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Business, Enterprise & Management

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/5

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Author: search.filters.author.Finkel, RebeccaHas files: Yes

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 28
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    ‘Doing gender’ in Critical Event Studies: A dual agenda for research
    (Emerald, 2020-12-01) Dashper, Katherine; Finkel, Rebecca
    Purpose: To introduce critical gender theory to events studies and set an agenda for research in this area. This paper focuses on various contexts, approaches, and applications for 'doing gender' in critical event studies. It draws upon interdisciplinary frameworks to develop robust theoretical ways of interrogating issues related to power and structural inequalities in events contexts
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    The material culture of music festival fandoms
    (SAGE, 2020-12-06) Barriere, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca
    This paper aims to explore an under-researched area of the entanglements between festivals and individual/collective identities by focusing on the material culture of festival fandoms. We start by conceptualizing festival fandoms as communities of people who attend the same festival or a similar festival type on a repeated basis. Our research focuses on how these recurrent festival attendees materially express their belonging to such communities, and how they claim being a fan as part of their identity. The core of the article starts with three conceptual sections. There, we discuss the existing literature in different related areas of research, which we link together utilizing Bourdieu’s (1986) forms of capital. First, we look through the theoretical lens of social capital at how various types of festivals foster identity communities and contribute to their visibility. Second, we explore the function of festival merchandising from the perspective of both events managers and festivals attendees within economic capital frameworks. And third, we explain that fans use derived products to mark their status and belonging to a community of taste as related to cultural capital conceptualizations. The following sections of the article are based on auto-ethnographic approaches. Through reminiscence and in-depth interviews with each other, we recount personal narratives of reflective practice and situate our lived experiences within the aforementioned conceptual contexts. As a conclusion, we state that investigating the material cultures of festival fandoms has the potential to contribute to future evolutions of event management.
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    Accessibility, diversity, and inclusion in the UK meetings industry
    (Taylor & Francis, 2020-09-04) Dashper, Katherine; Finkel, Rebecca
    Issues of accessibility, diversity, and inclusion are becoming increasingly important for MICE managers around the globe and need to be considered in terms of both event attendees and employees/meetings professionals. The UK MICE sector is facing an unprecedented period of disruption in relation to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty of Brexit, the impacts of which may have far-reaching consequences in terms of equality and diversity. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 13 stakeholders - meeting planners, venue managers, entrepreneurs and member organization leaders - this paper considers how issues of accessibility, diversity, and inclusion are playing out in the changing landscape of the UK meetings industry. Findings suggest that although the MICE sector is paying increasing attention to the importance of accessibility, there is evidence of persistent inequality and marginalization on the grounds of gender, age, ‘race’ and (dis)ability. We question if a focus on diversity remains a priority in economically, politically, and socially unsettled times, and what this may mean for an inclusive future for the UK meetings industry.
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    Cultural festivals and the city
    (Wiley, 2020-03-23) Finkel, Rebecca; Platt, Louise
    Cities have always been hubs for celebration and festivity, bringing people together to escape temporarily from the mundane nature of everyday routines. Festivals have often been bridges between people and places, linking personal geography with collective experiences and therefore increasingly of interest to cultural geographers. However, festivals also have social, economic and political aspects that are constructed by societal influences of the time and place. This article presents some of the key debates ongoing in academic literature across disciplines to demonstrate the contested role that cultural festivals play in urban settings and suggests that urban geography is critical to developing these debates. It is simply no longer possible to say that festivity is a simple rupture in the mundanity of everyday life of urban citizens; rather, contemporary cultural festivals now often exhibit complex and uneasy tensions between the socio‐economic strategies of commercialized neoliberal cities and the cultural needs of diverse communities to gather and celebrate. By reviewing the development of festivals as part of the urban cultural economy utilising a geographic lens, this article sets out how cultural festivals are now more often employed by cities for marketing, tourism and other socio‐economic benefits. We demonstrate that cultural festivals and cities have an ongoing relationship, which is now mainly commercialized and politicized, and this has diverse impacts on communities, urban spaces and cultural identities.
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    Gendered violence at international festivals: An interdisciplinary perspective
    (Routledge, 2020-03-24) Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca; Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca
    This introductory chapter argues that liminality as conceived by van Gennep (1960) and, subsequently, Turner (1969, 1979, 1982) within the festival literature has been under-theorised and, as a result, has limited event scholars’ abilities to be critical of festival spaces, especially when it comes to gendered power dynamics and structural inequalities. There is an assumption that power is dispersed or even absent under ‘communitas’. However, we argue there is often a neglect to understand how hegemonic cultural structures and social controls still govern these experiential settings. We also argue that festivals are too quickly seen as spaces of rupture when they are more likely to reinforce the status quo. This chapter frames the discussion around the increase in reported sexual assaults and gendered violence at festivals to argue that a persistence to characterise them as uncomplicated, value-free, utopic liminial/liminoid is highly problematic. It then presents the interdisciplinary chapters in this volume focusing on gendered violence at international festivals, and concludes with a ‘call to arms’ to change contemporary praxis in festival environs.
