The central aim of this chapter lies in exploring the concept of entertainment as a way of invigorating a number of tourism research areas. The sequence of discussion points commences with a consideration of certain kinds and styles of entertainment. Next, the presentation of a relatively new study area in the academic spectrum, an area potentially entitled entertainment science, will itself be entertained (cf. Bryman, 2004). It will be argued that entertainment science reaches beyond cultural studies of tourism (Baerenholdt et al., 2004; Howard, 2003; Inglis, 2000) and is a particularly adaptable specialism of interest capable of augmenting tourism research. Specific areas for attention in entertainment science will be considered, focussing in turn on the ownership and production of entertainment, the consumption of entertainment and education, training and employment in the world of entertainment. Throughout, the styles of entertainment particularly relevant to tourism settings will be the primary focus of attention. In establishing some new connections and refreshing existing tourism–entertainment analyses, the discussion will culminate in a framework for guiding research themes and agendas. The concluding section of the paper argues that without specifying conceptual frameworks for novel research themes, the identification of an entertainment wedge penetrating the circle of tourism interest will be dissipated, resulting in the kind of non-cumulative, ad hoc and disoriented approach to tourism study which already troubles a number of tourism scholars (Aramberri, 2001; Dann, 1999; Rojek and Urry, 1997).
Entertainment will be considered in this chapter as the commercial or semi-commercial structuring, display and performance of people and resources for focussed consumption. As studied in this context entertainment is provided by an organisation or business and while commercial imperatives may not dominate, covering costs is a ubiquitous consideration in the staging of entertainment. Some examples of tourism-connected entertainment can illustrate the key criteria under review and provide a link to interrelated concepts in contemporary tourism analysis.
Entertainment can be conceived as functioning at three levels:
For example, an illustration of the simple augmentative role is provided by the Grand Canyon Railway which transports passengers from Williams, Arizona, to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon. During the two-hour journey costumed western cowboys provide a number of diversions, including an episode of posing as train robbers boarding the train and, in comical style, harassing the passengers. It is a supplementary entertainment to the main role of the company, which is the efficient transport to the environmental attraction of the Grand Canyon itself. Similar minor augmentative roles can be seen in the action of wandering musicians and magicians in theme parks and cities and in the planned sub-routines involving humour and misadventure amongst tourist guides and service personnel. Attention to these kinds of settings and performers is not new in tourism, but together with the next two categories of entertainment, fosters a new realisation that these forms of display and action can constitute their own study area and an analysis of these activities might add insight to tourism’s directions.
The second category of entertainment is when the performers and resources engaged in the entertainment represent a key component of the tourism experience and setting. This level encompasses both the Disney-inspired applications of edutainment and the more market-oriented uses of interpretation (Bryman, 2004; Uzzell, 1998). There are hundreds of global examples but many take the form of being within an attraction or environmental setting where the performer or product makes a telling contribution to the total visitor experience. For example, in Hawaii, at the Polynesian Culture Centre, the 30-minute presentation by the Samoan spokesperson in a Samoan staged space blends skilled performance, comedy, audience participation and self-mockery to convey modest cultural insights about Samoan culture. The co-existence of other ‘shows’ and films at such sites is central to the notion that this unit of entertainment is only a component production piece, but masterful and mindfulness inducing presentations of this sort may be an important key to the success of the total setting (cf. Moscardo and Pearce, 1999).
A third category of entertainment involves the total time being filled by the one entertainment event. Some of these entertainment styles may be relatively passive for the spectators, such as a sedate Viennese classical music performance or cultural dance and display events. Others have a more physical or participatory character. Examples include dance clubs, night clubs and casino-based entertainment evenings. This wider ambit of entertainment leads to links with concerts, circuses, theatre, film and spectator sport. Environmental attractions involving wildlife can sometimes also be structured as a total entertainment experience with the behaviours of the animals constituting the performance and the access provided by the managing organisation representing the spectator infrastructure.
