“Plan your Burn, Burn your Plan”: How Decentralization, Storytelling, and Communification Can Support Participatory Practices

Abstract

Research has found that compared with larger groups, small ones had fewer difficulties with retaining their participatory-democratic practices and values. However, the endurance and expansion of Burning Man, from 20 friends and family in 1986 to a temporary arts community of more than 66,000 persons in 2014, suggests that collectivities can maintain and augment participatory practices over increasing scale. Using an ethnographic study of organizing activities spanning 1998 to 2001 and follow-up research through 2012, I focus on how the Burning Man organization has sustained its participatory-democratic principles over dramatic growth. Specifically, I show how the Burning Man organization promoted and sustained authentic voice and engagement by (1) decentralizing agency, (2) contextualizing norms and practices via storytelling and discussion, and (3) “communifying” labor.