Skip to Main Content

Circus World: Roustabouts, Animals, and the Work of Putting on the Big Show

Online ISBN:
9780252056741
Print ISBN:
9780252045868
Publisher:
University of Illinois Press
Book

Circus World: Roustabouts, Animals, and the Work of Putting on the Big Show

Andrea Ringer
Andrea Ringer

Assistant Professor

Tennessee State University
Find on
Published online:
23 January 2025
Published in print:
9 July 2024
Online ISBN:
9780252056741
Print ISBN:
9780252045868
Publisher:
University of Illinois Press

Abstract

Circus World: Roustabouts, Animals, and the Work of Putting on the Big Show examines the circus as a workplace during its Golden Age, from the 1870s until the 1960s. It is not focused on one particular circus. Instead, it considers the entire circus world, the wider collection of traveling shows. This study investigates how circus workers—a group that comprised adults, children, and animals from around the world—understood their own labor and shaped their workplace. Behind the scenes, practices in the circus world resembled those of other companies in the corporate landscape. But as a workplace it also operated much like a mobile company town, with systems that financially tethered employees to their employer through paternalistic policies that offered room and board rather than pay. Workers also labored and lived in the same space, which blurred lines between work and home life. Circus World explores the performative labor of physical and emotional work that created the circus world, and the ways that identity affected how circus workers understood their own lives and labor. Despite their varied identities, workers often banded together under the circus world banner, helping create this workplace in the late nineteenth century and then dismantle it in the mid-twentieth century.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close