Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the ways in which festivals have been understood and theorised in different disciplinary contexts. With their origins in rituals and religious celebrations, festivals continue to be significant to the ways in which communities can structure and activate significant social and cultural ideals. This capacity to bring about social connectedness and feelings of belonging reinforces the identity of a community and feelings of belonging but can also act to exclude certain individuals and groups. Festivals have also become very much a part of everyday life, and, as such, embedded in practices of consumption. Thus, festivals are important not only in processes of socialisation but also in strategies of economic, social and cultural development. This chapter introduces the theoretical lens of the encounter offered by Fincher and Iveson (2008), which underpins this book’s critical examination of the festival as a means to activate social justice. A summary is provided for each chapter, with reference to the ways in which the encounter intersects with a set of interrelated concepts: social capital, social inclusion, mobilities and non-representational theory.