Conceptualising participant observations in festival tourism

ABSTRACT

There is still confusion on what participant observation connotes and scholars call for more studies on researchers’ roles and emotional reflexivity in tourism. This interdisciplinary research aims to unpack participant observations at festivals. Findings from literary festivals in Ireland and Italy suggest that participant observations are Holistic Research Experiences and are characterised by four elements. First, they go beyond the visual and the multisensory nature, to be holistic experiences. Second, fieldwork is emplaced since researchers are situated in the field and can feel bodily sensations and empathy, but are not fully immersed. Third, the researchers’ participation continuum does not go from complete observer to complete participant, but it goes from passive to active involvement in the festival activities. Fourth, different passive/active, intentional/unintentional encounters can take place: human, animal, space, material, and immaterial. Finally, the paper considers future areas for research.

KEYWORDS:

• Event
• emplacement
• experience
• holistic
• qualitative
• senses

Introduction

Participant observation is a widely used method in tourism and festival studies. Academic deliberations have argued that participant observation involves fieldwork, produces qualitative data, and has been recognised as the most appropriate method to investigate interactions and meanings of actions from the insiders’ perspective (Cole, 2005). However, there is still confusion on what participant observation connotes and several elements of this method are unclear.

Burgess (1982) and Spradley (1980) claim that participant observation is about observing participants in a setting and participating in the activity. So, it is not just ‘looking’ (Swipway et al., 2012, p. 458). It also involves ‘listening and talking to the people being studied’ (Swipway et al., 2012, p. 459). Thus, ‘as Burgess (1982) points out, the term ‘participant observation’ is a little confusing since it connotes much more than simply observation. It entails talking to people, watching, reading documents; keeping notes and anything else that enables you to understand a situation’ (Thomas, 2016, p. 198).

While collecting on-site data, festivals and tourism researchers engage with several different senses, bodily movements, emotions, and interactions (Lea, 2006; Waitt & Duffy, 2010) and are involved in multisensory experiences (Agapito, 2020; Toraldo, 2013). Recently, in tourism studies there have been calls for more studies with a holistic approach (Rodríguez-Campo et al., 2020), research that focus on the role of the researcher (Farkic, 2021), including how emotions impact the research process (Witte et al., 2022).

Furthermore, it has been argued that the best way to understand festival visitors’ experiences is for researchers to ‘step into the worlds of participants’ (Jaimangal-Jones, 2014, p. 54) and become immersed in the field (Holloway et al., 2010). It has always been believed that during participant observations, researchers can adopt different immersive roles, from complete observer to complete participant (Gold, 1958). However, there have been claims that these are ‘antiquated labels’ and ‘all ethnographers are simultaneously participants in and observers of the microcosms they study’ (Seim, 2021, p. 2).

All the above means that there is a need to better explore what participant observation is. The aim of this paper is therefore to unpack what participant observation in festival tourism encompasses. Drawing from sensual geographies, multisensory ethnography, festival and tourism studies, this paper aims to further the conceptualisation of participant observation at festivals, using Irish and Italian literary festivals as case studies. The contribution of this paper is theoretical and responds to the shortcoming in the literature. By untangling the elements of participant observations, this paper furthers our understanding of participant observations and extends the conversations on emotional reflexivity (Witte et al., 2022) and the challenges of ethnographic fieldwork in festivals and tourism studies (Farkic, 2021). It suggests an innovative approach that could be valuable for festival and tourism researchers. As a matter of fact, understanding what participant observation entails can help researchers to better understand their positionality in the field and modify the data collection and analysis techniques.

Participant observations

Participant observation is a type of qualitative field research method. Field research started in the fifth century BC, with Wax (1971, as cited in Burgess, 1982) and Douglas (1976, as cited in Burgess, 1982), writing reports of the Peloponnesian wars (Burgess, 1982). Later, sociologists and anthropologists, such as Malinowski and Mead, started to explore people’s lives whilst in the field (Holloway et al., 2010) and nowadays it is a widely used method. Participant observation is a fieldwork method in ethnography (Spradley, 1980). It includes being in the field for a prolonged period of time and is useful to explore cultures and lifestyles (Denscombe, 2017). It has been recognised as a valid method in festival settings and more generally in tourism (Agapito, 2020; Holloway et al., 2010). Nevertheless, scholars argue that ethnography and fieldwork methods need to be reviewed and better conceptualised (Faubion & Marcus, 2009, as cited in Hockey & Forsey, 2020; Rabinow & Marcus, 2008 as cited in Hockey & Forsey, 2020).

