Analysing the Balinese cockfight, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) demonstrated that the concept of “deep play” could be a particularly fruitful analytical tool to interpret the operative sociocultural patterns of a Balinese village. He and social anthropologist Hildred Geertz, his wife, conducted research into the embeddedness of these local sociocultural models inside the Balinese state and society. Further, Geertz showed that the concept of play is apt to shed light on the interplay between the psychological attitudes of members of a community involved in festivities and processes of social ordering. However, he paid rather little attention to the specific places involved in play. Literature from the anthropology of childhood, on the contrary, highlights the importance of the location of places for the constitution of a successful play process (Brady 1975; Delalande 2001; Opie and Opie 2018: 32–40). Delalande (2001) depicts playing games as a primary mode of children's social grouping and cultural formation, an idea that parallels the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga's concept of play, which saw play as the practical and symbolic mode of the formation of human culture in general terms (Huizinga 1949: 4–10).
According to Huizinga, play is not restricted to the play of children but also encompasses adults’ cultural performances, such as theatrical performances, competitions, parades and festivities. In his now classic book Homo Ludens, he suggests possible links between processes of place production and the emergence of cultural patterns in festive social situations. One characteristic of such play is that it is limited in its temporal and spatial dimensions, as well as in the field of meanings. It is subject to a circular temporal structure, taking place repeatedly in analogous ways at certain times and in certain places, and, further, it provides a thematic framework for the actions performed and attitudes assumed by those engaged in it, players and spectators (Huizinga 1949: 10–14). The “playground” of play, then, does not mean an area where children play, but the field of interconnected places, temporalities and social relations linked to the theme of and practices during the play in which all ages participate (ibid.: 10–21).
The definition of “festivity” has various similarities to that of “play”. The term “festivity” refers to festive activities that usually have a cyclic temporal logic. A festivity is a temporary gathering, usually held at specific locations, and the activities focus on a particular cultural theme (e.g. honouring a patron saint, but also music, food or a competition) and involve a particular symbolic system (Handelman 1990). Studies have shown how urban festivities can contribute to the consolidation of collective identities or a sense of community and the formation of spatial patterns in cities. Festivities can take place in various locations throughout cities and tend to involve mostly rhythmic movements between different places where the festivities occur (Di Méo 2001; Smith et al. 2022; Willems-Braun 1994). Furthermore, festivities can be occasions for the negotiation of belonging and exclusion (Jackson 1988; Marston 2002). While the study of festivities provides important approaches to understanding the negotiation and organisation of social relations, concepts of “play” help to elucidate the emotional and symbolic constitution of socio-material configurations. Play seems to be the basic mode of representational practices during festivities.
My ethnographic study of the urban festivity the Palio di Siena1 in Italy is based on extensive fieldwork in Siena in 2014 and 2015. I ask how places are involved in this festivity in order to examine more closely the interrelationships that form between society, community and place in such contexts. From my fieldwork and theoretical considerations about “play”, the idea of combining a spatial analysis with an anthropology of emotions employing the notion of “playgrounds” in its literal and metaphorical meaning emerged. While the term “play” refers to the emotional involvement in the act of playing and the sociocultural interactions resulting from play, the term “ground” signals the spatiotemporal situatedness of play. These considerations are further supplemented by the concept of “deep play”, as formulated by Geertz (1973), who convincingly argues that the highly charged emotionality frequently attached to play can be seen as a reflection of the social positions and prestige of the “players” and spectators. This article explores the extent to which the two concepts “deep play” and “playground” can contribute to the investigation of the spatiotemporal dimension of social and political practices of grouping and identity negotiation that unfold in festivities. Moreover, the article investigates how different modes of living together, namely intimacy and publicness, are intertwined in specific festive places and, further, what role contemporary global contexts play in spatial processes of community-building at festivities.
The core of the Palio is a horse race that occurs twice yearly, in which the neighbourhoods of the historic city centre – collectively called the contrade di Siena (sing. contrada) – compete against each other to win the title “Lord of the City” for one year. The Palio is not a “horse race” in the common sense, since commercial betting is not part of the festivity, but rather, what distinguishes the Palio is its highly emotional character, its long history, which can be traced back to the late medieval era, and its attachment to the locality of Siena itself. I show here that the Palio is a sociocultural festivity linked to a competition from which permanent territorial and social orders emerge and become interwoven with emotionally charged meanings that are situationally and historically variable. Regional and global actors are also involved in the Palio. These include tourists present at the events and spectators watching on television or online. Although such multiscalar audiences are not per se active participants, they can nevertheless influence the development of play in significant ways (see Boos 2017, 2020).
