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62 Brit. J. Criminology 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/bjcrim62 and id is 1 raw text is: The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, 62, 1-17 DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azab047 Advance access publication 24 May 2021 Article O FR Carnival, Sexual Violence and Harm at Australian Music Festivals Phillip Wadds* , Bianca Fileborn. and Stephen Tomsen *Phillip Wadds, The School of Law, Society & Criminology and Centre for Crime, Law & Justice, The University of New South Wales, Room 355, Law Building, UNSW Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; p.wadds@unsw.edu.au; Bianca Fileborn, The School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Australia; Stephen Tomsen, The School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University, Australia. Much has been written about the search for carnivalesque release in late-modern society, but rela- tively less attention has been paid to the harms experienced within this practice. Based on mixed- methods qualitative research including observational fieldwork at a large, multi-day camping festi- val in NSW, Australia, and in-depth interviews with victim-survivors of sexual violence occurring at Australian music festivals, this paper considers music festivals as sites of contemporary carnival. The paper examines the way in which situational, environmental and gendered dynamics shape these transgressive experiences. In doing so, it advances cultural criminological understandings of the carnivalesque by highlighting the bounded nature of carnival and the 'cultural scaffolding' that enables sexual violence and harassment at music festival events. Key Words: carnival, music festivals, sexual violence, transgression, alcohol INTRODUCTION Being young' is characterised by a culture created out of the tensions that emanate between regula- tion and rebellion; control and care; the civilised and the savage. The result is a contesting carnival- esque culture thatforever pushes at the boundaries of transgression and where carnival becomes not the 'second life of the people' but the first life of youth. Their culture, rather than being a search for the 'authentic' as in modern culture, is an endless search for the inauthentic; that is, a culture that is empty of the authority and the imperatives that come with authenticity. It is this perceived 'emptiness as protest' that prompts panicfrom 'adult' society. (Presdee 2001: 114) Cultural Criminology has long focused on the complex cultural dynamics that exist in late modernity - on the symbolic meaning and communicative power of transgression and the agents and mechanisms of control that seek to preserve particular social orders. The above ex- cerpt, taken from Mike Presdee's 2001 text Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime, dis- cusses the affective dynamics of various governing structures present within, and central to, late modern economic and social life, and their influence on young people. The book speaks more © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissionspoup.com