A phenomenological exploration of music festival experience MOSS, Jonathan Matthew Henderson Available from the Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/21509/ A Sheffield Hallam University thesis This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Please visit http://shura.shu.ac.uk/21509/ and http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html for further details about copyright and re-use permissions. March 16, 2018 A PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF MUSIC FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy JONATHAN MOSS SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY Copyright Statement This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and due acknowledgement must always be made of the use of any of the material contained in, or derived from, this thesis. ABSTRACT The study provides an in-depth exploration of music festival experience. The research was positioned in the field of experience and this provided the research with a phenomenological lens. Reflecting on the theories of phenomenological anthropology (Jackson, 1996; Andrews 2006, 2009) and the anthropology of experience (Bruner, 1986, Turner, 1986) this research justified a contrasting epistemic perspective and phenomenological psychology was used to investigate the ideographic experiences of the attendees. This enabled an understanding of how music festival experience effected the lifeworld of the individuals involved. The research is grounded in the philosophy of existential phenomenology and its conceptualisation of experience. The exploration used the philosophical work of Husserl (1936/1999) as its phenomenological foundation. Developing this position, and contrastingly from the phenomenological research of Jackson (2014), the research argues for the interpretative phenomenological (Heidegger, 1927/1962; Merleau-Ponty, 1962) perspective to further understand music festival experience. This is because, by engaging with the phenomenological psychology of Smith, Harre & Van Langenhove, (1995a, 1995b) and Ashworth (2006, 2015), it becomes possible to understand the contribution that the music festival experience has to an individual’s Lifeworld. Smith’s et al (1995b; Smith & Osborn’s, 2015b) Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) provides a robust framework for understanding the idiographic music festival experience. The Descriptive Experience Sampling (Hurlburt & Heavey, 2001) approach was used to gather data about the experiences of 9 participants before, during and after the Green Man Music festival (a 5-day period), and then later explored in detail during individual phenomenological interviews. These interviews were carried out between 24-48 hours after the festival. Using Smith’s IPA approach (2009; Smith & Osborn, 2015b) the interviews generated rich data as the interviewer and each participant discussed the information recorded during the ‘capture’ process. This provided 9 deeply idiographic accounts of music festivals experience. Analysis showed 'Universals' (Ashworth, 2015) emerged which provided both a detailed picture of music festival experience and how the lifeworld of the individual was affected. These universals were then used to develop the Ideographic Map of Music Festival Experience. This is an illustrative conceptualisation of the shared, yet subjective, journeys taken by the participants during the Green Man Festival and provides an understanding of music festival experience which is in line with theories that articulate the need for experiences to be understood within the context of the individual’s everyday life (Uriely, 2005), and as a development of their lifeworld (Flowers, Larkin & Smith, 2009) and life story (Guignon, 2012). The findings also provided further idiographic perspectives about theories of experience including: flow (Csikszentmihályi, 1990), liminality and communitas (Turner, 1969, 1974, 1979), and existential authenticity (Cohen, 2007, 2010). The Descriptive Experience Sampling method and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis were also able to provide findings that contribute to Krueger’s (2014a, 2014b) Hypothesis of Individual Extended Emotions and his Hypothesis of Collective Extended Emotions. Moreover, the analysis showed evidence of how this theory combined and contributed to existing theories within experience research. Through this ideographic investigation, music festival experience was shown to be fluctuating, dynamic and oscillating. It was also found that while negative emotions were present, these still formed an