Philadelphia Mummers

Patricia Anne Masters is Term Assistant Professor of Sociology and Director of the Undergraduate Program in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University.

• Contents List of Illustrations and Maps iii Acknowledgments iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1. From Play to Play Community: The Early Years of the Mummers Parade 22 Chapter 2. Expanding the Play Community: The Contemporary Parade 60 Chapter 3. Blacks, Women, and the ANewA Immigrants: The Mummers and Diversity 96 Chapter 4. AGoing Up the Street@: The Experience of the Parade 138 Chapter 5. Rituals and the Play Community 166 Chapter 6. Family, Club, and Neighborhood 190 Chapter 7. The Experience of Play 245 Chapter 8. Play and Community: The Mummers Past and Future 283 Appendix 1. Research Methods and Materials: The Ethnographic Challenge 289 Notes 298 A Note on Sources and References 319 Index

"The Philadelphia Mummers presents overwhelming evidence about the significance and value to the City of Philadelphia of this unique tradition...This carefully written book is a good read for everyone involved with Mummery and a must read for anyone who wants to learn more about it." The Philadelphia Public Record "The Philadelphia Mummers provides an insider's look into its longstanding ceremonies, tied to larger culture, and how this annual parade provides community where social integration has otherwise been lost...Well-written, carefully documented, and assiduously researched, The Philadelphia Mummers offers insight into a time-honored tradition, how it has been maintained for over a century, and the crucial role that play serves in forging community ties...It's accessibility, readability, and fascinating tales make it recommended reading for courses in urban sociology, community, sociology of leisure, social change and qualitative methods. If Masters's rendering of the Parade is as accurate as we believe, to paraphrase another W.C. Fields quote, 'we'd rather be in Philadelphia' come next New Year's Day." Contemporary Sociology "Masters effectively demonstrates that mummers produced an ongoing 'successful community in a fragmented larger society,' a community in which the act of play is central...Highly recommended." Choice "Masters's participant-observer notes bring her sociological study alive...Good writing, great pictures, fine old newspaper quotes." Multicultural Review "With her ethnographic detail, Masters offers up a tremendous amount of information useful to students and scholars interested in urban culture and art." The American Journal of Sociology, March 2009