The study of events as a specific field of academic inquiry is relatively young. Degree programmes within the field in much of the Anglophone world tend to focus on operational considerations associated with the project management of delivering a range of events. Consequently events are frequently located in a matrix of two dominant dimension; these can be summarised as one of scale and the other of content. Scale encompasses small, highly localised activities with a small geographic reach, to mega-events that mobilise substantial media resources and target a global audience. Content is commonly broken down into a typology of events; there are many variations on the articulation of events typological modelsâmost can be summarised under the headings of sport, cultural, and business. However, that construal of events is being criticised more and more, whilst a neo-liberal agenda that attempts to managerialise and depoliticise de-politicised event typologies is being challenged.
The primary purpose of this book is to firmly ground Critical Event Studies as a significant part of the future for research and teaching, at all levels, within the field of Event Studies and Events Management. Those fields are maturing, moving away from a single focus on operational/functionalist concerns, indicated by the development of an increasing number of modules concentrating on political, social, and cultural trajectories. A book of research approaches for Critical Event Studies is a vital, missing element within the fieldâs progression. At present methodological discussion within event studies is often dominated by the changing demands for refinement of methods suitable for event evaluation. The dominance is a symptom of a neo-liberal economic agenda that seeks to de-politicise and, to some extent, de-culturate many events into some quasi-homogenous, âWesternâ-influenced, entertainment. Whilst we agree that there is a vital need for robust empirical event evaluation (which, itself, needs to go beyond the current limitations of approaches that are dominated by a common assumption that event assessments are fundamentally economic impact assessments in various forms of disguise), that domination restricts the range of research philosophies and theoretical frameworks available to scholars. By presenting researchers with a richer range of approaches, insightfully discussed by peers who are trying to develop techniques appropriate to this emerging field, this book works as a signpost to a wider array of tools than are presented within the field as it has previously been construed.
Whilst there are research methods textbooks, which offer undergraduate students the tools and techniques of doing research into events, there remains limited work, which critically examines research approaches that will be useful to postgraduate and research students. Central to how this book locates itself, within the broader oeuvre of texts currently available within event studies and events management, is as a work that develops and enhances skills around socially conscious critical thinking, and critical reflexivity, in the analysis and study of events. As well as setting forth a number of research approaches suitable for Critical Event Studies as an emergent field it also challenges readers to engage in seeking further possible theoretical frameworks and research approaches rather than present a basic methodological âhow toâ guide.
What research students, and academics active in trying to develop a critical approach to events studies, are increasingly seeking, is a richer understanding of what is to be understood as an event and what the study of events actually embraces. Many scholars interested in events, and teaching events management in higher education institutions, come with a background in related disciplines of sociology, anthropology, geography, politics, and so on. This volume emerged as a response to an appetite for a text that addresses the diversity of research approaches to events, one that can aid teaching at both and undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as supporting peers interested in developing the field further. We want to encourage students and fellow academics to pursue research projects that critique the neo-liberal, operational focus currently dominating events management.
The teaching of events management in higher education is at a critical juncture. Traditional courses, which focus on providing training for students in the operational aspects of event delivery, within the field have developed little over the last 10 years. At an undergraduate level what we describe, though not universally explicitly referred to, as Critical Events Studies occurs in a few disparate modules at several UK universities. However, its impact is being felt in a slow, but growing, number of students seeking to do their dissertation within its framework (anecdotally, we are often told by fellow academics how great it is when a student wants to do this rather than, for example, measure motivations!). Where growth is significant is in postgraduate and doctoral research proposals, as well as in the number of academics active in instigating research that is consistent with a Critical Events Studies perspective. These developments are happening globally as the study of events matures beyond its operational roots. In this book, through solid discussion of theoretical lenses, research approaches, and philosophies, all grounded in worked through case studies, those seeking to pursue projects within the area of Critical Events Studies will be shown the strengths, weaknesses, and potentials of a wide variety of perspectives.
What Is Critical Event Studies?
Critical Event Studies radically challenges all preceding formulations of events studies and events management by accepting that there is a central contestation at the heart of all events. A construal of events as part of an âevent industryâ is understood to be symptomatic of their colonisation by a dominant cultural political economic hegemony. Donald Getz has suggested that events management needed to widen its reach to become a broader, and theoretically enriched, area of academic scholarship, one he called events studies (Getz 2007). However, little progress was made in developing it as an aspect of event management education.
