Music for all tastes

Urban festivals and cultural cosmopolitanism as strategies of social control in Portugal

Abstract

In which sense music festivals have been serving to control urban conflicts and to create the image of Portuguese cities as tolerant places? Seeking for answers to this question, this paper discusses how these events are used as mechanisms of social control in Sines and, especially, in Lisbon. The research data were collected between 2016 and 2019, in four different festivals, through direct observation, semi-structured interviews, and documentary analysis. The results confirm that such events have been acting in the creation of urban cosmopolitanism, promoting social pacification through culture.