Play and Playgrounds of Urban Festivities: Geographical and Cultural Perspectives
The study of festivities linked to playful activities or games in urban contexts forms a diverse research field. While the term “game” is frequently used to designate sports events or other kinds of competitions, “play” connotes a sort of “theatrical” acting or display. At festivities both elements mingle in different ratios. Studied games include the Olympic Games and World Cups (Haferburg and Steinbrink 2017; Holden et al. 2008; Müller 2011; Satta and Scandurra 2015; Gold and Gold 2017); other sporting practices and events (Fournier 2021; Martin 1984; Wucherpfennig and Strüver 2014); student games (Foley 1991); traditional leisure competitions (Euvrard 2021); and leisure games and play in downtown areas (Flusty 2002; Stevens 2007). The authors of these studies have tended to emphasise the identity-creating power of these games and play, that they involve techniques of spatial appropriation and that they can initiate the regeneration of social and built environments by unleashing financial resources and bringing people together in informal and mostly positive ways. Although these sociocultural approaches reveal important socio-economic and political dynamics, they pay little attention to concrete spatiotemporal configurations and the geographies of emotion in the social negotiation processes involved. Yet the playful interactions and negotiations of meaning that take place during festivities bring about not only periodic but also enduring social orders, spatiotemporal configurations and deeply emotional geographies of rural and urban environments that have an impact on everyday life beyond the festivities themselves (Bronner 2005; Geertz 1973).
Geertz (1973) showed how during cockfights that took place in some Balinese villages – sometimes between cock owners from the same village, sometimes from different ones – the everyday hierarchy of the participants, both players and spectators, was transferred to the play; thus, not just money but also the social prestige of the participants was at stake in the fights. Geertz described this sort of festivity in terms of “deep play”, meaning that the interactions and ritualised behaviours that play out during such competitions should be interpreted not as merely reflecting everyday life but rather as a “metasocial commentary” (ibid.: 448) on local and regional social orders in which at least parts of the hidden meanings of everyday life are symbolically expressed. During the cockfights, it was not just the owners of the fighting cocks who symbolically faced off against each other, but also their relatives or the wider village communities participating as spectators (or both) (ibid.: 433–448). As a result, cockfights could become highly emotional situations in which the social prestige of entire families and friends was perceived to be at stake. For Geertz, deep play referred to the ways in which festive activities could arouse the passions of their participants, although he pointed out that the status hierarchy in everyday life did not change with the winning or losing of games. Contrary to Geertz, however, Handelman (1990) has shown that play tends not only to comment on sociocultural configurations but also to create them. Play and daily life thus shape each other.
When proposing “playgrounds” as an analytical tool, it seems appropriate to begin with a more literal interpretation of the concept and, based on that, to explore its metaphoric potential for the investigation of festivities. In a literal sense, playgrounds are considered to be areas specifically reserved and equipped for children's play. In the academic field, they are depicted as sites in which children and parents socialise (Woodyer 2012). Through the playing of games, specific children's cultures can emerge, in which the style of playing can be passed from generation to generation (Delalande 2001: 198–200). Sites of children's play are places where social grouping, emotional ties among children and with their social and material environment, and children's shared and conflict-laden relationships with each other and with the world are negotiated and become evident.
Literature from the anthropology of childhood (Brady 1975; Delalande 2001; Opie and Opie 2018) suggests that playgrounds are not restricted to officially reserved places but emerge whenever children play together through the material and symbolic delimitation of certain areas for their play and games. Indeed, children frequently resignify places, converting empty lots, parks, streets, street corners and so on into their playgrounds. Through playing together, children physically and symbolically appropriate certain places, converting them into sites of play and objects into toys and elements of play (Brady 1975: xiv; Opie and Opie 2018: 34–40). In this process of constituting playgrounds, the conversion of public places into intimate zones of belonging occurs (Opie and Opie 2018: 34–40), investing places with group- and play-specific rules (Delalande 2001; Opie and Opie 2018). The emotionality deriving from children's complicity and shared practices, according to Delalande (2001: 109–114), is further intensified by the game's inherent dialectic of pleasure and competition, which result from bodily and mental involvement in games. The excitement during games appears to be based on the uncertainty of the game's outcome, involving participants’ luck and risky choices of actions in the rule-based situation and environment of the playground.
