Events, Places and Societies

Events can be synonymous with a particular place, helping shape and promote a location. Given the rise of the global events industry, this book uncovers how events impact upon places and societies, looking at a range of different events and geographical scales. Geographers are concerned with how notions of space and place impact people, communities and identity, and events have played a central role in how places are perceived, consumed and even contested. This book will discuss international event cases to frame knowledge around the increased demands, pressures and complexities that globalisation, transnationalism, regeneration and competitiveness has put on events, places and societies. Integrating discussions of theory and practice, this book will explore the range of conceptual perspectives linked to how geographers and sociologists understand events and the role events play in contemporary times. This involves recognizing histories and planning strategies, the purpose of bidding for an event or the local meanings that have emerged and changed in the place. This helps us analyse how events have the potential to redefine place identities. This international edited collection will appeal to academics across disciplines such as geography, planning and sociology, as well as students on events management and events studies courses.

Nicholas Wise is a Senior Lecturer in Events and Tourism Management in the Faculty of Education, Health and Community at Liverpool John Moores University. His current research focuses on social regeneration linked to community change and local impacts in Southern and Eastern Europe. John Harris is Associate Dean Research in the Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland. He is Leisure and Events Subject Editor for the Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education (JoHLSTE).

Events, places and societies: introducing cases, perspectives and research directions. 1. Introduction to place. 2. Privilege on the Pearl: the politics of place and the 2016 UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Doha, Qatar. 3. Social impacts and implications of hosting festivals on the place and local community: the EXIT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia. 4. The spaces, places and landscapes of Brazil's Carnival: racialized geographies and multiscale perspectives of Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre. 5. Renewing Rijeka for 2020: managing placemaking, regeneration and community participation. 6. Cinematic sense of place: embodied celluloid spectres on the red carpet in Cannes. 7. Qingdao International Beer Festival: place identity and colonial heritage. 8. A taste of place: The Hokitika Wild Foods Festival in New Zealand. 9. Durban and the forfeiture of the 2022 Commonwealth Games: a bid won and lost by default. 10. Cultural sites of tension in the Iditarod of Alaska. 11. Reinventing and reimagining rural Wales: the case of the World Alternative Games. 12. Re-creating the clan: "brotherhood" and solidarity at the Masters World Championship Highland Games. 13. La Monoestrellada and the display of identity politics in Puerto Rico: cultural activism and placemaking in 78 pueblos y 1 bandera. 14. Follow the leather brick road: place, community and the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco and beyond. 15. Whose Europe?: representing place in the Ryder Cup. 16. Linking geographical and sociological interpretations: place, society and Diwali around the world. Conclusion: expanding (inter)disciplinary perspectives in research on events.Index