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The publication of "The Spectacle of Performance" three decades after it was written offers the opportunity to reflect upon the intellectual circumstances of its production; on what was and was not distinctive about it then; on where sociological and interdisciplinary studies of performance have come to in the years since; and about what the framing of Spectacle might still contribute so long after it was written. I suggest that performance, when understood not only in interactional terms but more broadly, in relation to temporally structured social formations, offers a basis for reorienting sociohistorical inquiry in a synthetic way.