Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Tourism Management Perspectives journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tmp The making of the London Notting Hill Carnival festivalscape: Politics and power and the Notting Hill Carnival Nicole Ferdinand ⁎ , Nigel L. Williams Bournemouth University, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB, United Kingdom ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Actor network theory Festival Festivalscape Notting Hill Carnival Politics Power Stakeholders ABSTRACT This paper examines the role of politics and power in the Notting Hill Carnival's evolution from a community festival to a hallmark event and tourism product. It overcomes the limitations of previous event/festival tourism research by utilizing Actor Network Theory's conceptualization of power as an evolving, relational and trans- formational phenomenon to analyse the development of the Notting Hill Carnival's festivalscape. Findings reveal over its fifty-plus-year history, non-human actors (such as, money) and human actors (such as, organizing committees) have engaged in continuous, complex ordering processes that have led to the development of six distinct festival frames – Community Festival, Trinidad Carnival, Caribbean Carnival, Black Arts Festival, Business Opportunity and City-led Hallmark Festival. These changes have taken place within a festivalscape that includes objects, space, the translation process, pivotal events and dissenting actors. Within the festivalscape, political actors have exerted significant influence due to their asymmetrical power creating challenges for fes- tival organizers. 1. Introduction Traditionally, festivals were expressions of historical, social or cul- tural aspects of communities (Getz and Page, 2016) and they have re- mained central to the articulation of cultures (Gold and Gold, 2016). In contemporary societies, they are staged increasingly for their economic benefits. Festivals are critical to making cities more dynamic and live- able places (Richards, 2017). They increase leisure options for locals, attract new investment to an area, revitalize existing infrastructure and, in some cases, completely remodel a city's landscape. Recent research continues to highlight that festivals staged for the benefit of tourists can lose their authenticity when they are distorted in pursuit of tourism goals (Overend, 2012). Whereas it is unfair to dismiss all manifestations of these of types of festivals as mere commercial pastiche, the tensions that result when local culture is used as part of tourism promotion are undeniable (Gibson and Connell, 2016). The difficulties organizers and city officials have faced in balancing the interests involved when a festival is staged, both for the benefit of host communities and for the purposes of tourism, are well docu- mented. It has been observed that contemporary festivals are spaces of conflict because of the opposing views of festival stakeholders (Todd et al., 2017) However, the literature has yet to explain how on-going conflicts and their resolution serve to develop and transform cultural celebrations, such as festivals, over time. The purpose of this paper is to examine the transformation process of a local community celebration which became an international hallmark event attracting tourists. It uses the Actor Network Theory (ANT) and takes a process approach to examine the activities, interactions and outcomes of festival actors in the London Notting Hill Carnival (LNHC), formerly known as the Not- ting Hill Carnival (NHC), for just over 50 years. It adapts Van der Duim's, 2007 tourismscape to develop a festivalscape for the LNHC to make three distinctive contributions to event/festival tourism litera- ture. Firstly, it reveals overarching patterns in festival development, thus going beyond the conflict that dominates examinations of festival politics in event/festival tourism research. Secondly, it provides an examination of festival politics, which shows how asymmetrical power relations impact festival networks. Thirdly, it advances van der Duim's (2007) tourismscape by demonstrating the importance of pivotal events and dissenting actors for the LNHC's festivalscape. 2. Politics and power in event/festival tourism This paper traces the development of a community festival into a hallmark international tourist event and, as such, is situated within the literature of festival/event tourism, which is described as a form of special interest travel in which attendees undertake a journey for the purposes of attending an event or festival (Getz 2008). A great deal of the literature on tourism-driven festivals/events is devoted to exploring https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2018.04.004 Received 10 September 2017; Received in revised form 16 March 2018; Accepted 4 April 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: nferdinand@bournemouth.ac.uk (N. Ferdinand), nwilliams@bournemouth.ac.uk (N.L. Williams). Tourism Management Perspectives 27 (2018) 33–46 2211-9736/ © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/). T