Apart from interpreting children's play, the term “playground” appears to be used in a rather metaphorical way. For example, taking up the aspect of playgrounds as a space of possibilities and new opportunities, Lessen and Petermann (2021) present peripheral villages and small towns as playgrounds for the negotiation of individual and collective identities. A more theoretically grounded conceptualisation (Slabina and Martínez 2014; Martínez 2014: 41) is employed as an allegory to connect processes of social transformation and the making of risky choices with practices of politically uneven power distributions. For Martínez (2014), “playground” denotes the creation of a temporalised and spatialised miniature world that breaks in a controlled way with daily sociopolitical orders, opening a legitimate space of possibilities for new and sometimes risky ways to alter society. Additionally, the dialectic relationship between joy and struggle becomes the heart of the spatial analysis of sociocultural practices (Slabina and Martínez 2014: 52, 57). In correspondence with this interpretation of the playground's defining features, the Palio di Siena includes uncertainty and luck (Boos 2020; Solinas 1987), the creation of miniature worlds with a certain connection to daily life (Dundes and Falassi 1994; Handelman 1990) and the dialectics between joy and suffering (Dundes and Falassi 1994).
Moreover, it seems reasonable to suppose that play involves both public practices and more intimate, hidden ones that are often performed in different places. For example, while games and festivities most visibly take place in public spaces (Stevens 2007), in backstage areas, players can work out their strategies, engage in other preparatory practices, rest and so on (Robbins and Sumiala 2016). Additionally, the anthropology of childhood suggests that intimacy between players is also established when the game occurs in public (Opie and Opie 2018: 34–40), making intimacy a partner concept of publicness. In the context of festivities, intimacy can be understood as a social and emotional bond of familiarity between people and their environment (Valentine 2006), which encompasses both cognitive processes and social practices. Herzfeld (1997) introduces another type of intimacy fruitful for the investigation of festivities. His term “cultural intimacy” views social and cultural particularities of a society that are “considered a source of external embarrassment” (ibid.: 3) by its members and commonly shared secrets (ibid.: 172) as potent sources of solidarity. Therefore, it is necessary to consider both political and social modes of being together – publicness and intimacy – and the global level (see Boos 2017) in the spatial analysis of festivities.
The Players and the Playground of the Palio di Siena
Two Palii take place every year in Siena's central square, the Piazza del Campo (Figure 1). The dates of both are linked to ecclesiastical feasts: the Palio of the Visitation on 2 July and the Palio of the Assumption on 16 August. Figure 1 shows that the territories of the 17 contrade are limited to Siena's medieval city centre. These limits were fixed in 1730 by the Declaration of Violante (Bando di Violante), which defined the delimiting streets and lines, and which is still in force today (Savelli 2008).
Siena, the territories of the contrade and the local playground of the Palio (draft by the author based on observations; digital base map: Comune di Siena (http://opendata.comune.siena.it/, Italian Open Data License) and Bando di Violante; software: QGIS).
Citation: Ethnologia Europaea 54, 1; 10.3167/ee.2024.540105
The historical origin of the Palio can be traced back to the Middle Ages when Siena formed an autonomous city republic that was often in conflict with Florence. The Republic of Siena was characterised by political autonomy, a flourishing of the arts and a relatively free electoral system within the oligarchy (Parsons 2004). The republic ended when it was defeated by a Florentine army in 1555, after which it became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany till 1859. Therefore, for the contradaioli, as the members of the contrade are called, the medieval republic remains a symbol of self-determination and prosperity. This might help to explain why, in the nineteenth century, the contrade decided to use medieval heraldry during the Palio, combined with militaristic styles of representation such as parades to commemorate Siena's proud period of autonomy and progressiveness (ibid.: 136).
Each contrada has its own colours and heraldry, which, combined with Renaissance costumes meant to evoke a medieval atmosphere and representing different military ranks, form the aesthetic leitmotif of the contrade and the Palio, as well as of the corteo storico (historical parade) that takes place just before the race. While the daily affairs of each contrada are managed during the year by the priore (president) who presides over the government, a special government of “wartime” (Silverman 1979: 416) is in charge of the preparations and negotiations related to the Palio. Both governments are elected by the members of their respective contrada, who together form the popolo (people). Both forms of government can be understood as allusions to the medieval Republic of Siena, which was guided during wartime by a military government, but otherwise governed as a comune with an elected government (Dundes and Falassi 1994).