This brief review of tourism-connected entertainment has established some important distinctions and conjunctions among the topics under consideration. The kind of entertainment being described is largely produced and provided by others rather than being performed and created by tourists themselves from their own resources. This distinction partly assists in marking off the tourism connected entertainment from some leisure activities. Further, the tourism-connected entertainment is conceived of as requiring customer or consumer travel and mobility and ensures that home-based entertainment is not under review. Importantly the entertainment being considered is not free or unstructured so that, while sitting in a café in Barcelona watching the passing crowds may be advertised as culturally entertaining, such activities are not being considered in this context.
For tourism academics and analysts the focus of entertainment as defined above is likely to bring to mind a diverse array of recent literature and pre-existing analyses. This suite of links can include the contemporary work of Uriely (2005) on conceptualising the tourist experience, the experience economy of Pine and Gilmour (1999), the production of entertainment and interpretation (Bryman, 2004; MacDonald, 1997; Moscardo, 1999; Ritzer, 1999; Uzzell, 1998) and attempts to elaborate and reposition tourism studies with concepts of mobility, chaoplexity and slow time (Cooper et al., 2005; Farrell and Twining-Ward, 2004; Franklin, 2003; Hall, 2005; Matos, 2004; Woehler, 2004). For other researchers the shadow of older traditions of work may be seen as adumbrating tourism-connected entertainment including ideas about staging (Goffman, 1959), dramaturgical analyses (Harre, 1979), insincerity and authenticity (Boorstin, 1962; MacCannell, 1976) and gaze and hyperreality (Eco, 1986; Rojek, 1993; Urry, 1990).
While several of these connections could be individually pursued, it is possible to do more than gesture at individual links to research work on entertainment. A holistic appraisal of tourism research trends and entertainment studies will be pursued by defining and contextualising entertainment science.
Entertainment science is the systematic study of the ownership, organisation, delivery and consumption of entertainment opportunities. This nascent study area can be cast as a hybrid form of social science because it seeks in an academic way and using existing research tools to understand the factors which shape entertainment offerings and the consumption and consequences of those offerings (cf. Becher, 1989; Gomm, 2004). It draws on management, psychology and sociology and presents a rich reservoir of examples and cases for consideration by tourism interested scholars. Entertainment science is not yet established as a study field but its beginnings can be detected in business, leisure, psychology and sociology where there are emerging analyses of the syntheses among sports, festivals, theme parks, tourist attractions, shopping centres, media and film (Bryman, 2004; Harris, 2005; Kahneman et al., 1999).
The term ‘science’ is stressed in this new formulation. One can anticipate an objection to the use of this generic label with the possible claim that it overly stresses quantitative positivist frameworks (cf. Phillimore and Goodson, 2004; Singh, 2004). The term ‘science’ is being used here in its ‘best sense’ where it indicates an openness to new ideas and where the itch of ignorance is assuaged by logic, a mastery of the information available and accessible public reporting (Gould, 2004). There is certainly no intention to create a little pocket of positivism (cf. Outhwaite, 2000). Certainly entertainment science can be methodologically eclectic in the way researchers and analysts consider the phenomenon and its tourism connections. The term ‘science’ is preferred here to that of cultural studies or creative industries which each have their own wider ambit of influence and which are more interpretive, avowedly postmodern and more idiosyncratic in their contribution to systematic information based knowledge (Harris, 2005).
In order to fulfil the promise that entertainment science can provide a new direction or reinvigoration of some areas of tourism study four key issues will be addressed:
Amongst some scholars, there has been an identifiable level of disappointment in the progress of tourism research. It is easy to find examples of such despair as the points are stressed with unusually frank and vivid phrases. In a previous meeting of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism Dann (1999, p. 14) suggested:
Instead of there being a desirable cumulative corpus of knowledge that is emic, comparative, contextual and processual what we frequently encounter is a ragged collection of half-baked ideas that constitute largely case confirmed wishful thinking.
