Events and Society: Bridging Theory and Practice

Events of all shapes and sizes play an important part in all of our lives. They are fun, frivolous, and often allow us to escape from our everyday lives – and they are also fascinating to study and examine in a more serious way, to understand what they mean and what they do for us – individually and collectively. Events in Society, therefore, explores the social impact and sociological implications of designing, planning, and delivering events – cultural events like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; sporting events like the Olympic and Paralympic Games and FIFA World Cup; to music festivals like Glastonbury.

Thirty carefully selected contributions feature, written by global experts in a short and succinct way that are easy to digest, covering a variety of disciplines, fields, contexts, and cases. Every chapter explores a critical issue or debate based on real-life events, and contextualises this within the key theoretical debates, managerial, and policy implications. Throughout, there are linkages to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, as well as interactive features to aid understanding and spur critical thinking, including learning objectives, quiz questions, and debate questions per chapter.

Some of the topics covered include:

• Uniting nations and people
• Personal experiences and transformations
• Social critique and explorations
• Activism
• Programming and representation
• Health, safety, and security
• Identity and gender
• LGBTQ+
• Environmentalism
• Displacement and exclusion
• Education and participation
• Community development
• Disability and accessibility

This innovative, topical, engaging, and comprehensive book is an essential reading and teaching resource for all students and lecturers in events that are easy to integrate into educational programmes.

Mike Duignan is a Professor at the Sorbonne, University of Paris 1, France, and the Director of Research, Intelligence, and Education at Trivandi, UK. Since 2021, Mike has been the Editor-in-Chief of the leading peer-reviewed journal for the study and analysis of events, Event Management Journal. Formerly, he was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, USA; the Director of the UK Olympic Studies Centre; and a Reader and Head of Department at the University of Surrey, UK.