Introduction
There are several reasons why the annual Burning Man festival is unique among mass gatherings. Held in the Black Rock section of America’s Great Basin desert in Nevada, Burning Man’s 70,000 participants construct a city that houses—and in itself functions as—a participatory performing arts space, a communal spiritual retreat, and a cathartic experience of radical self-expression (Brill 2007). Then, one week later, they tear it all down, pack everything out, and leave no trace behind. It is an anti-market event (Cesewski & Giles 2007) whose participants rely on gift-giving and barter to secure any necessities that they neglected to bring in with them. The only things sold on the seven-square-mile site are ice and water, which the sponsoring Burning Man Organization, a not-for-profit, sells only because people might otherwise become ill or even die from dehydration on the searing, dusty playa. Playa is a Spanish word that literally translates as “beach.” It is not a Burning Man appellation, but a term used by the federal Bureau of Land Management, which manages this public space for the American people.
The 10 principles of Burning Man are:
Radical Inclusion — All are welcome at Burning Man (if you have a $110 ticket, but more on that later.)
Gifting — People give to each other; they don’t sell. Gifts vary widely: a song, a story, a massage, a homemade bracelet, etc.
Decommodification — No commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. People go so far as to block out logos on their tents and tools.
Radical Self-reliance — Participants rely on their inner resources.
Radical Self-expression—Give unique gifts; be your unique self.
Communal Effort — People work together in ad hoc groups to produce art, promote and protect social networks, create public spaces, share supplies, etc.
Civic Responsibility — Anyone who creates an event or art work must do so with public welfare in mind, communicate civic responsibility to participants, and obey all laws.
Leaving No Trace — Leave no physical traces of the event and, if possible, leave a place in better shape than when you arrived.
Participation — Everyone is expected to participate, as transformative change cannot take place without personal involvement. Spectators are discouraged (and there is consistent peer pressure to join in).
Immediacy — Be present and in the moment. This helps overcome barriers “that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves.” (Pike 2012)
Sustainability Theories and Frameworks
There are five main theories or frameworks that are applicable to sustainable events. They are International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL), and Stakeholder theory.
ISO and GRI address a central problem in assessing the sustainability of events, which is how to define and measure what is sustainable. As (Widok 2009) asks, “What is the value of clean air?” Both of these frameworks attempt to help businesses quantify public goods and values that resist quantification. While each has its assets and shortcomings, the application of one of these frameworks can, if applied consistently, help business begin to develop a common ground for making comparisons and judgements.
CSR attempts to bring qualitative measures of sustainability into the equation. (Whitfield & Dioko 2011) assert that there is an ethical aspect to the correct application of CSR, a business should behave ethically in carrying out its activities. Hogevold et. al. (2014) disagree here, claiming that business does not practice CSR because it is moral, but because it is smart. CSR adds value to the company in that it builds trust between the business and its constituents, such as employees, customers, and the public officials of the town where the business is located. This view begins to move the discussion in a direction that considers those people beyond stockholders who are affected by the company’s activities. These individuals have come to be called stakeholders (Mish & Scammon 2010).
TBL also acknowledges the stakeholders of a company. The phrase, triple bottom line, refers to three net results that a business must consider as it decides how to conduct its affairs: people, profits, and planet (Halpern, et. al. 2013). An interesting thing here is that there is no set order in which a particular business might apply these considerations. Some experts believe that profits should always come first, which is not unreasonable given that a business is created to be profitable. The problem with that outlook, however, is that people and planet can easily be lost in the pursuit of profit, which was the original problem to begin with. It was the reason for developing sustainable practices in the first place. Nevertheless, the triple-bottom-line is a useful mnemonic because its main features are easy to keep in mind and comparatively simple to apply. It is, however, very difficult to measure unless in combination with one of the other frameworks.