Such sentiments are echoed by Meethan (2001, p. 2): ‘Tourism, at a general analytical level… remains under-theorised, eclectic and disparate.’ A range of other analysts repeat similar views with Aramberri (2001) noting the lack of tourism theory, Franklin and Crang (2001) suggesting that tourism scholars are missing the complex social and cultural processes underpinning tourism’s growth, while Rojek and Urry (1997) wonder whether tourism is even useful as a term of social science. The doubts about and the challenges to tourism research are indeed plentiful and they have existed for some time (cf. Crick, 1989; Dann et al., 1988). One significant implication of this unease about tourism study in this chapter lies in considering what kinds of emerging new directions are rising from these deliberations. Importantly, by reviewing these new lines of attack the special contribution of an entertainment science focus in relation to tourism study can then be established.
A number of tourism authors have begun to reconceptualise tourism as a special form of the study of human mobilities in space and access time. Coles et al. (2004), Hall (2005) and Cooper et al. (2005) represent good examples of this direction with the core argument being that tourism study can be usefully connected to powerful mathematical and conceptual models in mobility studies. Such analyses already exist in the broader transport, geography and life path literature. By linking to existing social science traditions the mobilities emphasis has quickly gestated some new tourism research concepts including space–time prisms, mobility biographies and the application of distance decay functions. The focus on people in space and time argues for and identifies significant constraints on travel and tourist behaviour, and there is an incipient link to tourist and leisure experiences which in turn form part of the entertainment science conceptualisation (Crouch, 2005; Lew and Cartier, 2005).
Another important new direction with the potential to reshape tourism thinking lies in expanded yet more fluid and dynamic systems models of tourism functioning. The work of Farrell and Twining-Ward (2004) represents an important statement in the genesis of this reworked systems approach to tourism. Three ideas are blended together in this new tradition to stimulate future tourism study. First, the contribution of sustainability science is advocated as an important ecological and managerial connection for tourism scholars (Holling and Gunderson, 2002). Sustainability considerations are already well represented in tourism study but for Farrell and Twining-Ward this sustainability emphasis needs to be fully linked to an expanded rather than a narrow view of the tourism system. In particular the earlier uses of the term ‘systems’ in tourism study is seen as too insular and mechanistic. The third force for stimulating tourism research development in this model is the notion, if not the full mathematical application, of chaos complexity theory (cf. Hovinen, 2002; Russell and Faulkner, 1999). Some insights generated by this expanded tourism system model with its sustainability and chaos–complexity components include the view that stable systems may have multiple fluctuating states – perhaps an important insight for tourism seasonality – and that systems are not simple hierarchical models but intermeshed in semi-autonomous parallel levels or panarchies. Additionally the approach also suggests that the study of tourism could usefully employ quasi-experimental appraisals to evaluate the effects of environmental and planning practices in tourism. The continued application of chaos and complexity approaches to tourism is, however, not assured since while the concepts have appeal as broad analogues of tourism processes the mathematical power and data-driven interpretations inherent in the approach are likely to be very difficult to achieve with social sciences and tourism data (Kiel and Elliott, 1996). Nevertheless chaos theory approaches in particular stimulate tourism researchers to connect variables in non-linear ways. For example, chaos complexity-based thinking may achieve some significant conceptual gains in terms of fostering visual models which highlight ceiling, floor and a variety of discontinuous, folded functions as possible underlying mechanisms of tourism processes. Few direct links have been made between chaos complexity approaches and the present interest in entertainment but some connections can be suggested as the two areas of tourism research grow. In particular chaos notions have an interesting applicability to fashion trends and the consumer adoption of new practices. Chaos theory approaches may provide, if not mathematically, then at least by their logic, novel ways for analysts of entertainment to better understand new consumer enthusiasms. In particular chaos approaches may assist ideas such as tipping points and innovation diffusion models (Gladwell, 2000).
