme psychological stress of poverty and the Plague, the Catholic Church attempted to crack down on such "unseemly" public displays. "Nothing is more threatening to a hierarchical religion than the possibility of ordinary laypeople's finding their own way in to the presence of the gods." Eventually, these festivities were banned piece by piece. "The loss, to ordinary people, of so many recreations an festivities is incalculable; and we, who live in a culture almost devoid of opportunities either to 'lose ourselves' in communal festivities or to distinguish ourselves in any arena outside of work, are in no position to fathom it."
Read the rest of the review on my blog at Build Enough Bookshelves
Collective joy is a term, and an experience, that is fairly foreign to most of us today. Dr. Ehrenreich describes ecstatic rituals, bacchanalias, festivities, and group dancing from cultures such as the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and various indigenous tribes around the world, including vestiges such as Carnival that survived until the Middle Ages. In the past, these experiences bound groups together in expressions of community and commonality. They provided opportunities for individuals to synchronize their goals and actions with the group, to reach a state of communion with the Divine, to escape from the sometimes almost unbearably stress of daily life.
Dr. Ehrenreich finds strong connections between social and religious hierarchy, especially those imposed by colonial imperialism or church structure, and the suppression of expressions of collective joy. For example, in response to "dance manias" that took place in the late Middle Ages, interpreted now by some historians as a physiological response to the extreme psychological stress of poverty and the Plague, the Catholic Church attempted to crack down on such "unseemly" public displays. "Nothing is more threatening to a hierarchical religion than the possibility of ordinary laypeople's finding their own way in to the presence of the gods." Eventually, these festivities were banned piece by piece. "The loss, to ordinary people, of so many recreations an festivities is incalculable; and we, who live in a culture almost devoid of opportunities either to 'lose ourselves' in communal festivities or to distinguish ourselves in any arena outside of work, are in no position to fathom it."
Read the rest of the review on my blog at Build Enough Bookshelves
dylan_james's review
2.0
Seemed like it would be really interesting but just didn't keep my attention the whole time.