During participant observation, researchers watch, hear, talk, take notes, and participate in an activity (Burgess, 1982). According to Denscombe (2017), the main features of participant observation are: direct observation, fieldwork in natural settings, and the issue of perception. The latter refers to the influence of the observer’s personal factors during the observation, such as memory, past history, emotional and physical state (Denscombe, 2017). As such, during fieldwork, researchers understand both the actions of the community under study as well as their own (Burgess, 1982). Researchers are part of what is being observed and therefore they shape the data (Cole, 2005). Therefore, ‘The participant observation method involves numerous methodological competencies and procedures, yet no systematic research has been found to date that evaluates the qualitative practice’ (Shin & Miller, 2022, p. 114).

The participant observation has been described as an immersive research method, where researchers immerse themselves in the lives of the observed (Cook, 2005; Holloway et al., 2010). As Holloway et al. (2010, p. 77) explain, ‘participant observation means that researchers are immersed in the setting; they interact with participants, observe what is going on and are able to ask questions about it’. Likewise, Cook (2005, p. 167) claims that participant observation ‘involves researchers moving between participating in a community – by deliberately immersing themselves into its everyday rhythms and routines’. Researchers can adopt different degrees of immersion in the field following Gold’s (1958) continuum: complete participant, participant-as-observer, observer-as-participant, and complete observer. The latter does not include any form of interaction with the informants in the field. Thus, researchers can only spend some time with the participants or be fully immersed in the activity (Spradley, 1980).

The concept of immersion derives from Pine and Gilmore’s (1999, 2011) experience economy. They argue that a person can be immersed in an activity along a continuum from passive to active. If people are actively involved participants, they experience escapist immersion, as they ‘want to go and do’ (Pine & Gilmore, 2011, p. 53). Instead, people experience esthetic immersion when they are immersed but have no or little impact on the environment, and they ‘just want to be’ (Pine & Gilmore, 2011, p. 53). According to Agrawal et al. (2020), immersion generates deep cognitive involvement in the activity that can lead the person to feel disassociated from the real world. Immersion can be sensory or psychological, but the concept has been defined in different ways and to date there’s a lack of consensus on how to best conceptualise and research it (Agrawal et al., 2020; Blumenthal & Jensen, 2019; Lunardo & Ponsignon, 2020). Likewise, the participant observation immersive continuum is unclear (Seim, 2021). As a matter of fact, Hockey and Forsey (2020) claim that the concept of participation in ethnography is unclear and suggest moving towards the concept of engagement since it reflects ‘the important sense of ‘being there’ and ‘being with’ research participants’ (p. 75).

Over time the concept of participant observation shifted to the concept of observant participant, who is deeper involved in the field and has a more active role (Moeran, 2009; Wilkinson, 2017). This shift was caused by the question: ‘How much should [ethnographers] involve themselves with the people, places, and processes they study?’ (Seim, 2021, p. 3). An observant participant does not have a transient role but plays an existing role in the field (Seim, 2021), is embedded in the field and is ‘a member of the community under study’ (Wilkinson, 2017, p. 614), so experiences ‘total social immersion’ (Moeran, 2009, p. 140). Moreover, an observant participant focuses on ‘inward gazing’ first and ‘outward gazing’ second, while the participant observer does the opposite (Seim, 2021, p. 16). However, there is no agreement on how to define who the observant participant is: sometimes called embodied ethnography or enactive ethnography (Seim, 2021).

Understanding how researchers are immersed and interact with participants is therefore crucial. As mentioned, researchers observe, ask questions, co-produce practices and interact with participants in various ways (Holloway et al., 2010; Pink, 2015). Nevertheless, according to Hockey and Forsey (2020), the Western conceptualisation of participant observations lead to the visual dominating over the other senses in the field, but ‘we seem to be reporting more of what we hear than what we see … [so] why do anthropologists persist in referring to our main practice as participant observation?’ (p. 71). Moreover, scholars use different terms, such as conversations or interviews to refer to verbal interactions during participant observations. Pink (2015, p. 95) talks about research encounters, as ‘shared moments through which ethnographers learn and know about other people’s experiences’. While Hockey and Forsey (2020, p. 71) argue that we should talk about ‘engaged listening’ instead of interviews in the field.

Recently, scholars have focused on a more multisensory/multimodal approach. For instance, according to Pink (2015, p. 95), ethnography is ‘a participatory practice in which learning is embodied, emplaced, sensorial and empathetic, rather than observational’. Meanings are therefore constructed in different ways and via different sensory modes of expression (Atkinson, 2017). By living the experience, researchers can understand the realms of meanings and explore new routes of understanding. Stevenson (2014) studied how sensory ethnography can be used to explore embodied and emplaced memories for certain places. According to Stevenson (2014), memory is linked to emplaced enactments, for example walking, talking, or riding a bicycle.