Another powerful redirection of tourism research effort lies in providing a stronger focus on experience. This topic, while present throughout the development of tourism studies as a theme of importance (cf. Cohen, 1979; Krippendorf, 1987; Pearce, 1982, 1988; Ryan, 1995, 2002; Urry, 1990), has been reaffirmed by the work of Pine and Gilmour (1999) on the experience economy. The significance of the Pine and Gilmour contribution lies in promoting the study of experience as the heart of a new kind of economic and business style; a style which is set to at least coexist with and at times supersede earlier modes of production such as the direct selling of goods and services. Pine (2004), for example, argues that, by delivering a memorable, enhanced experience to a customer whether in a hairdressing saloon or a theme park, the business entrepreneur creates repeat business with multiple possibilities of selling new or additional products for higher profits. In the experience economy the seller is a stager of experiences rather than a manufacturer or service provider and customers seek personal, notable, multisensory experiences rather than standardised benefits (cf. Franklin, 2003). Importantly for the seller and the provider a more intensive form of social interaction underlies the experience economy.
Numerous connections exist between contemporary tourism writing and Pine and Gilmour’s experience economy. Pine (2004) suggested that tourism is a prime exemplar of the experience economy and even a cursory examination of tourism marketing itself, as well as tourism marketing studies, reinforces the central point that destinations are repeatedly represented as sites for visitor experiences (cf. Cooper et al., 2005).
Uriely (2005, p. 209) observes that there are ‘ample academic works regarding this subject… spread across several sub-areas of tourism’ and has attempted to identify trends in the recent work on experiences. He suggests four contemporary directions. He notes that tourism experiences are now less differentiated from leisure experiences, that tourism experiences are now considered as less stereotypical and more diverse, that research attention has shifted from the nature of the objects or settings seen to the interpretation of those viewing the setting and that there is greater tolerance for multiple ways of analysing tourist experiences. Uriely then cautiously summarises these emphases as a postmodernist view of tourist experiences but carefully notes that future research should not be overly committed to subjectivities and should still pay attention to the kind of visited setting and the form of tourism as major determinants of the subjective experience.
The experience economy thrust which is defining a new direction in tourism research can be seen as the banner of tourism research development to which the entertainment science emphasis is mostly closely tied. And, yet, entertainment science offers something a little more than simply being a part of the experience economy push. Entertainment science brings to the fuller discussion of tourism an explicit set of statements about power, ownership and entrepreneurship. Additionally it reconsiders the concepts of benchmarking, flow and quality in performance appraisals by consumers and offers insights into slow time or rich time experiences. And, importantly in an academic context, it makes analysts pay attention to tourism workers, their education and skills and the daily quality of their work lives. A more detailed justification of these anticipatory claims can be established by considering select facets of entertainment science.
Many tourism businesses in many parts of the world can be classified as small or micro-businesses (Riley et al., 2002). Many of these tourism businesses operate in only one sector, such as accommodation or local transport, although Poon’s (1993) analysis of new tourism highlighted some moves towards greater cross-sectoral ownership, influence and integration. Entertainment-related businesses provide much more dramatic examples of integration, not just within tourism sectors but across whole business domains. For example, Rupert Murdoch’s empire has investments and ownership not just in the world of print media but in television, film, sports teams and casinos. Richard Branson’s Virgin company in its many divisions has influence in music, airlines, banking and travel. The Disney Corporation has involvement with sports teams, theme parks, film and television. Anheuser-Busch has ownership of theme parks and sports teams and still functions as a brewing company (National Vanguard Books, 2004). These shifting patterns of ownership – particularly as applied to theme parks, hotels, film, casinos and sports teams – offer the tourism researcher a new perspective on tourism development, effectively what Foucault calls the ‘eye of power’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 155). Foucault stresses that the controlled architecture of places embodies key owner-based cultural values supported by a system of surveillance:
The system of surveillance…involves very little expense. There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its own weight will end by interiorising to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over and against himself. A superb formula.
