Protests as Events

Politics, Activism and Leisure

Karl Spracklen editor Ian R Lamond editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Rowman & Littlefield International

Published:5th Nov '14

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

Protests as Events cover

Can activism be considered a leisure activity? Can the Occupy movement, local campaigns for change and lone acts of personal resistance be understood as events? Within the field of Events Management the content of events is generally analyzed within three categories—culture, sport or business. Such a typology can be helpful as a heuristic for interpretation and analysis within a commercial paradigm. However, this framework overlooks and depoliticizes a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest. Protests as Events is the first book to explore activism as a leisure activity and protests as events; using a fresh interpretation of event to develop a new critical politics of events and leisure. Bringing together a range of cutting edge research from around the world, it explores a variety of protests through the lens of events studies and leisure in order to understand how the study of events management might be conceptualized in the protest space.

This Protest as Events book comes at a timely juncture in the evolution of the event management field. Until now this field has been dominated by a concern with the operational and logisitical but this book marks a shift in emphasis towards shaping a distinctly critical event studies where the very notion of what an event represents is open to critique. Formal political protests, everyday opposition to issues of social importance and online dissent are all covered in the this text. Furthermore its call to researchers to be explicit about their political and ethical commitments lays the foundation for a radical new way of seeing and understanding events. -- David McGillivray, Chair of Event and Digital Cultures, University of the West of Scotland
This volume is a much needed and timely addition to the emerging literature on critical events studies. The book responds to fundamental epistemological questions around what constitutes an event and how, as researchers and students, we must challenge neoliberal-centric narratives of them. From raves to Occupy movements this book presents a diverse collection which will kick-start those debates. The volume highlights the trans-disciplinary nature of events studies and has the potential to develop thought-provoking and radical avenues for events management education and research. -- Louise Platt, Senior Lecturer in Tourism and Events Management, Liverpool John Moore's University

ISBN: 9781783480760

Dimensions: 232mm x 161mm x 24mm

Weight: 513g

276 pages