Emplaced performances, thoughts, and practices such as listening, chatting, eating, or walking are all present at festivals. Pink (2011) also argued that emplacement means that the researcher’s biological body becomes part of the environment, and it does not only embody knowledge and skills, but it can also be physically transformed. For example, using the example of bullfight, bodily transformations can be scars or muscular changes due to training (Pink, 2011). Additionally, according to Pink (2011), an experience of a performance is not only embodied and empathetic but it is also dependent on social, affective, and sensory sensations that are inextricable from the physical location of the event. Similarly, in sensuous geography, the environment perceived by a person is negotiated by socio-cultural filters, such as the individual’s education, socio-economic status, age, gender, and cultural beliefs of the person (Rodaway, 2011). This means that meanings are generated via researchers’ sensorial stimuli and individual socio-cultural filters (Edensor & Falconer, 2012; Rodaway, 2011).

Participant observations at festivals and visitors’ experiences

As mentioned, during participant observations, researchers take part in an activity to varying degrees. At festivals, researchers are also festival visitors, since they are in the field and can participate in the activities in different ways. This means that, in order to unpack participant observations in festival tourism, it is also important to explore how festival visitors behave and interact.

Urry (1990) theorised the concept of the tourist visual gaze in the context of mass tourism and sight-seeing. Later, scholars observed that tourists do not only gaze because ‘tourism occurs through visual and practical actions where bodies corporally engage with the landscape’ (Canavan, 2020, p. 2). In the updated Tourist Gaze study, Urry and Larsen (2012) argue that the gaze is linked with other sensory experiences, like tactile and olfactory, but the visual remains the dominant sense (Edensor, 2018). Tourism experiences are not only visual, but include sound, smell, taste, and touch sensations (Agapito, 2020). Tourists interact with other people, places, objects, and even technologies (Canavan, 2020). They experience ‘immersive sensory engagement with the world’ (Edensor, 2018, p. 915). So, scholars have started to conceptualise tourist experiences as immersive and multisensorial. This shift recalls the evolution of conceiving participant observation from only a visual to a more-than-visual method.

Multisensory experiences happen at festivals (Jordan, 2016), like literary festivals which are forms of literary tourism (Rossetti & Quinn, 2019). Festival visitors engage with several different senses, bodily actions, and emotions (Toraldo, 2013). Since festival participation includes cognitive, spatial, temporal, social, emotional and physical elements (Ommundsen, 2009; Rossetti & Quinn, 2021), some scholars have started to conceptualise it as a holistic experience. For instance, gastronomy festivals create ‘holistic experience which results from the interaction of sensorial (sense), affective (feel), cognitive (think), behavioural (act) and social (relate) experiences (Schmitt, 1999, 2003)’ (Mason & Paggiaro, 2012, p.1329). Some studies refer to the Festivalscape construct, which is the holistic pattern of how festivals are experienced by visitors and includes tangible factors such as food and comfort (Mason & Paggiaro, 2012). Its holistic nature links body, mind, and the world recalling the anthropology of the senses (Agapito, 2020).

A holistic attitude includes a collection of components, an overall evaluation, a union of all the elements. As such, holistic tourism aims at the ‘wholeness of the self’ (Rahmani & Carr, 2022, p. 539). It focuses on tourists’ body-mind-spirit connection and differs from spiritual tourism, which focuses only on the spiritual dimension (Rahmani & Carr, 2022). As previously explained, the participant observation method is shaped by the observer’s personal factors such as memory, emotional and physical state (Denscombe, 2017). While observing, listening and interacting with participants, researchers use their bodies, and observations are impacted by their thoughts and emotions (Cole, 2005; Farkic, 2021). The embodied consumption of places is cognitive, affective, and corporeal (Rakić & Chambers, 2012). Emotions and bodies are part of fieldwork (Witte et al., 2022) and Rodríguez-Campo et al. (2020, p. 230) call for more studies with a ‘holistic view of the tourist experience’.

In festival spaces, visitors are immersed in something out of the ordinary. For example, Gibson and Wong (2011, p. 92) claim that events like rural festivals, flower shows, and agricultural shows can ‘immerse people – literally – within nature’. All this brings to mind what was said before: how researchers are immersed in the field during participant observations (Spradley, 1980). However, the concepts of immersion and the Gold’s (1958) continuum are unclear (Agrawal et al., 2020; Blumenthal & Jensen, 2019; Seim, 2021).

