Picnic: order, ambiguity and community
Text: Kevin Harris
Images: Gemma Orton
This essay was published in November 2011 by Local Level using Bookleteer.
44 pages. Printed in full colour on high quality, FSC-approved sustainably-sourced paper.
Standard edition £10.00.
A limited edition of 50 copies, with a special wrapper designed by Gemma Orton, will be signed by the writer and illustrator, and sold in aid of Crisis for £30.00.
Online orders can be placed here.
_____________________________________________________________
About Picnic
People interact around food. Conventional mealtimes are ordered occasions when social relationships are reaffirmed. But picnic is different, often characterised by a wobbly combination of conviviality and disorder. So what does it tell us about the way we think of 'community'?
From the clamour of medieval feasts to mobile-enabled meet-ups with a sandwich in the park, getting together with food has always stimulated sociability. This text explores the history and social meaning of the picnic, and uses it to have a bit of fun at the expense of our contemporary obsession with 'community'. The essay uses reportage, social history, sociology, poetic imagination and illustration to challenge those understandings of social life that try to deny disorder, or insist on some mythology of unbreakable harmony.
Be prepared for a quirky and questionable read. And some gently anarchic images that stir the mix of community, ambiguity, and order.
44 pages. Printed in full colour on high quality, FSC-approved sustainably-sourced paper.
Standard edition £10.00.
A limited edition of 50 copies, with a special wrapper designed by Gemma Orton, will be signed by the writer and illustrator, and sold in aid of Crisis for £30.00.
Online orders can be placed here.
_____________________________________________________________
About Picnic
People interact around food. Conventional mealtimes are ordered occasions when social relationships are reaffirmed. But picnic is different, often characterised by a wobbly combination of conviviality and disorder. So what does it tell us about the way we think of 'community'?
From the clamour of medieval feasts to mobile-enabled meet-ups with a sandwich in the park, getting together with food has always stimulated sociability. This text explores the history and social meaning of the picnic, and uses it to have a bit of fun at the expense of our contemporary obsession with 'community'. The essay uses reportage, social history, sociology, poetic imagination and illustration to challenge those understandings of social life that try to deny disorder, or insist on some mythology of unbreakable harmony.
Be prepared for a quirky and questionable read. And some gently anarchic images that stir the mix of community, ambiguity, and order.
Sources used in the essay
The published version provides short format references. Full references, including some sources not cited in the final version, are available here (pdf).