During the race, the contrade can encounter each other as rivals, friends or on neutral terms. Ties between “friends” and “neutral” relationships do not have major implications for the competition, but rivalries do since some contrade may try to prevent their rivals from attaining victory by violating the rules of the Palio – as outlined in the regolamento del Palio (1949; last updated 2019). In order to win the race or prevent a rival's victory, the contrade will often make secret arrangements with each other and the jockeys (Dundes and Falassi 1994).
Other important players are the horses and jockeys. While the contradaioli regard the horses as symbols of happiness and incorruptibility, they do not trust the jockeys, who are usually not contrada members. Indeed, the jockeys are frequently considered corruptible and disloyal because they pursue their personal interests in making money. However, jockeys are said to have expertise regarding the horses and strategies for winning the race, which is why they advise the captains in plotting their race strategies. Another main actor is the municipality, which is the official organiser of the race and the referee. The municipality imposes penalties when contrade do not follow the rules of the Palio. It also oversees the lotteries that take place during the different phases of the race preparations. Other less involved actors are the stables, doctors, insurance providers and police, as well as the various audiences who watch the race, including tourists, journalists and TV viewers, inhabitants of Siena who are not contrade members and animal welfare associations. The special role of the latter will be discussed later (Dundes and Falassi 1994).
The Race and the Playground
The official preparations for the races, which during my stays lasted only about 80 seconds, started around one month beforehand with the drawing of lots to determine which contrade could participate.2 Because of the narrowness of the racetrack, only 10 of the 17 contrade can actually compete in any one race. The lottery took place in the Piazza del Campo, where the contradaioli waited for the results. A few hundred people were present, and the first emotional outbursts of disappointment or joy took place among them there.
The “hot” phase of the Palio started one week prior to the race when the surface for the racetrack was placed on the Piazza del Campo. The competition consists of three legs around the square. During this period, all the contrade adorned their districts with their flags and emblems, as well as with electric candelabra decorated in their colours. In this way, the main sites of the festivity were marked and converted into the playground. From this point forward, public spaces in this area were both sites of daily public life and sites of play, with the latter mode of life predominating at certain times according to the rhythm of the festivity. The Palio players visually and physically appropriated the playground-specific areas.
Meanwhile, the captains started to engage in secret negotiations with each other in order to gain the support of other competing contrade during the race. Most agreements made were kept secret even from the popolo. The emotional tension among the contradaioli steadily rose as their conversations revolved around horses, jockeys and possible race strategies. But plans and stories about race strategy remained speculation for the contradaioli, as my informants noted. Around this time, the Palio became almost the exclusive thematic centre of the contradaioli's conversations. As Solinas's (1987) interpretation of the Palio suggests, secrets, chance and imponderables are decisive factors contributing to its tense and dense atmosphere, thus raising the emotional involvement in the festivities of both the participants and spectators and giving the play greater depth. Accordingly, cultural intimacy (cf. Herzfeld 1997: 172) unfolded its group-building capacities at different social levels: the level of the group sharing the secrets, the level of the single contrada speculating on its own strategy and that of other contrade, and the level of all contrade sharing the same ways of speculating about strategies and secret negotiations. Furthermore, this cultural intimacy of secrets connected these social levels as part of the same cultural model. Aside from cultural intimacy, social intimacy (cf. Valentine 2006), defined as familiarity between people and their surroundings, was activated. Indeed, during the week preceding the race, the lives of the contradaioli took place to a large extent within the intimacy of their respective districts as they met several times a day to eat and prepare for the race together. They sang their contrada's hymns and songs that heaped abuse on the “enemy” contrada or contrade.