The sensory experience allows festival visitors to meet people and discover places, just like researchers do in the field. For instance, Bennet and Woodward (2014, p.12) claim that cultural festivals are sites for socio-cultural encounters via ‘sensual and embodied experience based on engagement with different taste, sounds, forms of dress and behaviour, and cultural norms’. Moreover, Hvenegaard et al. (2013) observe human-insect encounters at insect festivals. Simonsen et al. (2017, p. 640) define an encounter in festival spaces as ‘a meeting involving two characteristics: surprise and time–space’. All this recalls sensuous geographies that explore how places and communities interact (Duffy & Mair, 2018). In sensuous geographies human-environment haptic relationships can be passive or active and Rodaway (2011) identifies three levels of reciprocity: simple contact, exploration, and communication. They go from just a passive contact of two surfaces (eg. a hand and an object) to a ‘relationship between organisms’ (p. 45), such as stroking a cat. All these encounters can generate meanings.

Study methods

This paper aims to unravel participant observations in festival spaces. The study was exploratory, inductive, and adopted a qualitative approach (Yin, 2016). It included two literary festivals: one in Ireland and one in Italy. The case studies sample followed a purposive sampling technique. To instil trustworthiness and authenticity, the researcher was involved in a prolonged engagement in the field to have a better insight of what was being studied (Creswell, 2016): she was in the field for the entire length of the festivals. Findings were collected by one researcher.

The study adopted the emic perspective, which is associated with interpretivism, and according to which the view of the insider is used to understand the phenomenon (Jennings, 2010). The emic perspective allowed therefore to take ‘a culturally relative stance as opposed to the management-centric approach common to tourism and festival studies (Liburd and Ren, forthcoming)’ (Liburd & Derkzen, 2009, p. 138). The emic perspective is indeed used to study tourism and festivals with ethnographic fieldwork (Cohen & Cohen, 2015; Xue & Kerstetter, 2019). The researcher observed festival visitors by participating in the ‘normal setting’ (Descombe, 2010, p. 207), so the researcher’s role was known to the festival organisers only. No attempt was made to manipulate the behaviour of the participants. Ethics approval was obtained by the researcher’s institution (REC-16-119). Ethics guidelines included: ‘any use of the material should ensure that no one suffers as a result’ and ‘any use of the material should avoid disclosing the identities of those involved’ (Denscombe, 2010, p. 209). Moreover, the observations were mainly collected in public or semi-public spaces, such as hotels, pubs, cafés, squares, or museums. The observations were structured and the protocol followed Jennings’ approach (2010, p. 179): (1) ‘consider the research purpose’, (2) ‘decide which type of participant observation will be used’, (3) ‘design the research methodology’, (4) ‘enter the field’, (5) ‘interpret the empirical materials’, (6) ‘report the findings’.

The observations took place at seven events per festival (Table 1). They started before the event and ended after the event was finished, so they included, for instance, visitors’ queuing, their behaviours in front of the event venue, during the event, and after. The events were selected according to the type of event, location, and time (Table 1). The observations were therefore planned to be in different outdoor/indoor locations and at different times. The researcher planned when and where to do the observations before entering the field. She also planned meal breaks and time to change venues.

Table 1. Details of data collection.

Location	Day and time	Type of venue	Type of event
Ireland	Wednesday, 8 pm	Indoor (hotel)	Opening event
	Thursday, 11 am	Indoor (writing centre)	History/Performance
	Thursday, 6 pm	Indoor (theatre)	Art exhibition
	Thursday, 9 pm	Indoor (hotel)	Talk
	Friday, 9.30 am	Outdoor	Walking tour
	Friday, 9.30 pm	Indoor (pub)	Poetry reading
	Saturday, 10 am	Indoor (theatre)	Art talk
Italy	Thursday, 4.30 pm	Indoor (palace 1)	Business
	Thursday, 6.30 pm	Indoor (palace 2)	Talk
	Thursday, 9 pm	Indoor (theatre)	Concert
	Friday, 4 pm	Indoor (palace 3)	Poetry talk
	Saturday, 7 pm	Indoor (theatre)	Talk
	Sunday, 12.30 pm	Outdoor	Award ceremony
	Sunday, 6 pm	Indoor (theatre)	Talk

The location of the research while she was taking notes varied. For example, during talks in indoor venues, she tried to sit at the back so she could get an overview of the entire event and audience. The notes followed Holloway et al.’s (2010) and Taylor, Bogdan, and DeVault’s suggestions (2016) and guidelines included eight sections: event (type, ticket), space (venue), actors (participants’ gender, age, solo/group …), objects involved, time of the event, activity (behaviours and actions of the participants), feelings of the participants, and observer’s comments (Table 2). The researcher took notes simultaneously during the observations, and if this was not possible, she wrote them up as soon as possible afterwards. Taylor, Bogdan, and DeVault’s (2016, p. 80) techniques were used to recall details, such as ‘pay attention’ and ‘shift focus’. The researcher recorded her own behaviour and feelings in the field as well as doubts and what was not understood. Being able to speak both English and Italian, the researcher took the field notes in both languages, but she used her mother tongue (Italian), when she felt it was more natural or quick. Instead, she used English during the fieldwork in Ireland when she overheard conversations, when she needed to write jargon, or when it came naturally.

