Approaches and Methods in Event Studies

Tomas Pernecky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317673002
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

The recent proliferation of events as a subject of study in its own right has signalled the emergence of a new field – event studies. However, whilst the management-inspired notion of planned events, which strives for conceptual slenderness, may indeed be useful for event managers, the moment we attempt to advance knowledge about events as social, cultural and political phenomena, we realise the extent to which the field is theoretically impoverished. Event studies, it is argued, must transcend overt business-like perspectives in order to grasp events in their complexities.

This book challenges the reader to reach beyond the established modes of thinking about events by placing them against a backdrop of much wider, critical discourse. Approaches and Methods in Event Studies emerges as a conceptual and methodological tour de force—comprising the works of scholars of diverse backgrounds coming together to address a range of philosophical, theoretical, and methods-related problems. The areas covered include the concepts of eventification and eventual approaches to events, a mobilities paradigm, rhizomatic events, critical discourse analysis, visual methods, reflexive and ethnographic research into events, and indigenous acumen.

Researchers and students engaged in the study of events will draw much inspiration from the contributions and from the volume as a whole.

I Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315770642-1

1 The epistemic foundations of event studies

Tomas Pernecky

DOI: 10.4324/9781315770642-2

The problem with the study of events: the need to articulate a much broader vision of event studies

The recent proliferation of events as a subject of study in its own right has signalled the emergence of a new field. The notion of event studies, first articulated by Donald Getz (2007), arose from business and management perspectives, which sought to establish a body of knowledge in response to the needs of a growing events industry. The ‘event’ thus became firmly rooted within the rhetoric of managerial practices – a business-like entity, capable of not only generating revenues but delivering a host of other acclaimed benefits, including job creation, destination development and event tourism. Regardless of the typology employed, knowledge about events has been advanced mainly under the rubric of event management, whereby students are taught about topics such as event production, design and marketing – all of which contribute to an event manager’s practical know-how.

While it is appropriate for specialised forms of knowledge to develop according to disciplinary, field-specific or vocational needs, the danger which this book seeks to address lies in limiting event studies to the standpoint of event management. To make this point clear, the claim put forward here is that event studies ought to resist domination by a business paradigm, and instead serve as a platform for a multitude of scholarly investigations. As such, it ought to comprise a body of knowledge nourished by methodological diversity and conceptual and philosophical acumen. Such inquiries into events must navigate a much broader landscape than the notion of the event as something to be planned, bid for, marketed, designed, managed and executed.

Despite the fact that some event scholars have started to pay attention to the social, cultural and political aspects of events (for example, Merkel, 2013; Moufakkir and Pernecky, 2014; Richards et al., 2013; Rojek, 2013), these are on the fringe of the mainstream event curriculum. Critiques of the lack of theoretical sophistication and critical insight have come mainly from disciplinary thinkers like Rojek (sociology), who remarks that

[…] overwhelmingly, the professional event literature provides a technocratic view of events. It focuses on the nuts and bolts in the machine and when and where to oil the parts. The crucial issues of who owns the machine, who controls it and what is its purpose are confined to the backwaters.

(2013: xii)

The prevalent conception of event studies is, for the most part, a well-articulated extension of the event management curriculum. For example, Getz (2007) states that it is dependent ‘on the already well-established event design/production and management professions’ (p. 3; see also Figure 1.2 on p. 4). This suggests that there is a fundamental bond between event management and event studies, and that the former holds an a priori status upon which the latter depends. Such an assumption, however, speaks of disciplinary predisposition, and is explicitly contested in this volume by MacKenzie and Porter (Chapter 2). There is nothing more or less fundamental about social phenomena other than when an inquiry is framed by a disciplinary or interdisciplinary eye, knowledge is skewed towards what is deemed important by the discipline(s) in question. In other words, what is accepted as noteworthy and legitimate has to conform to the vision of discrete communities of practice.

It would seem that event studies needs to swap its straitjacket for a looser, more comfortable cloak. If its ambitions go far beyond producing knowledge on the type of event described in the event management literature, and if disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary visions are all too narrow and restricting, then we must develop a more flexible reading of the field: event studies is whatever researchers invested in the study of events do. ¹ Such a definition speaks of possibilities and inclusiveness: it says that there is no privileged reading of events, and that events inquiry is open to a range of ontological, epistemological and methodological views. In this light, event studies becomes neutral territory, erected upon the ideals of epistemological freedom and academic creativity. It extends, but is not limited, to disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary and post-disciplinary modes of inquiry, whose delineation will occupy us for the remainder of this chapter.

