NPR has published an excerpt from Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book “Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy”, which takes a look at the history of sanctioned public revelry from pagan antiquity, to Western colonialism, to the present time.

“That is my mission in this book: to speak seriously of the largely ignored and perhaps incommunicable thrill of the group deliberately united in joy and exaltation…the focus here is on the kinds of events witnessed by Europeans in “primitive” societies and recalled in the European carnival tradition. These were not spontaneous outbreaks of “hysteria,” as some Europeans tended to imagine; nor were they occasions for the suspension of all inhibitions and a general “letting go.” The behavior that seemed so “savage” and wild to Western observers was in fact deliberately planned, organized, and at all times subject to cultural rules and expectations.”

As one reviewer points out, the book is something of a call for the return of ecstatic rituals and festivities in our current culture. Something modern Pagans (and Burners) have been advocating for a long time now. It looks like an interesting read very much in the vein of her book “Blood Rites”.

Tags: Barbara Ehrenreich, Collective Joy, Dancing In The Streets, Festival, Paganism