Table 2. Observations’ guidelines – adapted from Holloway et al. (2010) and Taylor et al. (2016).

Observation NR: ____
Goal: what do I want to understand?
Time: day + hour
Space: location
Event: name and type of the event attended (if any)
Activity: presentations, reading, discussion …
Actors: the people in the field (gender, age, ethnicity, dresses …)
	Before/During/After the event
Action: attendees’ behaviour and feelings
Objects: in the field
Observer’s comments

After the fieldwork, an electronic copy of all the field notes was created and saved securely. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to analyse the data. The steps taken followed the thematic analysis phases (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and included: familiarisation with the data; initial coding; creation of categories of codes’; identification of similarities between codes; creation of key themes; production of outputs. The key themes found were: (1) Participant observations as holistic experiences at festivals; (2) Immersion of festival researchers during participant observations; (3) The meaning of Participation during participant observations at festivals; (4) Festival encounters during participant observations. The findings will be presented following the key themes. This paper discusses the fieldwork notes and analyses the researcher’s role to unpack the concept of participant observations at festivals. The observation notes will be presented in italics.

Findings and discussion

Beyond the visual, to holistic research experiences

Data show that the material recorded captured a picture that was multisensorial in nature. First, data include reflections on what the researcher observed. For instance, the researcher observed the visitors’ demographics, social class and group dynamics following Taylor et al.’s suggestions (2016): in Ireland, at an event they were ‘very elegant, over 60s, both men and women, all white’. Similarly, in Italy, at some events, ‘some women are wearing jewellery and are elegant’ and ‘there are people in suits, women are elegant (maybe for the topic of the event)’. As such, observations were useful to understand cultures and lifestyles (Denscombe, 2017). In Italy, some field notes included comments such as: ‘most people are alone/solo’, ‘not a lot of attendees, almost all women’, ‘it seems they are in groups or in pairs’. The performers, the venues, other festival features, and the overall atmosphere were also observed: in Ireland, ‘performers were wearing costumes – it was very evocative’. In Italy, during an event, ‘they don’t turn the lights off, maybe they know that people take notes?’. Findings also include notes on bodily movements, the proprioceptive sense (Agapito, 2020), and the festival visitors’ behaviours as well as the researcher. In Italy, before the events started, people in the venue, ‘read a newspaper, use their phones, wait in silence, browse the programme, drink, chat’. The researcher was taking notes, checking the time, looking at the festival programme. During the events, visitors ‘take photos with phones and tablets, listen, chat, text with their phones, browse the programme, smile, laugh, drink water, nod, someone seems bored’. The researcher was also involved in bodily movements, from writing to walking or eating. Sometimes she was walking, thinking and writing at the same time. All this means that the visual was important, but it was not the only sense.

Second, the observations include reflections on what the researcher heard. Indeed, festival attendees, including the researcher, are listening bodies (Waitt & Duffy, 2010) and are involved in multiple auditory experiences (Hockey & Forsey, 2020; Toraldo, 2013). For instance, they ‘chat’, ‘ask questions’ during events, they ‘laugh’, ‘clap’, or even ‘the audience sings [a song] with [the performer] after he has performed a poetry’. This supports the view that auditory notes are important (Duffy & Mair, 2018). The sound sensations were useful to have an overview of the audience (e.g. demographics: ‘Two people speak French’; ‘behind me two ladies speak a Slavic language’), of the performers (e.g. ‘A lot of presenters are talking … there’s one American’), of feelings: (‘the man next to me is obviously bored. He snorts’), and of the events (e.g. ‘There’s silence, and then music (cello)’).

Moreover, observations included comments on what the participants were touching. Attendees were touching the festival programme, ‘umbrellas’, ‘they have a pen in their hand, a lot of them’ and ‘they take notes on their notebooks or on the programme’, ‘they browse the programme and use their phones’. It was evident that participants, including the researcher, were feeling sensations of the skin, for example because of the weather conditions like ‘rain’ or ‘sun’. This confirms that festivals are multisensorial spaces (Jordan, 2016), where visitors can engage in different senses including the sense of temperature (Agapito, 2020). The researcher, being in the field, could understand some of the visitors’ skin perceptions. This helped to enter the world of the participants. So, participation observation is a more-than-visual method (Edensor, 2018).

Additionally, the field notes included comments on what the participants were tasting at the festivals. For example in Ireland: ‘they drink tea before the event’; ‘they were drinking wine, cider, and beer’. The researcher, being at the festival, also experienced the local cuisine. All this relates to the field of sensual geographies, in which senses are crucial to understanding how people and spaces interact (Duffy & Mair, 2018; Edensor & Falconer, 2012). Once again, being in the field and experiencing the festival, the researcher could put herself in the festival visitors’ shoes.

