Rethinking Events

This invigorating read explores the inherent unsustainability of events, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Vassilios Ziakas challenges the dominant paradigms of the field, suggesting the need to seriously rethink how we view, study and manage events in order to develop holistic event management frameworks which foster their adaptability and resilience. Treating events as complex ecosystems, Ziakas constructs a transdisciplinary explanatory framework to provide an integrative outlook for treating events and develop a comprehensive analytic for their study. Merging the contextual, policy, operational and sociocultural grounds of event portfolios, the book sheds light on how events operate as social systems interlinked with community networks. Chapters introduce cross-management as a holistic approach enabling inter-industry operational practices to move away from the current fragmented outlook across events theory and practice. Incisive and visionary, this book will be a thought-provoking read for students, researchers and practitioners in event management, tourism, leisure studies, sport management and cultural studies.