The argument that through design and surveillance powerful organisations control the tastes and consumer interests of a somewhat duped public is a core theme in popular culture writing (Harris, 2005). It is perhaps finding its clearest expression in tourism-linked writing in the work of Bryman (2004) on Disneyisation which in turn builds on the work of Ritzer (1993, 1999). The focus on ownership in Ritzer’s work on McDonaldisation extends to five production mechanisms and outcomes. These key qualities are:
These kinds of process, while highly effective and profitable for McDonald’s or a casino operation, seem to be at odds with the experience economy emphasis on personal, memorable, socially connected processes. Ritzer’s work anticipates this kind of incongruity and suggests that McDonaldisation as an outcome of business philosophy, results in disenchantment – the dislike that people come to feel for coldly rational organisations. Ritzer (1999) advocates a corrective which he terms re-enchantment to overcome the depletion of meaning and social contact which an overly technical calculated and efficient profit drive system can generate. Ritzer’s work has numerous critics, many noting that there is a cultural and regional customisation of McDonald’s and that customers as skilled consumers recognise what they are getting making them less dissatisfied and more complicit users rather than complaining consumers (Harris, 2005).
This analysis of ownership in relation to consumption and even closer to the present interest in entertainment is extended in the work of Bryman (2004) on Disneyisation. In particular Bryman examines the processes by which the principles of Disney theme parks are influencing, even dominating many sectors of contemporary society. The first of these ownership generated influences is theming which is seen by Bryman (2004, p. 15) as
The application of a narrative to the institution or object…a veneer of dreaming and symbolism to the objects to which it is applied…that transcends or at the very least is an addition to what they actually are.
Theming is widespread in the very core settings where entertainment is on offer and is visible in amusement parks, restaurants, malls, heritage shopping, museums and shopping outlets. A second principle defining Disneyisation is hybrid consumption, where the guiding ownership principle is to get people to stay longer in settings to purchase more products. The rearrangement of architectural spaces and forms to support these cultural values, as highlighted by Foucault (1975), involves such settings as theme parks, museums, zoos and shopping malls, all now merging into less-distinct entities. The customer and tourist reactions to these hybrid environments will be outlined in the next section. Two further mechanisms – merchandising and performative (or emotional) labour – complete Bryman’s portrayal of Disneyisation. The role of merchandising is to label, promote and sell goods which bear images and logos germane to the company’s range of consumption experiences. The diversity ranges from conventional souvenirs through to clothing, music and corporate training systems. Performative labour is a further defining element of Disneyisation and links well with the broader treatment of this concept in entertainment science settings.
An analysis of tourism–entertainment ownership can also be studied at a smaller scale. For example, Donlon and Agrusa (2003) report that the French quarter of New Orleans depends in part on adult entertainment clubs for its tourism appeal. Like other businesses capital is invested in this tourism resource in order to generate profit for the owner. The notoriety of the clubs together with the historic associations of New Orleans constitute a tourism resource built on performances, dance and entertainment routines. Donlon and Agrusa’s analysis emphasises that this kind of entertainment is strictly business, the clubs are commercial spaces and the entertainers viewed as expedient talent whose sole purpose is to extract money from the visitors’ wallets. Donlon and Agrusa (2003, p. 121) report that:
From 1975 to 2000 venture capital injections (businessmen pouring cash into an apparent opportunity to gain strong profits) updated and up-scaled many such settings, attempting to reposition them in the competitive hospitality marketplace. Investors included publicly traded companies listed on the stock exchange.
From large-scale enterprises to small businesses the entertainment science emphasis in the topic area of ownership and production suggests that tourism research might re-engage with social science work on business management, power and control systems. There are few studies interviewing and researching the eye of power that is the perspectives, philosophies and goals of those who construct tourism environments. How do such significant organisers of the tourism world generate their ideas, what makes them choose the styles and designs to which visitors respond and what views do they hold about the future of entertainment and consumer response? Entertainment science with its multifaceted interests in many kinds of themed settings and the pre-existing work on the principles defining Disneyisation could be a stimulus to this work.
