This book explores and challenges the concept and experience of liminality as applied to critical perspectives in the study of events. It will be of interest to researchers in event studies, social and discursive psychology, cultural and political sociology, and social movement studies. In addition, it will provide interested general readers with new ways of thinking and reflecting on events. Contributing authors undertake a discussion of the borders, boundaries, and areas of contestation between the established social anthropological concept of liminality and the emerging field of critical event studies. By drawing these two perspectives closer together, the collection considers tensions and resonances between them, and uses those connections to enhance our understanding of both cultural and sporting events and offer fresh insight into events of activism, protest, and dissent.

Within events management, events are commonly categorised within two axes, size and content. Along the size axis events range between the small scale and local, through major events, which garner greater media interest, to internationally significant hallmark and mega events such as the Edinburgh Festival and the Tour de France. Content is frequently divided into three forms – culture, sport or business. However, such frameworks overlook and depoliticise a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest. This book brings together new research and theories from around the world and across sociology, leisure studies, politics and cultural studies to develop a new critical pedagogy and critical theory of events. It is the first research monograph that deals explicitly with the concept of critical event studies (CES), the idea that it is impossible to explore and understand events without understanding the wider social, cultural and political contexts. It addresses questions such as can the occupation and reclamation of specific spaces by activists be understood as events within its framework? And is the activity of activists in these spaces a leisure activity? If those, and other similar activities, can be read as events and leisure, what does admitting them into the scope of events management and leisure studies mean for our understanding of them and how the study of events management is to be conceptualised? This title will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students on events management and related courses and scholars interested in understanding the ways in which events are constructed by the social, the cultural and the political.

Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness examines the concept of liminality in the social sciences and humanities, and advocates for a more critical use of the concept while offering more precise alternatives. Originally conceived in response to the near-universal ritualization of changes of status (i.e., "rites of passage"), liminality was a welcome and much-needed correction to the reigning static and structural models of culture at the time. However, it soon escaped its initial realm and was enthusiastically—and mostly uncritically—absorbed by many if not all scholarly disciplines. The very success of the concept suggests that there is something about it that resonates with our own cultural sentiments. However, the assumptions that underlie diagnoses of liminality are seldom noted and even more seldom analyzed and critiqued. This book examines the history of the concept, its evolution, and its current status, and asks whether liminality accurately reflects lived realities which might better be described by fluidity, hybridity, multiplicity, constant motion and recombination, and abundant betweenness. Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness is key reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities interested in ritual, performance, identity formation, rights, ontology, and epistemology.

Innovative and the first of its kind, this informative and multidisciplinary book explores the socio-cultural significance inherent in event infrastructures. While mainstream event management literature addresses event infrastructures mainly through its operational relevance, this carefully compiled edited volume takes infrastructures as an analytical point in respect to its social, political, economic and cultural potential of the study of events. Borrowing from the ongoing social scientific debates on the geography, sociology and anthropology of infrastructures, critical questions are posed in relation to the event contexts. With references to events in Argentina, Malawi, Spain and the UK, among others, the volume combines an international perspective with a highly relevant subject for contemporary event management education. By bringing together theoretical as well as empirical readings on the question of event infrastructures from a critical point of view, the debates are relevant to practitioners and researchers as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of events, leisure, tourism, anthropology, sociology, geography and urban planning – among others.

Disruptive and creative research methodologies proposed in this book are designed to dismantle neoliberal narratives deployed in tourism studies and wider social sciences. Progressing criticality in tourism studies, this volume showcases cutting-edge contributions ranging from reflexivity, subjectivities, and dreams; to messy emotions in auto-ethnographic accounts of fieldwork; ‘motherhood capital’ accessing Inuit communities; collective memory work; ethnodrama and creative non-fiction, amongst others. Disruption and creativity are the two ideas around which tourism geographers challenge and begin dismantling hegemonic ideologies in tourism studies. The chapters in this book provide a vantage point from where to disrupt first, before tourism geographers can engender progress and transformation within and outside of the field. In tourism studies in general, and tourism geography in particular, the years of the 2000s have witnessed an emphasis on qualitative methodological research, both in terms of the topics addressed and the types of methodological tools. In many ways, this legitimisation of qualitative work mirrors developments in other areas such as human geography, sociology and anthropology, in which this book is anchored. The authors debate in more depth how tourism studies offer multidimensional, multilogical and multi-emotional approaches to research design. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Tourism Geographies.

