Contemporary Engagement

Abstract

This chapter, ‘Contemporary Engagement’, questions how contemporary participants experience these ritual landscapes. Drawing on both ethnographic evidence of interviews with participants and material data collected during fieldwork, it traces people’s engagements with these sites, from their first encounter with a coin-tree to their decision to participate in the custom and their memories of it afterwards. It considers the roles played by aesthetics in captivating the public; the lure of physical interactivity and serial collaboration in encouraging participation; and the subculture of children in ensuring the evident popularity of this practice. The chapter ends by exploring the coin’s potential as a simultaneously anonymous and personal deposit, demonstrating the seemingly contradictory centrality of both imitation and individuation to the coin-tree custom.