In appraising consumer reaction to entertainment simple satisfaction measures are likely to be inadequate. For some time now the realm of satisfaction studies has recognised that direct satisfaction questions work well for instrumental and enabling conditions surrounding tourist and consumer settings but less well for expressive and complex material (Noe, 1999; Schmitt, 1999). The move is from assessing satisfaction to appraising enjoyment and pleasure, and insightful studies frequently incorporate the notion of the skilled specialist versus less familiar naïve users. Uriely’s work on the changing treatment of experience in the social science literature is relevant here with the view that there are many types of audiences or consumers and many interpretations of the quality of the entertainment or performance being evaluated. Much work has been conducted in the fields of cultural studies, literature and the humanities under the broad rubric of criticism. Such work defines and refines the sources of pleasure in numerous entertainment offerings. While some of this work is outside of the commercial sphere of entertainment with which this paper is concerned, there are some powerful cross-situational variables worth considering. These factors include reactions to entertainment built around insight, benchmarking, involvement, effort, tension balance and resolution. These evaluations, which have varying applicability to different types of entertainment, can be specified in more detail:
In modelling these entertainment science variables influencing consumer reaction, they can be seen as meshing into two more generic outcome factors: a sense of flow and subjective or perceived appraisals of quality (cf. Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Jones et al., 2003; Rojek, 2000). These ideas are expressed in Table 19.1.
Table 19.1 Entertainment evaluation: the elements defining the consumer reaction
The precise measurement of the kinds of variables and factors described in Table 19.1 represents an important methodological challenge for analysts of entertainment science, the experience economy and tourism. Pine (2004) proposes a number of possibilities including notions of sacrifice, defined as the gap between what consumers want and what they will accept, as well as analysing the dramatic structure of entertainment. Further, he notes the importance of willingness to pay as a benchmarking process in comparisons of entertainment offerings. He also suggests the value of the concept of authenticity in this context, a suggestion that tourism researchers are likely to see as limited due to waning enthusiasm for its usefulness and its limitations (cf. Pearce, 2005; Ryan, 2002). For entertainment itself rather than all of the experience economy-linked offerings, the strength and the structure of the narrative or theming have been suggested as important determinants of quality particularly as strong narratives can create insight, meet benchmarking standards and deal well with tension creation and its resolution. For the more physically involved entertainment offerings including the appreciation of dance and music, Csikszentmihalyi and Rojek’s (2010) adaptation of flow may be critical with the expressive enabling conditions of benchmarking involvement and effort figuring prominently in evaluating the performance as successful and generating pleasure (cf. Daniel, 1996).
One direction for tourism researchers resulting from these considerations lies in the more sophisticated treatment of satisfaction and outcome appraisals to tourism products and services (cf. Kozak, 2002). Both quantitative and qualitative appraisals are called for here as researchers grapple to understand when and how tourism entertainments work and fail for different market segments and audiences.
Three interrelated concepts assist in clarifying some of the special employment issues germane to entertainment science. The three linked concepts are emotional labour, performative labour and aesthetic labour. Emotional labour, which now has a wide currency in the human resources literature, recognises that many service sector jobs require employees to maintain a set of emotional styles for the smooth functioning of their position (Hochschild, 1983). For example, nurses and doctors have to be at least positive and optimistic rather than depressive and neurotic, salespersons have to be approachable and helpful, and contemporary academics have to be enthusiastic in their delivery. Performative labour, which is of even more relevance to entertainment science suggests that more than basic social skills and emotional control are required of the employee since in this instance the actions, style and setting require a theatrical performance delivering rehearsed scripts in well specified roles (Bryman, 2004; Crang, 1997). Aesthetic labour directs attention to the physical appearance of the employee where people have to have the right look or sound, usually linked to body shape and facial features (Bryman, 2004). Where performers are the centre piece of tourism-linked entertainment there are undoubtedly strong aesthetic and performative labour requirements. The notion that this kind of work is stressful and debilitating for employees is not consistent and indeed some research in tourist attractions has found that it is the managerial treatment of employees rather than the performative role which troubles more workers (Law et al., 1995).