Stakeholder theory is the approach that seems most flexible and comprehensive. It is relatively old, its practice having been defined in 1984 by Freeman as “the effective management of a broad group of stakeholders rather than social responsibility” (Harrison, Bosse & Philips 2010). The idea is for a business or organization to identify its various stakeholders and then make genuine efforts to respect the needs of all of them. As a way to evaluate the results of a stakeholder approach, a business could assess the quality of its relationships with each stakeholder group, trying to maintain good relations with all. This is, of course, not an objective measure, which is one of the criticisms of this theory, but used in conjunction with one of the standards measurement systems (ISO or GRI, or perhaps even both) it provides a flexible system to accommodate the many determinants of true sustainability. Loi (2015) suggests combining stakeholder theory with TBL because it tends to “ease tensions between stakeholders and shareholders (n.p.).”
Some scholars have criticized the way that some event organizations are practicing stakeholder theory. It is one thing to have a strong policy, but another to practice it in a meaningful way. The critics charge that certain companies plan events without first taking sustainability measures and stakeholder concerns into account (Steenbekkers 2014). These are applied only after the fact, when it is too late to alter plans to make an event more sustainable. While these firms are likely to pay a price for this behavior in the long run, in the short term it has deleterious effects on at least two of the three bottom lines—people and planet—and on the third, profits, down the line (van Berkel 2014).
Because Burning Man has clear sustainability values integrated within its 10 Principles and because the flexibility of stakeholder theory makes it especially suitable for analyzing an event that is run by a not-for-profit organization, the following analysis of the sustainability of Burning Man is informed primarily by stakeholder theory.
Analysis of Burning Man
The first issue that should be addressed is the question of profits and what it means to be a not-for-profit organization. Burning Man, along with most other not-for-profits (also referred to as nonprofits) in the UK and the US, does need to generate revenue. There is no prohibition against realizing a profit from, for instance, the sale of ice and water at the Burning Man event (Feldman 2013). The prohibition applies to the way that those profits—usually called ‘earnings’ or ‘income’ in a nonprofit—are used. In any nonprofit organization, earnings must be re-invested in the organization. They may not be distributed to shareholders. In fact, nonprofit organizations have no shareholders, only stakeholders. This means that it is important for any not-for-profit, including Burning Man, to generate income so that at least some of its activities are self-supporting. That is why the Burning Man Organization (BMO) charges a $110 fee for a ticket to its event; ticket fees and water sales help subsidize the considerable costs of staging the event (Kozinets 2002). It should also be noted that most of Burning Man’s Black Rock City is built by volunteers, who bring their own materials, along with friends who provide the free labor. Nevertheless, BMO bears the cost of developing critical infrastructure. This includes installing microwave towers that provide communication with outside medical and law enforcement officials, assigning key organizing roles to volunteer participants and training them in how to provide emergency first aid, crowd control services, recycling, and other necessary functions.
Because the highlight of the festival is the burning of a 40-foot-high effigy of a man, followed a day later by the burning of an elaborate temple built to serve as a type of sacrifice, fire control and management are key. Also, fire is a motif for the spiritual component of Burning Man. Many art projects and demonstrations incorporate fire as a symbol of surrender, of letting go of worldly fears or worries, or of purification (Ramey 2011). Thus, BMO creates and runs several volunteer fire departments that are deployed around the playa. Although the volunteers who operate these services consider them as their gifts to the Black Rock community, all of this still costs money. That is why BMO generates some income from the event as a supplement to the donations and grants it receives from individuals and foundations. The federal government provides in-kind donations via the Bureau of Land Management, which allows BMO to use the playa, so long as government regulations are followed (Reid 2011).
Stakeholders of Burning Man
The BMO has eight major stakeholders. They are: 1) Participants who attend the event, 2) Donors who give money to put on the event, 3) Paid staff who plan and organize essential infrastructure, 4) the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 5) the residents of Gerlach, the town nearest the playa, 6) the American public, which owns the land, 7) the land itself and the creatures and plants upon it, and 8) the values of the organization itself, the 10 Principles.
Values of the organization — people and planet
Ramey (2011), in her review of Rachel’s Bowditch’s book, On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man, notes that in 2004 the volunteer organizers of the festival realized that they needed to create a vehicle to sustain the organizational processes of Burning Man if it was going to survive in the long term. They created a nonprofit LLC, she writes, “and struggled to realize a utopia within capitalism (667).”
