ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how we might access the 'deep structures and thick descriptions' that surround and give meaning to a festival, in order to get 'a sense of the particular and the local', and to understand how the festival is actually experienced, on the ground and in real time. Nichols' use of the term "thick description" is a direct reference to anthropologist Clifford Geertz, whose original articulation of this concept is helpful in clarifying the contours of ethnography as a methodology. Ethnography as an endeavor aims to shed light on these contexts or frames that structure social and cultural significance. In contrast to research, it focuses primarily on organizational structures, programming patterns. Ethnographic research gives us a view onto such ephemeral, invisible, or silent moments; a "thick" understanding of the deep structures that give them meaning; and what they reveal about the festival as social experience.
