Festivity, Play, Well-Being … Historical and Rhetorical Relationships: Implications for Communities

Abstract

This chapter introduces to community development event organizers and planners, through a lens of organic festivity, the knowledge that creating optimal festival attendee experiences is an important factor in generating higher levels of well-being and social capital. Organic Festivity Theory was discovered with participant observation and socially constructed grounded theory method research undertaken to progress a contextual understanding of attendee behavior at community festivals. Substantive theory emerged from the study to reveal participant behavior shifting from passive spectatorship to more emotional, physical, creative and collaborative activities conjointly affected bonding and bridging social capital. Subsequent investigation into the historical and rhetorical relationships of festivity, play, and well-being was conducted to further validate this hypothesis. This inquiry revealed the social-psychological underpinnings of happiness, liminal experience, and peak experience provided substance to this phenomenon. Paralleling Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory that peak experience is achieved when participants balance perceived challenge and skill constructs during competitive and performance activities, neoteric constructs of “primordial behavior” and “sensual infused crowd behavior” were correspondingly conceived of as the elements that lead to optimal experiences for attendees at community festivals. The implication for community development event organizers and planners is that they must move past the mercantile and spectator amusements of community festival since sustainability and prosperity in today’s experience economy are dependent on the peak liminal experiences wanted, sought out, and demanded by participants. Tangible economic and marketing aspects of community festivals should be united with intangible benefits of increased social capital bonding between friends, family and unacquainted peers, social capital bridging between strangers, and the social capital bridging generic senses of well-being, playfulness, and communitas created by organic festivity. Key words: festivity, social capital, well-being, play, community development