Inside each district, the most prominent meeting points were the main streets, clubhouses and private households where the interviewed contradaioli went to enjoy each other's company (cf. places of intimacy in Fig. 1). Part of the purpose of the flags and electric candelabra mentioned previously was to mark out these areas as private and intimate spaces for each contrada. On special occasions, such as dinners, the districts’ main streets and squares were closed to vehicles, and passers-by were asked not to disturb the events, although non-members (e.g. tourists) could attend most of the events as guests. Therefore, during the Palio, previously public places were redefined as semi-private areas and marked as such by fences and decorations. On the last four evenings before the race, dinners were held in the main square or street of each district and were attended by between one hundred and fifteen hundred people. Many members dressed up for these occasions in ways that identified their allegiance, such as by wearing scarves with their contrada's colours and insignia, and thus bodily contributed to building an atmosphere of anticipation and familiarity. The contradaioli created territorial interiors that the interviewees described as intimate areas where they were not subjected to annoying rules of conduct: in short, they felt secure and able to relax in them. These intimate places were thus important sites where the representatives and broader communities of the contrade could create a sense of belonging among themselves, construct common narratives and practices, discuss strategies for winning the Palio and simply enjoy each other's company. The contrada's authorities made speeches in front of the popolo about winning the race, young contradiaoli served the meal and everybody joined in the singing, making them visible and heard by others and confirming their importance for and belonging to the contrada. This description confirms the dialectical relationship between intimacy and publicity inherent in the concept of the “playground” (Slabina and Martínez 2014: 57), emerging at the same time and in mutual interdependence.
In contrast, meetings held in the public areas of the Palio, including the Piazza del Campo, various buildings and their adjacent squares, and sections of streets (such as the Banca Monte dei Paschi or the Palazzo Chigi-Saraceno – see Figure 1), were subject to strict rules of conduct. For the contradaioli, it was an honour to represent their respective contrade in such places. “Public” places – that is, where representatives of the contrade appeared before the spectators – did not belong to any of the contrade's territories, as was marked out during the week of the Palio by their being draped in all the contrade's flags. These places were thus symbolically appropriated by all the contrade collectively, while the wider public was prevented from becoming actively engaged in the festivities. According to this “expressive” positioning strategy (Woodyer 2012: 319), the contrade made their claim to a central space and time in Siena's social and cultural context. Through their simultaneous bodily presence and interplay, participants created intimacy in public places at the levels of the single contrada and all contrade in alliance with the municipality, showing their collective responsibility to make the festivity work.
Located in the historic centre of the city, the Piazza del Campo was the regular meeting point of the contrade where all lotteries and trial races took place. Rhythmic movements between the Piazza and contrade formed part of the annual cycle of the Palio, becoming more and more frequent as the race days approached. Selection procedures and lotteries held at various stages of the race preparations prevented money from becoming the decisive factor determining who won the competition, thereby institutionalising an element of chance and making the outcome of the race unpredictable, which is a defining feature of play (cf. Opie and Opie 2018). Three days before the race, the captains selected ten horses for the race out of a pool of around fifty. At this point, the captains did not know which contrada would be assigned to which horse, as this happened some hours later, again by lottery; hence, they were incentivised to select more or less equally well-matched horses in the initial draw. Lots for the assignation of horses were drawn in public by the mayor, and as this happened, strong emotional outbursts of joy or grief flowed from the contradaioli who flocked to the Piazza del Campo to witness the spectacle, depending on whether their contrada was allotted a favourite horse or not.
Afterwards, six trial runs took place, during which the horses were tested in public on the racecourse, with the last of these taking place on the morning of the race day. Then, in the afternoon, the horses were consecrated in the churches of their assigned contrade in a ritual that symbolically transferred the contradaioli's hopes of winning the race to their horses. From this point on, the contrade lost control over the race, whose outcome now largely depended on the capabilities of the horses and jockeys.
At 4:50 p.m., the corteo storico entered the Piazza del Campo. Ceremonial movements through a city such as this one are of great symbolic significance (cf. Kenny and Fortunato 2022). The contradaioli paraded in flamboyant costumes to the sound and beat of drums, which echoed throughout the city centre. These parades usually traverse the whole of the medieval city and, therefore, can be considered to mark a temporary appropriation of that area by the marching contrade. Using this expressive medium, the contrade thus announced that they were an important part of the city's social life, not in a way that suggested opposition to other ways of inhabiting the city, but rather in one that exerted their right to maintain their way of life.
At about 7:20 p.m., the firing of a cannon announced the arrival of the horses and jockeys at the Campo, and their appearance was accompanied by loud cheering and singing from the contradaioli. The jockeys directed the horses to the starting line where a commission under the supervision of the city authorities drew the starting order, which the referee in turn announced loudly. The contradaioli considered a starting place on the inner curve to be favourable, and one on the outer curve to be unfavourable. The emotional tension of the contradaioli was expressed by their silence before the proclamation, and then through screams of joy and disappointment afterwards.