Nevertheless, data show that fieldwork was more than multisensory or multimodal (Atkinson, 2017; Pink, 2015). The environment was not only perceived via sensorial stimuli but other individual filters impacted in the perception of it and meaning creation. These filters included socio-cultural elements (Edensor & Falconer, 2012; Rodaway, 2011), and also mental and emotional elements. As a matter of fact, every person is different, with different levels of cognitive abilities, thoughts, and emotional sensitivities that can act as filters when we perceive an environment. ‘In tourism, as with all experience, sensation is … biologically shaped, culturally conditioned and subject to more-than-human agencies all at the same time’ (Edensor, 2018, p. 915). Findings agree with Ommundsen (2009) in saying that literary festival participation is ‘physical, emotional, intellectual and social’ (Ommundsen, 2009, p. 21). Visitors, including the researcher, were mentally engaged while listening to the authors or exchanging opinions with other festival visitors. Findings also support the view that festivals are sites for emotional experiences (Toraldo, 2013). For instance, during an event, ‘a man closed his eyes’ and another ‘snored’. The researcher, since she was in the field, also perceived emotions, such as enthusiasm, hunger, or tiredness. As a matter of fact, ‘we bring into research our idiosyncrasies and subjectivities’ and tourism researchers experience emotional aspects such as exhaustion, anxiety or awkwardness (Farkic, 2021, p.234). Emotions and affect are crucial parts of ethnographic fieldwork (Witte et al., 2022). Festival visitors, including the researcher, were involved cognitively, sensory, and emotionally, with different degrees. Exactly as Denscombe (2017) argues, the issue of perception in participant observations includes the observer’s personal factors, from memory to emotional and physical state. The whole person shapes how we perceive the world and create meanings. All this means that participant observations are holistic experiences (bodily, cognitive, and emotional) – ‘in an anthropologist’s sense’ (Moeran, 2009, p. 139) – and the researcher’s perspective is shaped by sensorial, mental, and emotional filters. This paper therefore argues that the method of participant observation should be more broadly considered as a holistic experience that encompasses mind–body-emotions, at least at festivals.

Researchers are emplaced but not immersed

At first, it seemed that the researcher was ‘immersed in the field’ (Holloway et al., 2010, p. 76), into the world of the participants (Pereiro, 2010). She was engaging in similar bodily activities and movements, such as watching and listening to the performers, browsing the festival programmes, or walking and listening to the performers.

The researcher observed that she was experiencing similar auditory sensations to other festival visitors. For example, she heard the music, the background noises, such as attendees chatting before the events started. As a matter of fact, ‘soundscapes surround us in everyday life’ (Atkinson, 2017, p. 127). She also chatted with people sitting nearby. She interacted with the participants in unplanned-informal conversations, experiencing a sort of aesthetic immersion (Pine & Gilmore, 2011). For instance, she had conversations with event volunteers, locals, and visitors. The researcher also remembers that she enjoyed the breakfast porridge in Ireland. This was because she was living the experience almost as an international tourist and her festival experience was shaped by her past history (Denscombe, 2017). She also ate the local food in Ireland and in Italy. All this was part of her festival experience and Festscape, which according to Mason and Paggiaro (2012) includes food.

All this might suggest that she was immersed in the field, since immersion can be shaped by ‘the visitors’ interactions with different elements in the experiencescape’ (Blumenthal & Jensen, 2019, p. 160). Nevertheless, she was always aware of the time and of her physical location. For example, she had to regularly check the time to make sure to collect enough data (as planned), and take the planned breaks. So, she was not experiencing loss of self-consciousness, altered sense of time/lost track of time (Lunardo & Ponsignon, 2020), or unaware of the surrounding physical world (Agrawal et al., 2020), all of which are elements of immersion. The immersion’s core dimension, which is concentration in the activity (Lunardo & Ponsignon, 2020) [in this case the festival events], was not fully present. Also, she was always adopting the self-reflective position, aware of being part of the context investigated (Cole, 2005). As a matter of fact, learning and making meanings with ethnography involves self-consciousness of the learning process and a reflexive approach (Pink, 2015). All the above suggests that it was not a proper immersion (Pine & Gilmore, 2011).

Thus, it is not exactly correct to claim that doing participant observations means that ‘ethnographers are immersed in the totality of the world about them’ (Atkinson, 2017, p. 125). Instead, it was an emplaced experience. The researcher was emplaced: her biological body became part of the festival environment and was physically transformed. Even if the bodily transformation was not evident like getting scars or muscular transformations (Pink, 2011), the researcher was living (eating, walking, sleeping …) during the festival days, and all these performative activities were part of the entire festival experience. This supports the view that the ‘researching body’ is ‘a medium through which experiences and knowledges are created’ (Farkic, 2021, p. 233). The researcher learned from her situated bodily positionality.