However, from being relatively low key, often parochial, and commonly of secondary significance to many other aspects of the state and the cultural/economic life of citizens, events have become a key strand in national identity building and acknowledged as a significant driver for economic change and societal development. Such growth has been reflected in the rise, and rise, of event management courses across the world. Over the last decade the number of universities offering a degree courses in events management has increased significantly, as have the numbers of students seeking places on their programmes. Particularly within the Anglophone world, though increasingly in South-East Asia, education in that field has focused on the development a core toolkit, one that students leaving degree courses can apply to the delivery of events that are compliant with those dimension of the standard events typological models we identified earlier. However, the growth in the significance of events has come at a cost that many, especially in the area of mega-sporting events such as the World Cup and Olympic Games, would consider overly high. Protests surrounding mega-events such as those seen in the UK (2012 Olympics) and Brazil (2014 World Cup), for example, those concerned with sponsor selection, the cost of hosting such events, their impact on local communities, and the consequences of legislative changes associated with them, have challenged standard models of event analysis. Protest, which is frequently treated as a factor to be mitigated against within a consumerist frame for events management, has increasingly taken on an event-like character. Our socially networked and digitised interconnectedness, which sits at the heart of a de-centred globalised economy, has given the small scale event the potential to have a global makeover (Rojek, 2013).
Critical Event Studies is emerging as a strong strand within the scholarly study of events; placing it firmly within other areas of multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. There is a growing body of scholarship, within Events Management and the wider social sciences, which is pushing the boundaries on how we, as events scholars, communicate the role of events in society. For example, whilst focusing on sport events, Dashper, Fletcher, and McCullough (2014) introduce their volume with an excellent outline on the emergence of critically underpinned events research. They challenge the assumption that what event scholars are doing is merely âborrowingâ social science theory to events; instead they argue events should be placed, âat the heart of wider social, cultural, political and economic issuesâ (p. 4). Similarly, Andrews and Leopold (2013) place events within the social science context and present a user-friendly introduction, for students, to key social theories and how they can offer a more nuanced understanding of events. Whilst many of these volumes do not explicitly refer to Critical Event Studies, their work has much in common with the trajectory of this book. A critical turn in events research is gathering momentum. Internationally, researchers over the last few years have been pushing the boundaries of what can be considered legitimate areas for events scholarship and, consequently, responses to questions of appropriate methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks are highly current and pertinent.
To that end, Critical Event Studies takes the concept of âeventâ, within the field of events studies, to be essentially contested. It does not shy away from that contestationânor does it see contestation as a problem to be resolvedâinstead it recognises this essential contestation as a creative dynamic that powers and enhances research, and understanding, placing it at the forefront of our work as academics interested in events. By extension, Critical Event Studies interprets the acquisition of knowledge, and understanding, pertinent to the study of events as motivated by a desire to engage in an emancipatory and liberatory activity, one rooted in a concern for the people and places impacted by events, not one steered solely by ideas of profit or limited constructions of oppression under some distorted guise of employability.
Outline of the Book
The book is divided in sub-themes in order to help the reader navigate the book more easily. Our hope is that students and researchers will find something here to provoke questions, and raise issues for their own research practice. This book is not a âhow toâ guide offering directions on such topics as questionnaire design, interview protocols and so forth. The market is already awash with such books. To merely place such generic methods into an events context would be a missed opportunity. What the chapters presented here do is offer an insight into the thoughts, reflections, and processes of active event researchers, supplemented with guidance and advice from them, for you to consider in relation to your own research studies.
Part I: Critical Considerations
The chapters in this part of the book deal with some of the key critical considerations that scholars might need to broach before, or during, their research process. The chapters presented here sum up the complexity of managing our own feelings and assumptions, the participants themselves, and how we deal with the data we collect. The chapters here are an acknowledgement of the reflexive nature of researching social phenomena. There is an important balance to be made, as McLean and Leibing point out, when they state that reflexive research should be a, âmeasured economy of disclosure [...] exercising discretionâ (Leibing & McLean, 2007, p. 13). Therefore, it is less about the confession of the researcher and more about an engagement with the role of the researcher and their subjectivity. Whilst, to lesser or greater extents, all chapters in the volume consider the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of their research, the chapters gathered in this section explicitly explore key concerns that a researcher faces when designing research in events.
