Events and Infrastructures

Innovative and the first of its kind, this informative and multidisciplinary book explores the socio-cultural significance inherent in event infrastructures.

Barbara Grabher works as Lecturer in Event Studies at the University of Brighton, UK. As a trained anthropologist with a specialisation in gender studies, she researches event-based regeneration processes through a lens of critical event studies. Combining perspectives of event, gender and urban studies, she published the monograph Doing Gender in Events: Feminist Perspectives on Critical Event Studies (Routledge) in 2022. In her current project Between Culture and Salt, she considers the notion of the Anthropocene and its conceptual and empirical potential for the field of event studies in regards to the case study of Bad Ischl-Salzkammergut European Capital of Culture 2024. Ian R. Lamond is Senior Lecturer in Events at Leeds Beckett University (UK) in the UK Centre for Event Management (UKCEM). Ian's academic background is in philosophy, particular social and cultural theory, and contemporary European thought. His interests include the conceptual foundations of event studies, protest events, end-of-life events and events associated with deviant leisure. He is the co-author and co-editor of several books in the broad field of critical event studies.

1. Introduction: Lost in Infrastructure. Part 1. Infrastructuring Space. 2. Revisiting the Spatial Relationships Between Mega-Events and Host Cities. 3. Interrogating Event-Induced but Underused Infrastructures: The White Elephants of Spanish Mega-Events Linked to the Neoliberal Urbanism of Recent Decades. 4. The 'Circus' is Coming to Town... Literally. Contestation and Conflict Around Formula 1 Street Circuits. 5. Culture, Cognition, Events, and Infrastructures. Part 2. Event Infrastructures as Expressions of in/Equality. 6. Exclusive Expectations: Examining the VIP Experience at UK Music Events. 7. Infrastructuring an Event. FemIT Conf 2021: Diversity and Technology in Argentina. 8. Transforming Attitudes through Strategic Infrastructuring: The Tumaini Festival in Malawi's Dzaleka Refugee Camp. 9. The Genesis of a Shared World Through Event Infrastructure: A Phenomenological Investigation of Communitarisation in Shared and Extraordinary Experiences. Part 3. Events as Infrastructure. 10. An Analysis of Multicultural Trends Underlying the Maltese Festa in a Digital Era. 11. Events as Infrastructure and Learning Experiences: Exemplified on an Alpine Peripheral Living Lab in Rural Switzerland. 12. Events as Soft Infrastructure for Urban Development? Learning from the Italian Capital of Culture Initiative. 13. Beyond Control: Critical Reflections on Infrastructure and Events. 14. Last words? - Unconclusive remarks.