The experience was also empathetic. Sometimes, the researcher was able to relate with the audience’s feelings and emotions. For example, there was ‘a woman falling asleep’ during an event and the researcher added a personal note: ‘[the event] is a bit boring’. During another event, ‘one man looks at the ceiling, it seems that he has never been there before’. Similarly, the researcher was new to the town and, curious, paid attention to some monuments. Here, she adopted Cole’s (2005) self-reflective position and experienced the issue of perception (Denscombe, 2017).

From passive to active involvement

Findings show that the researcher’s participation referred to involvement in the festival activities. There is reason to believe that involvement in the festival activities can happen with different degrees, from passive to active, and can shape knowledge creation. For example, at literary festivals, active involvement in the festival activities could be when researchers attend book discussions, ask a question during the Q&A and buy the book after the event. A lower level of involvement is when researchers attend walking tours and walk with the participants but, instead of listening to the tour guide, they focus on taking field notes. The level of involvement in the festival activity can also be more passive, when researchers are in the venue, without taking part in the activity, such as a bus tour.

Additionally, data suggest that at festivals it is unlikely to be a total observer as previous scholars argued (Gold, 1958; Spradley, 1980). At literary festivals, it is very difficult to avoid contact with the participants. Sometimes, a visitor can simply ask for directions or share casual thoughts on a book. Interactions might be kept to a minimum, but sometimes this is difficult as other visitors can approach you for debates or conversations. Moreover, as previously explained, findings suggest that the researcher was not merely observing, but it was a holistic experience that went beyond the visual. So, the term ‘complete observer’ is confusing – the researcher cannot be a mere observer. Thus, moving away from Gold’s (1958) and Spradley’s (1980) participant observation continua, this study suggests that the continuum should go between active and passive involvement in the festival activities.

Multiple and different encounters

Scholars talk about encounters (Hvenegaard et al., 2013; Pink, 2015; Wilks & Quinn, 2016), but what are they and how do they occur in festival tourism? Findings reveal that encounters were several: passive/active, intentional/unintentional and with different degrees of reciprocity (Rodaway, 2011). They generated meanings and shaped how the environment was perceived (Atkinson, 2017).

Data show that festival visitors, including the researcher, experienced different human encounters at the festivals. These encounters were within similar ‘festival groups’, such as between workshops participants, and between different ‘festival groups’, such as performers-visitors encounters. Encounters were intentional (e.g. listening to a book presentation) and unintentional (e.g. spontaneous debates), active (eg. shaking hands) and passive (e.g. overhearing chats while queuing), with different degrees of reciprocity. Human encounters created a social atmosphere and allowed notions and knowledge to be shared. The researcher experienced human encounters and interacted with people, in planned and unplanned ways. A field note on the social festival atmosphere during a poetry event reports: ‘solidarity is perceived’.

Moreover, spatial and place encounters happened. For instance, festival visitors and the researcher discovered something about the locality. During an unstructured casual conversation, a domestic festival tourist talked about the clothes shops in the Irish village, and how he perceived the town to be unique, friendly, and intimate. Another note from the Irish fieldwork showcases the links between the small spaces of the village and the socio-cultural festival atmosphere: ‘they say: you arrive as a writer/reader, but you’ll leave as a local’. Here, findings reveal the encounters between people, spaces, and cultures (Wilks & Quinn, 2016).

There were also animal encounters (Hvenegaard et al., 2013). For example, in Italy, ‘during the event, a dog barks, the speaker compliments him, and the audience laughs’. Festival visitors also encountered physical and tangible objects. For instance, books, tickets, festival brochures, paintings, mobiles, gadgets, glasses and cutlery, and pens while writing notes. All these objects have different textures, weight, and levels of temperature. This happened to the researcher as well, since she was emplaced and ‘ethnographers need to take full account of things’ (Atkinson, 2017, p. 126). Festival atmosphere is indeed made of ‘bodies, practices, emotions, materials and places’ (Simonsen et al., 2017, p. 647).

There were also sound encounters. For instance, at some events, there was ‘music’, ‘[people] were playing the guitar’. People experienced several different active/passive and intentional/unintentional sound encounters. Sounds came not only from the performers but there were also background noises from the venues and the towns, like traffic noise. There were also sounds from people moving, interacting, and performing different actions, like eating. As Pink (2015, p. 101) claims, ethnography includes performing everyday ordinary activities, like eating or walking because of the fact of ‘‘being there’ in a shared physical environment’. So, some encounters were related to the festival activities while others were generated by the fact of being in the festival venue, in the town.