Several promising lines of work can be explored in the employment dimensions of entertainment science. Some researchers have begun the search for personality style predispositions, which might assist individuals in working well in performative settings (Lee-Ross, 1999). In Hawaiian resorts Adler and Adler (2003) have observed that fixed pay scales for all categories of resort worker can limit enthusiasm for the job and fail to reward growing performative competence. Further exploration of how entertainment workers are paid can be identified as central to future study (Riley et al., 2002). Job rotation systems are used in some existing tourism theme parks so that employees move repeatedly from role to role thus maintaining a fresh and easier emotional commitment to the person in front of them. The applicability of employee control and empowerment in these settings is a potentially fruitful research and managerial exercise. For the categories of the tourism—entertainment spectrum where the performers are the true stars of the event, an examination of fame, careers and dealing with popular recognition at various levels is also an analytic direction.
There are important possibilities in studying and creating the training and educational opportunities for entertainment employees. The technical skills of remaining enduringly positive even when harassed by unreasonable patrons is already a standard part of the pedagogy of the so called Hamburger and Disney Universities (Crang, 1997; Harris, 2005). The ways in which tourism education can respond to an expanding connection between tourism and entertainment would seem to be numerous. Already many institutions offer courses in festival and events management, sports management and media production. One promise of entertainment science is to foster amongst tourism educators the recognition that many of their graduates will work in areas where entertainment matters, whether it be themed shopping malls, events management or heritage settings, and the inclusion of these areas into tourism degrees might enhance the significance and power of existing programmes.
One way to engage researchers in new topic areas in tourism lies in providing a set of structures or frameworks to stimulate and shape interest. Dann (1999), for example, suggests there is value in reconceptualising tourism through such useful rubrics and heuristics as concept stretching, reversing conventional wisdom, scope broadening and resolving paradoxes. In a similar vein Pearce (2004) notes that for Asian tourism researchers greater international recognition and incorporation of local work might follow if frameworks concentrating on cultural comparisons, technological impacts and the reactions of minority or muted groups were emphasised. For the organisation of new research efforts in entertainment science, the guiding structure of this research piece can be revisited forming a nine-cell model of research topics. On the one hand studies can be directed at three levels of focus – where entertainment is an occasional or augmentative offering, where it occupies a significant component of a tourism experience and where it is the all inclusive holistic offering. These three levels of analysis can in turn be cross-referenced by the major themes in entertainment science already described – power and ownership, consumer reactions, and employment and training. The resultant nine-cell framework is presented in Table 19.2 and some indicative but certainly not exhaustive research directions are included within each of the specific cells.
Table 19.2 A framework for entertainment science research
The framework outlined in Table 19.2 can be used in a number of ways. In addition to the focus in each cell, an across the rows or down the columns set of research exercises can be suggested. In the cross-row research the consideration of augmentative entertainment practices, their role and use by organisations, public reaction to these structures and employees’ views of them could form a number of case studies offering a cumulative inductively derived conceptual account of how these performances assist tourism settings (Eisenhardt, 1989). Similar contrasts could be provided across the other two rows in Table 19.2. The vertical connections could also be explored, with the emphasis on this occasion being an investigation of whether such forms of entertainment grow from the smaller cases to the larger components. Additionally, consumer reaction to these offerings may have their own logics and benchmarks or it could be established, following Table 19.1 reviewed earlier, that a cross-level view of entertainment is the most insightful approach. For the employment and training column the careers of employees in entertainment represent an obvious cross-level link, with further issues of employee satisfaction, stress and training requirements representing investigative possibilities. Some of this work may usefully be done at a descriptive level.
It is, however, also possible to follow more conceptual and theoretical themes through the rows and columns of Table 19.2. Concepts such as gaze, power, surveillance, theming, cultural capital and flow all appeal as organisers of entertainment science study cells. Methodologically the new tolerant eclectism which characterises much tourism publishing could also be reinforced and extended in entertainment science (Phillimore and Goodson, 2004). Observation and archival analysis can be suggested as important techniques in seeing how performances are enacted and received, but there is a place too for systematic survey work uncovering the multi-variate determinants of pleasure and enjoyment.
In a literal sense entertainment is the holding and capturing of the attention of people through the efforts of others. Perhaps entertainment science can hold and capture the attention of tourism researchers as they seek to understand both the commercial and social dimensions of existing and future tourism.
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