Disciplines vs professions

The challenges faced by event studies in its nascence are typical in the growth and development of new and emerging fields. In addressing the question of whether or not human movement studies ² is a discipline, Abernethy et al. ( 2013) differentiate between disciplines and professions. In their reading, disciplines are viewed as coherent bodies of knowledge that describe, explain and predict ‘key phenomena from the domain of interest (or subject matter)’, whereas professions draw on knowledge from a variety of disciplines in order to ‘improve the conditions of society’ (p. 5). Accordingly, the profession of engineering, for example, is argued to require the disciplinary know-how of mathematics, physics and computer science for solving engineering problems. Similarly, various medical professions apply knowledge from physiology, anatomy, pharmacology, psychology and biochemistry when attending to medical problems. Hence, the distinction at hand sees disciplines as theory- and research-building, and professions in terms of applied learning. Nevertheless, such a distinction – as indeed recognised by Abernethy et al. (2013) – is limiting for it does not help us to differentiate between disciplines, fields of studies and vocational training/profession-based curricula. Before we examine this point further, it is useful to note some of the shared characteristics that professions have in common:

• an identified set of jobs or service tasks over which they have jurisdiction or monopoly;
• organisation under the framework of a publicly recognised association;
• identified educational competencies and formalised training and education criteria (this generally includes the mastery of complex skills and the presence of a theory and evidence base for their practice);
• political recognition, usually through acts of government legislation (including, in some cases, establishment of licensing or registration boards); and
• a code of ethics defining minimal standards of acceptable practice.

(Abernethy et al., 2013: 5)

All of the above traits can be applied to the applied field of event management. In light of the points above, there are specific jobs, professional bodies, associations and training programmes for event professionals. The importance of planned events has been recognised not only by the industry, but also in many countries by governments via legislation (e.g. the Major Events Management Act 2007, which provides protection for major events in New Zealand), regulation (e.g. local by-laws dealing with noise restrictions, health and safety, traffic management, waste management, etc.), strategic planning (e.g. events featuring in a variety of strategic documents), and funding to support the development of new events as well as the bidding for international events. In addition, with the growth of planned events come new industry standards, codes of ethics and the emergence of associations that strive to improve industry practices and support event stakeholders. In the UK alone, several associations have emerged over the past few years: the Association of Event Organisers (AEO), the Event Supplier and Services Association (ESSA), the Association of Event Venues (AEV), the Association for Events Management Education (AEME), the National Outdoor Events Association (NOEA), the Association of British Professional Conference Organisers (ABPCO), the Event Marketing Association (EMA) and the Meetings Industry Association (MIA).

From this vantage point, we can understand event management – as opposed to event studies – as a phenomenon that arose to cater to the needs of industry and event professionals. In the words of Getz (2012), it is ‘an applied, professional field devoted to understanding and improving the management of planned events’ (p. 5). The event industry and the applied field of event management have developed symbiotically, as reflected in the exponential growth in the number of events organised internationally, the increase in university programmes offering courses in event management and the number of students choosing to study event management over other subject areas.

It has been argued that event management and event studies are not disciplines because both derive their theoretical perspectives from, and are therefore dependent on, other disciplines and fields. Among the figures supporting this view is Getz (2012), who has provided a list of what he calls the foundation disciplines and closely related fields – showing that psychology, for instance, contributes to the understanding of the event experience and people’s personal needs, motives and preferences – which have direct value for event planning, production, marketing and design. Such disciplinary importing has been depicted as playing a fundamental role in the still emerging field of event studies. Also worthy of mention is Tribe’s (1997) critical analysis of tourism studies, which similarly rejected the conception of tourism knowledge as conforming to a discipline. He proposed that tourism studies is jointly made up of a business field and a non-business field. In his subsequent work, these have been labelled Tourism Field 1 (TF1) and Tourism Field 2 (TF2) (Tribe, 2004). Whereas TF1 includes marketing, management and corporate-focused inquiry, TF2 covers social, environmental and other non-business areas of inquiry.

Event studies may be seen as following a similar path: event management, with its focus on planned events representing the business arm and social, cultural, political, environmental and critical research into events representing the non-business arm. This dichotomy must be resisted. Event studies comprises a broad body of academic knowledge, of which event management is one of many sub-strands; event management should not be seen as a necessary or a priori prototype of the field of event studies. Put another way, event studies is a loose, umbrella-like, broad-ranging area that includes all types o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledegments
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Articulating a broader philosophical, conceptual and theoretical vision for event studies
• Part III Towards critical capacity and methodological vigilance for the study of events
• Part IV Conclusion
• Index