Gendered Violence at International Festivals is a groundbreaking collection that focusses on this highly important social issue for the first time. Including a diverse range of interdisciplinary studies on the issue, the book contests the widely held notion that festivals are temporal spaces free from structural sexism, inequalities or gender power dynamics. Rather, they are spaces where these concerns are enhanced and enacted more freely and where the experiential environment is used as an excuse or as an opportunity to victim blame and shame. In this emerging and under-researched area, the chapters not only present original work in terms of topics but also in theoretical and methodological approaches. All of the chapters are cross- or interdisciplinary, drawing on gender, sexualities, cultural and ethnicity studies. Studies from a range of highly regarded academics based around the world examine the subject by looking at examples from a wide range of destinations, including Spain, Argentina, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Australia, Canada and the UK. This significant book progresses understanding and debates about gendered festival experiences and emphasises the symbolic and physical violence often associated with them. This will be of great interest to, undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics in the field of Events Studies. It will also be of use to practitioners or non-profit workers in the festival industries, including festival management organisations and planning committees.

This book examines the enactment of gendered in/equalities across diverse Cultural forms, turning to the insights produced through the specific modes of onto-epistemological enquiry of embodied performance. It builds on work from the GRACE (Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe) project and offers both theoretical and methodological analyses of an array of activities and artworks. The performative manifestations discussed include theatre, installations, social movements, mega-events, documentaries, and literary texts from multiple geopolitical locales. Engaging with the key concepts of re-enactment and relationality, the contributions explore the ways in which in/equalities are relationally re-produced in and through individual and collective bodies. This multi- and trans-disciplinary collection of essays creates fruitful dialogues within and beyond Performance Studies, sitting at the crossroads of ethnography, event studies, social movements, visual studies, critical discourse analysis, and contemporary approaches to textualities emerging from post-colonial and feminist studies.

This book examines the relationships between sport event hosting and community development goals. With sport events proliferating around the world, from major events to local events, the book explains how community goals can be embedded into sports event planning, and how events at all levels can be most effectively leveraged to achieve positive outcomes and legacies for local communities. Featuring real-world case studies and the perspective of industry practitioners in every chapter, the book explores the commercial, social, and political contexts in which events take place and what is meant by "legacy" and "impact." It introduces the key stakeholders, from residents and local government to NGOs, as well as the spectrum of goals that might be in play, and looks at partnerships working for the best effect. The book also explains the sports event management process, from bidding to planning to venue management to monitoring and evaluation, and considers how community development goals can, and should, be incorporated at every stage. With a practical focus, and full of useful features for learning and understanding, this is essential reading for any student or practitioner with an interest in sports events, community sport, sport development, event management, or sustainable business.

This volume is the first to draw together theoretical reflection, empirical research, and critical reflection on practice occurring at the juncture of critical approaches in leisure studies and event studies within diverse explorations of deviance. It includes chapters on games and gaming; performing queerness; events around being kinkster; drugs and sex, LGBTQ+ events and activism, and goth subculture. These are combined with poetry, personal reflection and artwork, much of which has been created by contributors. The compendium draws on inquiry undertaken by contributors from a wide spectrum of academic disciplines, as well as deviant leisure practitioners/event organisers. It seeks to expand the cultural and academic articulation of deviance into other disciplines and to develop new perspectives on deviant leisure and deviant leisure practice. It speaks to students, researchers, and practitioners working or interested in critical leisure and event studies, queer theory, cultural theory, burlesque/circus studies, media studies, and discourse studies.

An unprecedented exploration of the intersection of events and family studies, Family Events uses events as a lens through which to explore the concepts of families, family practices, family displays and family intimacies. Family Events explores the idea that how families come to be and, moreover, come to be defined as ‘families’ relies on events: whether that be via ‘family events’ – those which serve to celebrate being part of ‘my’ family – (e.g., birthdays, weddings, funerals), ‘events experienced as a family’ (e.g., a holiday or day trip) or ‘events which impact families’ (e.g., recession, war, global health emergency). Family Events brings together contributions from the social sciences, leisure and event studies which focus on a variety of different event contexts, including the life cycle, death and illness, sport, holidays, and community and religious festivals. Family Events offers a multitude of insightful perspectives on the intersection of events and family studies, and is a valuable resource for academics and students with a research interest in events, leisure and the family.