Rural events and festivals: Between community cohesion and commodification’

Submit your paper here

Introduction

Events have long been associated with urban environments, celebrated for their regenerative potential and embedded within complex cultural and economic networks (Betz, Hitzler, & Pfadenhauer, 2011; Smith, Osborn, & Quinn, 2022). In contrast, rural events remain underexplored in event studies (Li, 2021), despite being recognised as a “critical aspect of rural experiences” (Richards et al. 2025: 771). When regarding the literature on rural, remote, peripheral or insular events (referred to further as rural events for purposes of simplicity), it is worth noting that studies investigating rural events are unlikely to question the rurality of the event. With exceptions of some interesting publications such as Browne (2011), George (2015) Fountain and Mackay (2017), Kwiatkowski et al. (2020), the rural is often used as a geographical denominator or description of a living condition. Guided by the cited authors’ interest in “place identity” (George, 2015), “sense of place” (Fountain & Mackay, 2017) or wider rural associations (Browne, 2011; Kwiatkowski et al., 2020), this call for papers is driven by the ambition to challenge conceptions of rural events beyond rural stigmatisations in order to explore how the rural is characterised, defined, discussed, challenged through events.

This special issue aims to advance critical understandings of rural events and festivals by moving beyond their treatment as merely geographically bounded phenomena to critically examine how rurality itself is constructed, negotiated, performed, and contested through event and festival spaces. This special issue seeks to reconceptualise rurality as a socially, culturally, and politically constructed and contested category, shaped through events and their associated practices. Addressing the persistent urban bias in event studies, the issue invites contributions that examine how rural events produce, negotiate, and challenge meanings of place, identity, and community.

Driven by research perspectives centring on event-based development, revitalisation and regeneration, research on rural events has long been shaped by deficit-based and often stigmatising narratives, dominated by selected topics, which reflect certain stigmatised or stereotypical conceptions of the rural. Hereby, the ‘lack of …’ takes prominence in the discussion (Frost & Laing, 2015; Ðurkin & Wise, 2017). Often in a comparative perspective with urban or other rural settings, rural events are studied in regard to their lack of infrastructure, management structures, funding and professionalisation (Koreman, 2023, Qu & Zollet, 2023, Gamble, 2022, Porfido, 2022). Such framings risk reproducing simplistic stereotypes of rurality and obscuring the diverse forms of agency, resilience, and innovation that rural communities demonstrate. 

Next to such ‘lacking’ perspectives, the relevance of rural events as a form of social, cultural and political infrastructure is widely discussed. With attention to community perspectives, rural events are championed as key fabrics of rural living and hereby considered to be a necessary institution to keep rural community vital (Chiya, 2024; Dalla Torre et al., 2025; Lee, et al., 2024). Furthermore, the political, strategic interest in events in rural settings for touristic purposes increasingly raises interests in scholarly debate. Events based on local culture, identity, and heritage are discussed as powerful "pull factors," drawing tourists to remote, peripheral, or insular destinations. By doing so, they are assumed to not only generate direct revenue and economic impact, but also play a critical role in place identity transforming the rural setting into a distinctive and authentic cultural experience. Henceforth, rural events are embedded in wider tourism geographies, shaping and being shaped by flows of visitors, mobility patterns, place marketing, and destination planning and development (Quan-Baffour, 2023; Mair & Duffy, 2021; Eversole & Martin, 2005).

List of Topic Areas

We welcome contributions that offer theoretical advancements, empirical research, case studies, and critical commentary on, but not limited to, the following themes in the context of rural events and festivals:

• Rural events as catalysts for social inclusion/exclusion.
• Rural events as sites for intergenerational exchange.
• Events as a marker of belonging and revitalisation of rural locations.
• Rural events as a mechanism for reclaiming or resisting urban dominance.
• The symbolic and material role of events in sustaining local distinctiveness and reimagining place identity.
• Rural events and the negotiation of social change (e.g. tourism mobilities, migration and demographic shifts).
• Power dynamics between local actors and external stakeholders.
• Indigenous and traditional events as sites of cultural continuity and contestation.
• Methodological and theoretical innovations on researching “with” rural communities rather “on” rural communities.
• The role of rural events in shaping people, place and the geographies of rural life.
• Philosophical and ethical dilemmas with rural festivals and events.

Guest Editors 

Dr Barbara Grabher, University of Brighton, UK, [email protected]

Dr Willem Coetzee, Western Sydney University, Australia, [email protected]

Dr Vasiliki Georgoula,  University of the Aegean, Greece, [email protected]

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.

Submit via ScholarOne

Author Guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”. Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 30th October 2026

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 14th February 2027

Closing date for abstract submission: 30th September 2026

Email for submissions: [email protected]