Event Mobilities

Events from a mobilities perspective attend to moments in which individual networks coalesce in place but are not isolated in their performance as they often foster far-reaching and mobile networks of community. In so doing, individuals travel from varying distances to participate in localized performances. However, events themselves are also mobile, and events affect mobility. Mobile events serve as contexts that provide meanings and purpose articulated in relation to, and as, a series of other social actions. They further highlight the role of the body and embodied practices in the performance of events. Building on Sheller and Urry's (2004) seminal work Tourism Mobilities, the purpose of this book is to further develop event studies research within mobilities studies so as to challenge the limitations that dichotomous understandings of home/away, work/leisure, and host/guest play. Simply put, events are always already place-based and political in the sense that they can both inspire mobility as well as lead to various immobilities for different social groups. The title addresses everyday as well as extraordinary events, shining an empirical and theoretical lens onto the political, economic and social role of events in numerous geographic and cultural contexts. It stretches across academic disciplines and fields of study to illustrate the advantages of a mobilities multi-disciplinary conversation. This groundbreaking volume is the first to offer a conceptualization and theorization of event mobilities. It will serve as a valuable resource and reference for event, tourism and leisure studies students and scholars interested in exploring the ways the everyday and the extraordinary interlace.

Kevin Hannam, PhD is Professor of Tourism in the Business School at Edinburgh Napier University. Previously he was at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is co-editor of the Routledge journals Mobilities and Applied Mobilities. Mary Mostafanezhad, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Jillian Rickly, is an Assistant Professor in the Business School at the University of Nottingham.

1. Introduction: Towards an agenda for event mobilities research Kevin Hannam, Mary Mostafanezhad and Jillian Rickly-Boyd 2. All the way to Timbuktu: Mobilizing imaginaries in the globalized space of the festival in the Desert, Mali Angela Montague 3. Waltzing around the world: Musical mobilities and the aesthetics of adaptation Peter Peters 4. Framing identities and mobilities in heavy metal music festival events Karl Spracklen 5. Game of Thrones to game of sites/sights: Framing events through cinematic transformations in Northern Ireland Rodanthi Tzanelli 6. Making home 'Under the Big Top': Materialities of moving a small town every day and wintering in place Rebecca Sheehan 7. Time and space to run: The mobilities and immobiliites of road races Julie Cidell 8. Necromobility/choreomobility: Dance, death, and displacement in the Thai-Burma border-zone Tani Sebro 9. Mobility slogans: Rhetoric, movement, and #WeAreHere Lisa C. Braverman 10. Food sovereignty galas: Transnational activism for rich moral economies and poor livelihoods Elizabeth Louis 11. Food as a quixotic event: Producing Lebanese cuisine in London Ali Abdallah and Kevin Hannam 12. Afterword Chris Gibson