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    Accessibility, diversity and inclusion in events
    (Routledge, 2020-05-26) Finkel, Rebecca; Dashper, Katherine; Page, Stephen J.; Connell, Joanne
    This chapter explores the importance of issues concerning accessibility, diversity and inclusion in events discourses and praxis. These are broad terms encompassing a multitude of facets related to social, cultural, economic and political approaches and interactions. We recognise that individual events have distinct issues to explore; however, we intend to provide a general discussion about these three interlacing topics in order to provide a platform for further debates and improved applications in events landscapes.
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    Barriers to access: Investigation of plus-size women consumer experiences at fashion events
    (Routledge, 2019-01-08) Elliott, Amanda; Finkel, Rebecca; Walters, Trudie; Jepson, Allan Stewart
    Recent cross-disciplinary literature in the social sciences has shown that fat women experience weight bias and marginalisation in nearly all aspects of life, including within the fashion industry. This stigmatisation results in exclusion from brand and designer collections, runway shows, and other fashion events. As research in this area and in particular within an event context is very scarce, this chapter draws upon accessibility research, fat studies, and critical events studies to investigate the physical and psychological barriers to access for plus-size women at fashion events along with consumer attitudes with regard to fashion events. Research methods adopt quantitative approaches and include a survey of plus-size women who have attended a fashion event in 2017, which allowed for analysis of their experiences with regard to accessibility obstacles as well as their attitudes regarding fashion events and fashion event managers. Findings reveal plus-size consumers are more likely to attend fashion events if they see their body types represented in promotional event materials. They are also more likely to attend if they believe their needs will be met by the event facilities. Consumer attitudes toward fashion events and fashion event managers were generally negative, but provided several opportunities for growth and improvement.
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    Governing major events legacy: Case of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games
    (Cognizant Communication Corporation, 2018-09-26) Sharp, Briony; Finkel, Rebecca
    This paper explores the emerging importance of planning and governance surrounding the concept of event legacy by focusing on an in-depth case study of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Given the long-term nature of the concept of legacy, the need for planned and thorough pre-, during and post-Games management is essential if legacy outcomes are to be monitored effectively. Research methods employed for this study consist of in-depth interviews (n=14) with policy makers, organisers, and local community associations, who were involved with legacy planning and implementation for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. The findings present Glasgow’s legacy approach as an advancement in the understanding of legacy governance and planning in relation to critical event management. By designing and implementing legacy governance structures at an early stage, each stakeholder role is established and can be monitored while allowing for some flexibility within the legacy management partnerships. In addition, the notion of a partnership legacy can be seen to have grown from innovative legacy governance structures, such as collaborative working and network creation, put in place by Glasgow in the early stages of legacy planning, which can act as a model of best practice for other major event host destinations.
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    Multispecies leisure: Human-animal interactions in leisure landscapes
    (Taylor & Francis, 2019-06-24) Danby, Paula; Dashper, Katherine; Finkel, Rebecca
    The emerging multidisciplinary field of human-animal studies encourages researchers to move beyond human-centric practices and to recognise that human and nonhuman beings are positioned within shared ecological, social, cultural and political spaces whereby nonhumans have become key actors worthy of moral consideration and play a fundamental role in humans’ lives. With some exceptions (e.g. Carr, 2014; Dashper, 2018; Danby, 2018; Danby & Finkel, 2018; Young & Carr, 2018), leisure studies has been slow to embrace this ‘animal turn’ and consider how leisure actions, experiences and landscapes are shaped through multispecies encounters between humans, other animals, reptiles, fish and the natural environment. This special issue begins to address this gap by considering leisure as more-than-human experiences. We consider leisure with nonhuman others, both domestic and wild, by exploring the ‘contact zones’ between humans and other species and, in doing so, we create an interspecies lens through which to explore these encounters. The research presented in this special issue takes into consideration the affective and ethical dimensions of human-nonhuman animal entanglements in leisure spaces and the need to strive for reciprocal, mutual welfare and wellbeing. Through the use of innovative methodological approaches, the authors explore a range of issues and perspectives to capture shared experiences of interspecies leisure pursuits. This special issue provides direction for future ways in which research on multispecies leisure, and its associated mutual benefits, can be done to advance understanding and practice in the field. The special issue seeks to ‘bring the animal in’ to the leisure studies domain and contribute to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, interwoven multispecies phenomenon.
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    Post-humanist investigation into human-equine relations in event landscapes: Case of the Rodeo
    (Routledge, 2018-09-14) Danby, Paula; Finkel, Rebecca; Finkel, Rebecca; Sharp, Briony; Sweeney, Majella
    Due to the increases in human leisure time, education, and affluence, animals are now incorporated into a range of recreational activities, which encourage and enable intra-active multi-species encounters in experiential environments. Framed in post-humanist theory, this chapter seeks to challenge the singular focus around human subjects, blurring boundaries between the human and nonhuman, looking beyond human agency and exploring the ‘more-than-human’ within the human-equine sporting event relationship. Focusing on a qualitative case study of the Austin Rodeo in Texas, USA, it is evident from this research how the boundaries and significant differences between humans and horses are challenged by the fluidity and interconnectedness of both species in rodeo performance spaces through increased knowledge, skill, and companionship. This has implications for the leisure, tourism, and events fields by repositioning animals as partners in the co-creation of cultural experiences.