After the race, the members of the victorious contrada became ecstatic. It was hard for them to describe their feelings to me, although many contradaioli reported a sense of “total happiness” and memory lapses due to the enormous tension and strength of their emotions. Some interviewees said they needed a few moments to realise they had won, after which they started to search for other contradaioli to hug. Because of the uncertainties institutionalised by the lottery draws, victory was considered a matter of fate, albeit one that could be influenced by hard work. The institutionalised uncertainties, continuous conversations and speculation over the Palio, as well as the consecration of the horses and the race in the churches, all endowed the Palio with emotional depth.
After their triumph, the victorious contradaioli celebrated, either at the church of Santa Maria di Provenzano in July or at the Duomo in August, and then moved on to their neighbourhood and the Piazza del Campo, where the festivities continued. On the next day, they walked through the city dressed in traditional costumes and waved their contrada's flag to the accompaniment of beating drums. After the race, the city symbolically belonged to the victorious contrada, which thereby gained the sole privilege among the contrade of being allowed to organise parades through the city centre in the following days and to leave up the decorations in its district over the following weeks. Meanwhile, the defeated contradaioli fell into a state of depression and disappointment that could last for weeks. This increase in the emotional involvement in the Palio of the contradaioli, who gained or lost prestige through the festivity, was linked both to a sense of community among the contradaioli and to the strength of their identification with the city of Siena, its history and built environment. The passions (joy and suffering) generated by the Palio made it, indeed, deep play in Geertz's (1973) sense.
Processes of Social Ordering and the Widening of the Playground
The slogan “Il Palio è vita” (“The Palio is life”) was printed on orange T-shirts worn by members of the Contrada di Selva after their victory in the August Palio of 2015, indicating that, at least for these contradaioli, the Palio is “not just a game” but a serious matter. Furthermore, due to the Palio's annual cycle of events and activities, the festivity maintains a presence throughout the year (Silverman 1979: 426).
At the same time, the rituals and social life around the Palio are subject to social change. For example, after the Second World War a baptism ceremony was invented to formally initiate new members, including women, adolescents, and even babies and people not born in Siena, into their respective contrade. Such changes have led to a large increase in membership numbers. Whereas around the beginning of the twentieth century, each contrada had only between twenty and one hundred members who financed the contrade and participated in parades, wearing official costumes, today membership numbers have risen to between eight hundred and three thousand for each contrade. Moreover, since the mid-twentieth century more and more events, such as dinners, presentations and concerts, have been organised in the clubhouses, with the members providing catering on a voluntary basis. The current period, in which membership is open to all those interested in the contrade and Palio, marks the beginning of the professionalisation of the Palio and the running of social services inside the contrade. The combining of work and play at the festivities seems to go beyond merely having fun, as the contradaioli have reported experiencing living together in an everyday way. In many cases, the contradaioli who worked together at the dinners to prepare for the Palio and other festive activities formed friendship groups, or at least got to know each other better. Therefore, it seems that in this context, work is not only intertwined with play but, from the viewpoint of the contradaioli, imbued with a degree of emotionality and vitality that leads to the emergence of new social groups. This supports the view of Crozat and Fournier (2005) that work is an integral element of festivities and games and that both realms of reality, “work” and “leisure”, should no longer be taken as opposed categories of analysis but as interconnected sociocultural practices.
Due to the continuous post-war trend of increasing contrade membership and professionalisation of the Palio, the contrade have continued to differentiate their institutional orders. The two “governments” now work together with the contrada's clubhouse management and other officials responsible for the various new areas of work that have emerged, such as children's groups, sports activities, archives, museums, and charitable and cultural events.
During my stays, social life in the contrade was structured according to gender and age. There were children's groups, youth groups and adult groups, and from adolescence onward, male and female groups were separated. The structural disadvantaging of women, who were, for example, largely prevented from participating in the historical parades as drummers and flag-bearers, occurred because, according to some interviewees, in medieval times women did not participate in frontline military action, which these present-day parades represent. The historic orientation to the imagined Middle Ages seems to legitimise gender inequalities. However, in recent years such rules have started to be relaxed. This gender division is also noticeable at the leadership level since, while women are represented in large numbers in all kinds of official functions, only a few become presidents or vice-presidents, and even fewer still captains – although again, recently, cases of women occupying the higher levels of authority have become more common. Some contradaioli believe that gender inequality is a collective embarrassment that needs to be addressed in the modern era, not just within the contrade but throughout Italy. This source of collective embarrassment is part of the contrade's cultural intimacy (cf. Herzfeld 1997: 3, 6) involved in the deep play of the Palio.
