IN-PERSON Lisbon Livable Cities. Section B

Abstract

This study investigates how idealised place images are constructed through official discourse in the context of the Daliangshan Theatre Festival in China. While existing scholarship on festivals increasingly highlights their role in shaping place identities, much of this literature is grounded in Western democratic contexts and lacks engagement with non-Western governance environments. Drawing on a critical realist-informed grounded theory (CR-informed GT) approach, this research analyses multimodal data—including government-issued news articles, interviews with artistic committee members, promotional videos, and visual materials—to identify the mechanisms underpinning place image construction within the festival. Through a three-stage analytical process—open coding, theoretical abduction, and retroduction—the study identifies three interrelated generative mechanisms: cultural mediation, governance integration, and affective mobilisation. These mechanisms demonstrate how place identity is not merely represented but actively produced through institutional structures, symbolic narratives, and sensory strategies. By conceptualising the festival as a site of state-driven cultural governance and symbolic reterritorialisation, this research contributes to critical event studies and cultural geography by offering a non-Western theoretical model of festival-based place-making. The findings challenge assumptions of spontaneous community expression in festivals and instead foreground the strategic orchestration of “place” as an object of governance, branding, and emotional investment.