This section begins with a consideration of involvement and detachment in the research processes, drawing on two distinct case studies. Turner and Pirie focus upon Norbert Eliasâ (1978, 1987) contribution to research philosophy, his attempts to resolve the dualism of induction and deduction, and problematises the search for âobjectivityâ in social research. The Chap. 2 uses Eliasâ work here in order to address an issue often prevalent in student research projects in the events terrain, namely, how to maintain analytical insight into issues of significant personal interest. Drawing on two case studies of significant personal interest to the authors, namely, live music events and the football matches of Scotlandâs national team, the chapter considers how students can maintain distance from their subject without losing the rich understanding that comes from personal involvement. The case studies are introduced to demonstrate how it is possible, by taking a âdetour via detachmentâ (Elias, 1987) to create a methodology for the investigation of live event experiences.
Dowse develops that discussion of the personal role of the researcher by exploring an ongoing concern, in discussions of qualitative investigation, regarding the effect of an inside or outside position on the researcherâs ability to obtain, and appropriately interpret, data. Understanding the challenges and opportunities inherent in such approaches is important, but they present the researcher with a host of practical considerations and private dilemmas. Chapter 3 explores those issues, drawing on her own experience of conducting a case study of a mega-event that included fieldwork in a foreign country. The research findings illuminate the value of qualitative research in developing a nuanced understanding of the specific context(s) that influence complex social events, while the experience itself highlighted how personal insider and outsider statuses may influence the research process.
Finally, in this section, Chap. 4 outlines the complexity of community festivals and explores, from a methodological point of view, how festivals can pose many challenges to researchers. Such challenges include how to capture, record, and analyse the rich qualitative and quantitative data they produce, spanning a variety of time periods and phases of festival planning, production, and consumption. Their research utilises a flexible and reflexive methodological approach that incorporates five data collection techniques, deployed to capture and analyse primary data drawn from across those unique phases of a festival. Their research aimed, in particular, to reveal the distinct relationships between planning, production, and consumption. The chapter outlines the process by examining the philosophical underpinning of the research; how the research questions and data need to be operationalised into practical data collection methods when working in the field; and the integration of the literature reviewed, data gathered, and the triangulation (or in this case quin-tangulation) of primary data, in order to build themes for analysis which, in turn, reveal the contribution to knowledge the research can make. Jepson and Clarkeâs chapter provides an excellent examination of a how critical events scholars need to carefully consider complexity right from the start of the research process.
Part II: Discursive, Historical, and Ideological Perspectives
In this part of the book we look at approaches that consider the studying of events from different discursive perspectives, particularly those that focus on the significance of history and ideology. A central element of critical event studies is to highlight relationships of power and subordination at work within events. The five chapters that comprise this part of the book look at such relationships through a variety of theoretical and analytical lenses. Here the authors use their various expertise to consider examples drawn from events in cultural, political, and sporting arena, drawing on methodologies as diverse as computer-assisted discourse studies, which employs a computational, and statistically driven, approach to the analysis of a large corpus of lexical data, to techniques that are more qualitative in their pursuit of the social value of complexity.
We begin this part of the book with a chapter by McDowell and Skillen (Chap. 5), two trained historians who have taught on research methods courses in sports and events management courses. Following Doug Matthewsâ (2012) declaration that events management students needed to understand âhistorical spectacleâ they propose a toolkit for those undertaking historical research on events, highlighting the strengths and potential problems or pitfalls involved in analysing relevant primary source material. Chapter 5 has two aims. The first is to introduce events practitioners to relevant, accessible literature which can enhance a broader understanding of events studies in their historical context; the second is to stimulate original research. To that later end they discuss, in detail, their work on the 1970 and 1986 Commonwealth Games (both held in Edinburgh). Using many different archival sources they discuss the ways in which they have used that material to piece together the narratives of both events. In conclusion they argue that archival research is a crucial, yet often overlooked, approach vital to historical research on events, whilst noting that archives are a mediated space whose collections depend on many factors that are frequently beyond the control of the researcher.
Dominique Ying-Chih Liaoâs chapter (Chap. 6) considers how, in response to contemporary social anxieties, re-enactment in performances has been used to both recall the past and invoke collective memory and identity. Her case study, the Huashan Event, was a theatrical re-enactment of the siege of Troy; a cultural response to the 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis, in which the Chinese government deployed hundreds of missiles, aimed at Taiwan, and conducted missile tests within the Taiwan Strait, as a signal to warn Taiwan off declaring political independence. She shows how this performance triggered a series of cultural and political interventions that ...