An increase in tourist and media interest in the Palio during the twentieth century seems to have influenced not only the inner differentiation and professionalisation of the contrade, but also the formation of new institutions. As early as 1894, the Magistrato delle Contrade was founded to represent the interests of all contrade vis-à-vis third parties; and since 1954, the Palio has also been broadcast on Italian national television, thus boosting its national and international recognition. Furthermore, increasing commercialisation of their symbols led the contrade to establish the Consorzio per la Tutela del Palio di Siena in 1981 as a subsection of the Magistrato. This relatively new entity holds the copyright to the images and symbols of the Palio and contrade in order to protect the contrade's ownership of them and to guarantee, in their eyes, the “correct” representation of the Palio in newspapers and on television, as well as to generate financial income. Additionally, since the late 1990s, all contrade have maintained their own online homepages where they present themselves to the global public (cf. Boos 2017). This development has led to the formation of a new global context in which the contrade must act to control the presentation of their communities and the Palio, which in part involves adapting them to meet the expectations of different kinds of online spectators (Boos 2020). Accordingly, communities such as the contrade are under the dual pressures of seeking benefits such as tourism and technical advancement and maintaining control of their collective identities (Boos 2017).
On the basis of my interviews, I found an ambivalent relationship between the contradaioli and tourists. On the one hand, the contrade members were suspicious of the latter group because they disturbed the competition, which the contradaioli claimed to perform for themselves rather than for tourists; yet on the other hand, they recognised that tourism is an important part of Siena's economy, and, moreover, the interest shown by tourists in the Palio was a source of pride for the contradaioli.
An undisputed source of antagonism for the contrade and the Palio is provided by animal welfare organisations, which regularly organise marches to protest against the Palio, which they view as an archaic festivity in which animals suffer abuse. Thus, for the contradaioli, these groups may be said to play the role of the “spoilsport” as defined by Huizinga (1949: 11) and Caillois (2001: 12). Spoilsports are figures that deny the right of a game, and with it the community of players, to exist. The municipality and contrade have reacted to the interventions of these groups by establishing formal means to protect the horses. These include a new rule prescribing the use of only robust half-breed horses, which are slower than the thoroughbreds that ran previously. In addition, since the 1990s, the horses have been placed under constant medical care to prevent doping and serious injuries. All contrade and their sympathisers have joined together to protect the contrade and the Palio from the objections they face from animal welfare associations.
During the years when the horse race was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the contrade organised outdoor charity events and collective meals to benefit the local economy and those in need. Life in the contrade never came to a halt but rather adapted to the conditions. After the Palio was suspended for two years in 2020 and 2021, the contrade resumed holding and preparing the Palio in 2022 just as before.
Conclusions: The Extended and Multilayered Playground of the Urban Festivity of the Palio di Siena
The Palio seems to be an emblematic case of deep play, as it is a competition and festivity in which social relationships in the town are negotiated, bearing strong emotional significance for the participants and spectators. Its connection to spatiotemporal configurations can be considered an important element of the social and cultural research on games, play and events in general terms. The presented findings highlight the importance of differentiation between the various types of spectators whose presence can influence urban festivities in different ways. For instance, while both national and global spectators who may be sympathetic to the Palio may drive the contrade to make their performances more spectacular, more antagonistic groups such as the animal welfare associations can open political spaces in which the players fear the abolition of their way of life. Considering this, therefore, it seems appropriate to follow Bronner's (2005) advice to scholars of festivities to consider the different “semiotic layers” of the playful practices. Theories of play and festivity may still be able to view a festivity as a symbolic miniature world for its main participants in order to investigate its inner logic (Delalande 2001; Dundes and Falassi 1994; Handelman 1990; Slabina and Martínez 2014). But it is equally important to consider the meaning system and practices of outsiders and even “spoilsports” who break into this world by reinterpreting and questioning its legitimacy, in order to understand the present-day social, cultural and spatiotemporal dynamics of festivities.