These core volunteers, among them Larry Harvey who is thought of as the festival’s founder, clearly had sustainability in mind as they built the BMO. Indeed, they had it in mind from the very beginning, when Larry Harvey wrote the 10 Principles. Also embedded in the Principles are sustainable factors such as ensuring the “participation” (aka volunteer labor) of all attendees, the “radical inclusion” of all comers (aka a broad base of customers), and “civic responsibility” (aka respecting outside stakeholders like the BLM and the neighbors).
In fact, all of the stakeholder groups are considered in the 10 Principles. In addition to the groups already mentioned, there are the paid staff and participants, each of whom is encouraged to express his- or herself fully amid an atmosphere of mutual respect, and the American public, whose property the event uses, presumably for free, and in return agrees to maintain the playa’s natural state. Even the land itself, which although it has no voice other than through the proxy BLM, is respected because the relationship between people and place is baked into Principles 4, 7, and 8.
Revenues of the organization — profits
That the revenue from the event is put back into the organization is a major indicator of financial sustainability. It is also recognition of the donor stakeholder group, since donors give to an organization in order to get something back, even though this exchange is not market-based. Interestingly, many of these donors are individuals who have found Burning Man to be a life-changing spiritual experience and are eager to assist others in having something similar (Feldman 2013). This is not to say that every life-changing experience qualifies as religious, or even spiritual. Testimonies abound from people who had profound revelations about their own self-worth once they experienced radical self-reliance and/or radical self-expression (Cook 2005). But there is definitely something about Burning Man that touches the spirit of thousands of people who have nothing in common when they enter the playa other than simply being there (Stern 2012).
Criticisms of Burning Man and BMO
Burning Man is not without its critics, some of whom see the 10 Principles as nothing more than arbitrary rules that ruined the fun of a great festival (Turner & Jandric 2015). Many of these rule-rejectors are long-time burners who resent the need for BMO, faced with ever-increasing numbers of participants, to issue rules and deploy an organized volunteer group to enforce them called the Rangers.
Stern (2012) has a theory that it is not possible to sustain a heightened level of interest among burners who have come to Burning Man again and again. The initial excitement of having so much sensory stimulation out under the stars is bound to wear off over time, he contends. And even for the Christians in Stern’s primary audience, the awe associated with deep spiritual revelation probably can’t be sustained indefinitely. Nevertheless, other writers, such as Mergen (2009) and Rothman (2002) suggest that standing among others, witnessing huge bonfires blazing away in the dark, stirs something primitive within us humans that never really grows old.
Johnson (2012) is one of Burning Man’s most vociferous critics. He went there himself as a participant in 2011 to prepare himself for writing an article in Tikkun, a progressive Jewish magazine. He was unimpressed with the rhetoric about self-expression and inclusion, seeing it as more self-indulgent than sacrificial. Some of his criticisms are more objective, however. He points out the tremendous levels of fossil fuels that go into staging the event, including the portable generators used by many artists and the gasoline that 70,000 people use to haul tons of material into and out of the desert for a week. Pratt (2016), interviewing BMOs tech director, Heather Gallagher, never mentions this, instead praising the BMO staff for the herculean efforts made to provide recycling and waste management services at Black Rock, which surely is not inconsiderable. Mish and Scammon (2010), referring to the problem of waste management in a similar context, tend to agree with Pratt’s emphasis on responsible waste management practices, rather than on the effort required to implement them.
Conclusion
Of all the literature and news coverage written on Burning Man, the most comprehensive treatment of is sponsoring organization, BMO, appears in a 2009 book by Katherine K. Chen entitled Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization Behind the Burning Man Event. Pike (2012) reviewed the book in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism, whose title offers a good clue to how Pike views the Burning Man event. She describes BMO as “a combination of collectivist organizational practices, such as consensus decision-making, and bureaucratic practices, such as a chain of authority” (153). Perhaps this hybrid form is what enables BMO to juggle its multiple stakeholders in what seems to be an effective manner, as evidenced by increased attendance every year and just a handful of critics among the horde of writers who cover it. Pike’s final verdict is that the Burning Man Organization employs “organizational strategies [that] have clearly worked to empower members and foster innovation.” That seems to be in keeping with Burning Man’s ethos, as well as with successful sustainability practice.
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