Holistic research experiences

To summarise, Figure 1 shows the new suggested continuum for Holistic Research Experiences at festivals. As such, as previously explained, the data unpacked the concept of participant observations at festivals and showed that they were in fact Holistic Research Experiences and were characterised by four elements. First, they went beyond the visual and the multisensory nature, to be holistic. Second, fieldwork was emplaced since the researcher was situated in the field and could feel bodily sensations and empathy. However, she was not fully immersed. Third, there is reason to believe that the researchers’ participation continuum goes from passive to active involvement in the festival activities (see Figure 1). Finally, data suggest that during Holistic Research Experiences, different active/passive and intentional/unintentional encounters can take place (human, animal, space, material, and immaterial), with varying degrees of reciprocity (see Figure 1). These are unique findings that expand the existing literature and provide theoretical contribution to knowledge.

Figure 1. Festival holistic research experiences continuum.

Conclusions

This paper answered the calls for more studies on the concept of participant observations (Hockey & Forsey, 2020; Seim, 2021; Shin & Miller, 2022; Thomas, 2016), the researchers’ role in tourism (Farkic, 2021), including their emotions (Witte et al., 2022), and holistic approaches in tourism (Rodríguez-Campo et al., 2020). It used findings from two literary festivals in Ireland and Italy to deconstruct participant observations (Spradley, 1980) in festival contexts. The aim of the paper was not to criticise participant observations as a method, but rather to further conceptualise it, at least in festival studies. From the findings, there is reason to believe that participant observations at festivals are Holistic Research Experiences, which are characterised by four elements.

First, findings support the view that festival tourism is multisensorial (Toraldo, 2013) where people, including researchers, look, listen and talk, eat, drink, smell odours, touch objects, walk and move around the venues. Drawing on sensuous geographies (Rodaway, 2011) and the concept of holistic Festscape (Mason & Paggiaro, 2012), findings suggest that researchers conducting participant observations are not only observing and hearing, they are also engaging with other senses, including taste, smell, skin sensations and the proprioceptive sense. The experience is not only filtered by their bodily senses, but by cognitive and emotional elements: it is a holistic (body–mind-emotions) experience.

Second, findings show that the researcher was experiencing similar sensory and emotional feelings as other visitors, such as tiredness and enjoyment. Similarly to festival tourists, the researcher’s experience was cognitive, sensorial, social, and emotional (Ommundsen, 2009). Her biological body became part of the environment and was physically transformed by the act of being there (eg. via eating, walking …). This suggests that festival researchers’ bodies are modified by what is happening in the field – are emplaced (Holloway et al., 2010; Pink, 2015; Spradley, 1980). So, this study suggests that researchers do not experience a proper immersion, which includes losing the sense of time (Lunardo & Ponsignon, 2020) and ‘disassociation from the awareness of the physical world’ (Agrawal et al., 2020, p. 407).

Third, this paper argues that Gold’s (1958) and Spradley’s (1980) participant observation continua should be rethought. The rich and dynamic festival social context makes it difficult to eliminate (or sometimes even limit) interactions with actors and the researcher will never be a mere observer. Instead, data reveal that participation refers to involvement in the festival activities, which forms a continuum from passive to active. Different levels of involvement shaped how the researcher engaged with the festival activities and, in turn, meaning and knowledge creation.

Fourth, this paper advances the idea that, during Holistic Research Experiences at festivals, visitors, including researchers, experience multiple encounters with humans, animals, objects, places, and immaterial elements like sounds. These encounters can be intentional/unintentional, active/passive, with varying degrees of reciprocity, and are all embedded components of this type of fieldwork.

Nevertheless, there are several limitations. First, this research only included two literary festivals as case studies. Future studies should explore different types of festivals, such as music or food festivals. Second, multiple case studies should be considered as well as comparison between them. Third, while findings were useful to understand the multiplicity of festival encounters, future studies should work on better unpacking human encounters at festivals. Fourth, further research is needed to fully understand how researchers use their senses in relation to their mental engagement and emotions during data collection (bodily, cognitive, and emotional). Finally, this research included only one researcher in the field. Other studies should compare holistic research experiences conducted by a research team.

Acknowledgements

This paper draws on Dr Rossetti’s PhD thesis (2020), which was funded by the Technological University Dublin’s Fiosraigh PhD Scholarship. Dr Rossetti would like to express her sincere gratitude to her supervisor Dr. Bernadette Quinn for the continuous support and feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This paper draws on Dr Rossetti’s PhD thesis (2020), which was funded by the Technological University Dublin’s (TUDublin) Fiosraigh PhD Scholarship.