Week 11 Readings: Creating Public Space: Ritual/Practice and Event Spaces

In response to Roach's "Cities of the Dead"


Overall I found this reading to be very confusing and there was too many "back and forth" moments throughout. Mainly it was figuring out what time period he was talking about and what new or old laws pertained to them. As for the basic ideas behind a parade, I do have my own personal opinion about them. Parades are for the public, or a particular group within the public to express themselves whether it be for political reasons or for protest, or for at least primarily what I have seen in life, for fun or celebration. The role of tradition does come into play for certain things however I feel as though if a tradition involves something such as racial discrimination than that tradition should be altered to follow some of the social orders and well, US laws that are instated. In my opinion a tradition should still be able to be had, just to a certain extent. For example, say a group has a historic tradition to drink alcohol in the public square of town. Now it is technically against the law to do so in a lot of places because it is illegal to drink, or be drunk in the open public. However, I feel as though if the group does not disturb the peace of the public than their tradition should still be able to be had. This creates grey areas for what is right and what is wrong, this I know, but there is always going to be grey areas when it a subject is dealing with both law and tradition and what is "right."