Beyond these findings, some extensions of the concept of play in the context of urban festivities may also be proposed here, which involve taking more seriously the playground, understood as the link between the spatiotemporal configuration and the sociopolitical space of identity negotiation. In public places such as the Piazza del Campo, the contradaioli mix with outsiders, most visibly tourists, but also with the city authorities and Siena's other residents. However, due to the race's growing fame and development into a tourist attraction, steadily bolstered by live broadcasts on television since 1954 and online since the 2000s (cf. Boos 2017, 2020), the contrade have had to adapt to presenting themselves not only in the Piazza del Campo and other public places but also via the new media that recent technological advances have brought about. Accordingly, the contrade and the Palio can be viewed as being embedded in a “complex power-geometry of spatial relations” (Massey 2005: 183) and thus in geopolitical spaces at different scales. The contrade's positioning strategies, such as setting up their playground by appropriating places in the historic city centre during the festivity, gradually institutionalising a control system (e.g. the Consorzio per la Tutela del Palio di Siena) over the discussions and images concerning the contrade and the Palio, and professionalising their social organisation and social services, indicate the Palio's deep embeddedness in social and technological changes from the local to the global level.
Analysing the strategies that actors such as the contrade employ to position themselves in local sociopolitical relations and in the global context is crucial to interpreting not only play but festivities in more general terms. In line with recent studies (see Gold and Gold 2017), the case of the Palio shows how by expanding our scope to also include media and global perspectives on festivities, researchers can capture the political dynamics of festivities on an international scale. Since urban festivities seem to have increasingly entered the global stage, it now appears critical to conceptualise their playground as an extended and multilayered one, a local-global constellation of places, including media-based places, that is constantly reconfigured. On the one hand, the concept of an extended and multilayered playground extends Geertz's (1973) concept of “deep play” by taking into account the spatial configurations and importance of the material environment in eliciting deep emotionality. On the other hand, it adds to the anthropology of the childhood-related concept of the “playground” (Delalande 2001), to the consideration of global and virtual aspects of play and to the importance of material and sociocultural external influence in social grouping processes during play.
Existing studies on festivities linked to playful practices and games (Haferburg and Steinbrink 2017; Gold and Gold 2017, 2020; Satta and Scandurra 2015; Stevens 2007) and event studies on social cohesion (Smith et al. 2022) have mainly focused on the social and political dynamics of festivities in public spaces. As discussed above, the playground of the Palio includes not only those places where the players and spectators meet in public, but also the intimate places where the players come together and celebrate their cohesion as a community excluding the wider public. Indeed, the presented ethnography of the Palio indicates that intimate places are important for understanding and analysing the social, political and emotional geographies of festivities. For the contrade, such intimate places, such as the clubhouse and fenced-off main streets during dinners, are typically situated within their territorial boundaries, thus making those boundaries and territories an essential part of the contrade's collective identities. This was most visible during the Palio, when the contrade symbolically appropriated their respective residential districts by marking them with flags and coloured candelabra and restricting entry to outsiders, thereby transforming them into places of intimacy where the way of life of the contrade could be maintained and negotiated. Furthermore, leisure and work are not diametrically opposed but rather intertwined aspects of play. Thus, event studies can gain further insights into the processes of building solidarity by considering work activities as part of play and by including intimate places in their research.
The case of the Palio shows that publicness can be produced in places of intimacy and intimacy can be produced at public places, intertwining these modalities of living together. By expanding the view to include this dialectical reading of public and intimate places in the concept of “playgrounds”, research can offer greater insights into the negotiation dynamics of groups involved in organising and maintaining public festivities. A theoretical understanding of “playgrounds” opens up the possibility to connect political theories of publicness (e.g. Arendt 1998) and intimacy (e.g. Herzfeld 1997) with a spatial and emotional analysis of social change (Slabina and Martínez 2014). The concept of a multilayered playground, combining a player- and playground-centred analysis, can help the researcher recognise the emotional and sociocultural dimensions of being together during festive situations.
Acknowledgements
The field research in 2015 was financed by the Internal University Research Funding of Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. I would like to thank the reviewers of Ethnologia Europaea and the journal's editors-in-chief, Alexandra Schwell and Laura Stark, as well as Daniela Salvucci, for their comments on a previous version of the text. Further, I would like to express my gratitude to the contrade di Siena, especially my friends there, the Magistrato delle Contrade di Siena and the Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali, Politiche e Cognitive della Università di Siena for their generous support of my field research.
Notes
The term palio (pl. palii) generally refers to all kinds of competitive city festivities, such as horse races, bullfights, fistfights, etc. In the Sienese context, it refers to the horse race held in the central square and to a painted drapery (also referred to as the drappellone) of approximately two metres in height that is won by the victorious contrada.
For a detailed description of the rules and logic of selecting the participating contrade, see Dundes and Falassi (1994).
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