important part of the participant’s Page | i experience. Past models of music festival experience, due to their managerial prerogatives, have tended to ignore these negative emotions (Lee & Kyle, 2013; Getz, 2012; Morgan, 2008), but this research argues that they should be acknowledged so that meaning, or insights can be derived from them (Jackson, 2014; Ziakas & Boukas, 2014) and therefore a richer understanding of the effect upon the individuals’ lifeworld can be developed. In doing so, the method’s applicability and adaptability were enhanced to justify using them for future studies. Page | ii List of contents List of figures viii List of tables viii Acknowledgements ix Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 History and development 1 1.2 Theoretical context 3 1.3 Researching experience and music festivals 4 1.4 The critical and cultural turn 5 1.5 Positivism to phenomenology 7 1.6 Repositioning music festival experience research 9 1.7 The field of ‘experience’ research 10 1.8 The researcher’s perspective 11 1.9 Green Man festival 13 1.10 Research question 14 1.11 Aims and objectives 15 1.12 Structure of the thesis 16 1.13 Concluding overview of the introduction 17 Chapter 2: Festivals 2.1 Introduction 18 2.2 Festival development 18 2.3 Music development 19 2.4 Festival theory 21 2.5 Festivalisation and festivalscape 21 2.6 Characteristics of music festivals 23 2.7 Music festival as a planned event 23 2.8 Motivations to attendance 26 2.9 The consumption of experience 30 Page | iii Chapter 3: Experience 3.1 Introduction 34 3.2 Contextualising leisure and tourism research and music festival experience 37 3.3 The field of experience 39 3.4 Erfahrung and erlebnis 40 3.5 Embodiment of experiences 44 3.6 Anthropology of experience 44 3.7 Perspectives about lifeworld 45 3.8 Experience within tourism research 47 3.9 Inter-experience 48 3.10 Liminality 49 3.11 Liminoid spaces 50 3.12 Communitas 51 3.13 Flow and optimal experience 53 3.14 Authenticity 56 3.15 Music festivals and phenomenological research 58 3.16 Conclusion 61 Chapter 4: Methodology 4.1 Introduction 62 4.2 Ontology 63 4.3 Critical realism 64 4.4 Emergence theory 65 4.5 False beliefs 66 4.6 Epistemology 66 4.7 The phenomenological philosophy 67 4.7.1 Origins of phenomenological philosophy 67 4.7.2 The five assumptions of phenomenological psychology 71 4.7.3 Emotions and phenomenological psychology 73 4.8 Denzin’s assumptions of emotion and experience 74 Page | iv 4.9 Music festival experience and the development of the individuals’ lifeworld 77 4.10 Existential phenomenology and interpretative phenomenological analysis 78 4.11 Contributions to the lifeworld 79 4.12 Neurophenomenology, descriptive experience sampling and music festival experience research 80 4.12.1 Theoretical perspective of neurophenomenology 80 4.12.2 Krueger’s hypothesis of individual extended emotions 82 4.12.3 Krueger’s hypothesis of collective extended emotions 85 4.12.4 The contribution to neurophenomenology 88 4.13 Descriptive experience sampling (DES) 88 4.13.1 Justification of method 89 4.13.2 Experience sampling and researching the everyday experience 89 4.13.3 Experience sampling in music and emotion research 90 4.14 Limitations of approach 91 4.15 Design and implementation 93 4.15.1 Choosing cases 93 4.15.2 Recruitment 94 4.15.3 Participant incentives 94 4.15.4 Research site: Green Man, 2014 95 4.16. Equipment 95 4.16.1 Pre-briefing 96 4.16.2 Participant details and researcher’s background 97 4.16.3 Design and implementation 98 4.16.4 Cases, time, durations, location 99 4.16.5 Structure, recording, reporting 99 4.17 Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) 100 4.17.1 IPA - History and development 100 4.17.2 Analysis of the data 101 4.17.3 Case by case 102 Page | v 4.17.4 Analysis of the transcripts 102 4.18 Validity, reflexivity and ethics 106 4.18.1 Validity 106 4.18.2 Validity framework 107 4.18.3 Reflexivity 107 4.18.4 Personal position 108 4.18.5 Ethics 109 4.18.6 Conclusion 109 Chapter 5: Findings 5.1 Introduction 110 5.2 The neuro-physical territory 110 5.2.1 Physical relaxation and sleep 110 5.2.2 Physical responses to external stimuli: live music, weather, climate, landscape 111 5.2.3 Corporeal imperative: fatigue, body temperature, physical exhaustion, sustenance, washing, expelling 114 5.2.4 Temporary abandonment of corporeal norms: corporeal hedonism, bodily routines and rituals 119 5.3 The psychological territory– the internal elements 121 5.3.1 Anticipation: pre-festival anticipation, experiential Inequality 121 5.3.2 Past experiences 127 5.3.3 Identity: