Critical Event Studies

Karl Spracklen, Ian R. Lamond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317427032
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Within events management, events are commonly categorised within two axes, size and content. Along the size axis events range between the small scale and local, through major events, which garner greater media interest, to internationally significant hallmark and mega events such as the Edinburgh Festival and the Tour de France. Content is frequently divided into three forms – culture, sport or business. However, such frameworks overlook and depoliticise a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest.This book brings together new research and theories from around the world and across sociology, leisure studies, politics and cultural studies to develop a new critical pedagogy and critical theory of events. It is the first research monograph that deals explicitly with the concept of critical event studies (CES), the idea that it is impossible to explore and understand events without understanding the wider social, cultural and political contexts. It addresses questions such as can the occupation and reclamation of specific spaces by activists be understood as events within its framework? And is the activity of activists in these spaces a leisure activity? If those, and other similar activities, can be read as events and leisure, what does admitting them into the scope of events management and leisure studies mean for our understanding of them and how the study of events management is to be conceptualised?This title will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students on events management and related courses and scholars interested in understanding the ways in which events are constructed by the social, the cultural and the political.

1 Critical event studies

Theories and practices

Introduction

In order to begin studying events critically we need to address two central concerns, neither of which has, to date, been given much detailed thought within the events management literature. They are as follows: to what does ‘event’ refer to; and what constitutes the context in which the event, under such a construal, occurs? These questions are not separate concerns: the second rests very definitely on how you understand the first. While these two concerns may seem relatively simplistic, a thorough reflection on them, on the theories that support them and on the practices such theories enable us to articulate opens up the study of events beyond the boundaries in which it currently operates. Of the two, the first is somewhat easier to handle: it is principally a definitional issue, and one to which we will now attend.

Etymologically the word ‘event’ derives from the Latin eventus, which directly translates as ‘to happen’ or ‘the occurrence of an incident’ (Cunliffe, n.d.). Within the events management sector Getz’s definition is commonly assumed: ‘An organised occasion such as a meeting, convention, exhibition, special event, gala dinner, etc…. often composed of several different yet related functions’ (Getz, 2005: 16). As is frequently the case, the devil in the detail here is the well-trodden villain ‘et cetera’. In Event Studies: Theory, Research and Policy for Planned Events (Getz, 2012), he develops the idea further, refining it to refer to, using his terminology, ‘planned events’. However, the transition from event to planned event is significant as it fills in some of the assumptions behind the initial ‘etc.’. Where event as organized happening only touches context lightly, a planned event is something much more robustly associated with a context. It suggests it is a response to a perceived situation while carrying with it a set of objectives as identifiable outcomes. Getz seems to locate the study of events as first at the heart of, and wholly within, events management, which itself is a key field within tourism management. This locates the construction of event, and the concomitant construal of events management, as predominantly driven by a commercial frame of reference. Such a frame of reference is found throughout the events literature, the vast majority of which focuses on factors that locate events in a paradigm that is either directly connected to, or influenced by, contemporary capitalism, particularly the variant that is more commonly referred to as neo-liberalism.

A critical approach to the study of event needs to begin by problematizing this frame of reference. At its most basic level we define event as ‘that which intervenes the mundane’. We understand that such interventions will be contested by some of those impacted by them, and that they are never simple, surgical-like incisions; if anything, they are more like ragged lacerations with consequences far beyond those of the location of the wound. Being clear on context and its relationship to event is thus central to a richer understanding of what CES is. The remainder of this chapter concerns our second issue. It will consider the theories and practices relevant to understanding the context within which our construal of event occurs. In order to do that we need to begin by considering the current frame of reference that dominates the study and analysis of events.

To begin, let us give some consideration to the context that lies behind the prevailing view of event within the events management/event studies literature. Neo-liberalism, it could be argued, is a rather overused term that is not always thought through as a set of ideas. It is often paraded before the reader, who is expected to nod sagely, without establishing if he or she has really grasped what it means. The sense of it that is used in this chapter is close to Jim McGuigan’s (2006, 2009a) notion of ‘cool capitalism’. This is the capacity for the current incarnation of capitalism to absorb disaffection with it into itself. A central aspect of this is its ability to frame identity and human relationships (even those ostensibly reacting against it) through the reification of identity as consumer and brand, normalizing relationships within and between those two elements through a discourse of the market place.

Events have become almost the archetypical cool capitalist product. They are now one of the major currencies through which nations and global businesses seek a competitive advantage by attempting to distinguish themselves from one another (Kavaratzis et al., 2014). Events have become the lingua franca through which an enormous range of people and organizations, from politicians to corporate CEOs, the ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2012) to the current darlings of the mass media, as well as provincial dignitaries and lowly local hopefuls, attempt (with varying degrees of success), through the production of and participation in events, to communicate, shape and frame the world around them.

In order to get to grips with the context in which such an interpretation of event can be articulated we need to have a thorough grasp of some key concepts in social and cultural theory, using those ideas as a foundation upon which to review the different kinds of practice that are implied by them. As such, this chapter acts as a point of return for much of the discussion you will find throughout the book. Theories and concepts sketched here will be echoed in the subsequent chapters, where they will be developed and interrogated further, applied to various examples and case studies, enabling you to understand better what it means to adopt a critical attitude to the study and analysis of events.

The remainder of this chapter will be divided into four sections. In the first Habermas’s work will be assessed, in particular his conception of the public sphere and the lifeworld (lebenswelt). A reflection on those notions, and their associated ideas, will enable us to understand better how events can be used to distort communication. The idea that events can be understood as a form of social and cultural capital that has the potential to distort human relationships leads us to consider the role of dominating hegemonic forces. The second section will thus concentrate on developing Bourdieu’s conceptualization of social and cultural capital and Gramsci’s formulation of hegemony. Those ideas, however, present us with a challenge as they seem to diminish the liberatory potentialities of events even further. In the third section that concern is interrogated more deeply through a discussion of Foucauldian concepts of discourse, regimes of truth and biopolitics, and Debord’s notion of the spectacle. While offering us some insight, those theories are found to provide an ambiguous response to the concerns raised in our deliberation on Gramsci and Bourdieu. Nevertheless, they lead us on to the final section. There we ask if some route through those issues can be found in Žižek’s construal of ‘event’ and Bauman’s formulation of liquid modernity. In so doing we are drawn to a refreshed perspective on the public sphere and communicative rationality.

In the conclusion, we argue that, despite its twists and turns, our odyssey has been important in itself, and not just for its eventual homecoming. The path we have followed reinforces our commitment to the view that a critical approach to the study of events is not only important for those engaged in event studies and events management research, but of real value to the social sciences as a whole.

The public sphere and the lifeworld

At its core, the work of Jürgen Habermas is an attempt to theorize, and robustly ground, what is required to establish a good society (Habermas, 1987). In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas, 1992a), Habermas lays the groundwork for much of his later work. In it he suggests that the public sphere was a space where individuals met to discuss, challenge and develop alternatives as a response to the societal problems they perceived around them. It was the forum and space through which power could be held accountable and political authority could be confronted. In that regard it was very much an Enlightenment-like project, where the acts of reason could be victorious, and Habermas alludes to the historical role of the coffee shops and intellectual life of earlier times (Habermas, 1992b). However, the past tense is significant – as will become clear.

Habermas suggests that there needs to be a level of communicative rationality if the public sphere is to exert such an authority (ibid.). This differs from the more common construal of rationality, which locates reason in a rigorous system of deduction, rooted in an objective world of facts (Wittgenstein, 1973), independent of human norms, actions and values. Habermas suggests that rationality is intrinsically normative. It is not a process that leads to successful communication; rather, it is, to a significant extent, constituted through those self-same human norms, actions and values that establish what it is to communicate successfully (Habermas, 1997). In order to achieve that, there must be a universal pragmatics of meaning. If we are unable to share meaning at a real and practical level, so that any discussion involves participants having a common expectation of what fits and what does not fit with the issue being addressed, then the topic cannot be substantively considered. Consequently, no body, individual or group can be held accountable, and communication breaks down. Successful communication becomes impossible. Communicative rationality is possible within the public sphere only if we can be assured of a universal pragmatics of meaning.

However, such a universal pragmatics is not, itself, without foundation. In order for meaning to have the capacity of being shared, there must be a substantial and coherent level of shared experience. Drawing on the concept of the lifeworld, developed by the founder of phenomenology – Edmund Husserl (1999) – Habermas proposes that the lebenswelt exists as that background environment of practices, competences and capabilities that constitutes our daily life. As we will discuss later, that background forms key elements of what Bourdieu (1984) describes as the social and cultural capital we carry with us.

To take stock, then: it is through shared experience (lebenswelt) that we are able to communicate through a universal pragmatics. That universal pragmatics secures the possibility of communicative rationality, which in turn means that discussion within the public sphere can successfully articulate bodies (individual and group) as accountable for their actions. Thereby, those bodies can be challenged, alternatives can be generated, political power can be exerted, and we have a good society. There is, however, a problem. For Habermas, the public sphere has been undermined through the growth of mass media; particularly a mass media dominated by advertising and public relations. He believes those forces have distorted communication to such an extent that we have become passive consumers rather than a critical public.

The mass circulation of narratives has resulted in a fragmentation of the lebenswelt, undermining universal pragmatics, which, in turn, has distorted (or, in Habermas’s terminology, ‘colonized’) communicative rationality. In its place we are now in a world of instrumentality, where meaning is meaning for a pre-prescribed purpose and those purposes are multiple. In order to manage the complexity emergent from such a diverse instrumentality the former communicative rationality has been replaced with a technical one. This rationality brings with it regimes of authority and power, reframing the horizon of the background competencies and practices that form the fabric of the lebenswelt itself. Capitalism is one such technical rationality; it mediates communication through its own system of rules, legitimizing certain forms of reason over others, formulating modes of interaction to such an extent that it becomes naturalized to the point of becoming mundane.

How does this relate to the study of events? At one level, events can be seen as sites where the lebenswelt is fragmented, forming their own pragmatics of meaning appropriate to the event itself. This fragmentation produces its own public sphere, generating communicative relationships, criteria of rationality, norms of behaviour, rules of interaction and so forth. This is most clearly discernible in sports events and other areas where fandom is a key component of the event. The phenomenon of cosplay, where fans dress as characters from their favourite films, TV series, comics or video games, which is common to many fan-based events, is just one of the many ways in which these communicative relationships may be observed in their articulation. Of course, cosplay is also prevalent at sports events, where supporters of a team wear replica strips of their favourite players. Such fragmentation has an impact by distracting meaningful debate away from wider societal issues through the generation of more minor concerns – a bread and circuses (Debord, 1977) argument. Moreover, the management of a fragment, through the management of the events associated with it, has the potential to steer those communicative relationships. Such manipulation reverses the role the public sphere once had in challenging power, developing alternatives and showing how others are accountable for their actions. Those managing the event now establish the rules of rationality, setting the horizon within which communication becomes possible.

Nation-states’ battles to host large, global-audience events, together with the lesser conflicts between global brands and businesses to secure sponsor/partnership relationships with the organizing bodies of such events, indicates the significance they now possess. The impact of coordinating such relationships – as it were, the technical rationality of the event – can have significant repercussions for those doing the coordination (witness the allegations of corruption in FIFA; see, for example, Jennings, 2015), other associated organizations (as, for example, in the case of the International Olympic Committee awarding the Discovery Channel global rights to broadcast the >Olympic Games from 2022 onwards; see Gibson, 2015), and individual participants/supporters.

Events are social and cultural capital; they have become a key component of how the lebenswelt is colonized and steered. In order to progress we need to have a clear understanding of what is meant by ‘cultural and social capital’ and why, particularly (though not exclusively) in capitalist societies, it is steered in the way it is. To do that, we need to consider some of the ideas of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and the political theorist Antonio Gramsci.

Habitus and hegemony

Whereas Habermas places communicative relationships at the centre of the social world, Bourdieu (1984) sees the body and practices in the social world in which it engages. As such, Bourdieu’s theory acts as a counter to theories that suggest human behaviour and interaction are products of rational choices made by actors. In place of such rational choice approaches, Bourdieu argues that the social world is split into different, socially structured spaces that support (although not always consciously) their own means of production and reproduction through systems of domination. He calls such spaces ‘fields’ (Bourdieu, 2011 [1986])). Actors within those fields do not engage in an ongoing process of calculation to determine the most rational course of action; instead, they exhibit a set of cognitive and bodily dispositions (or, using his terminology, a habitus) that present their orientation to the field in which they participate. The habitus of an actor, or group of actors, is an implicit, practical logic that encompasses modes of legitimation, schemes of perception, ways of thinking and acting (Bourdieu, 1992). It blurs the boundary between subjective and objective by focusing on the body and its practices. An actor’s location within a field becomes embodied in a deep and pre-reflexive way: it is a ‘feel’ for the game in which the actor is acting, to the extent that it assumes the place of the mundane, the unquestioned natural order. To some extent, the idea of field is consistent with that of lebenswelt, as the background environment of competencies and practices (Habermas, 1987); the field also resonates with the ideas of form of life and language game found in Wittgenstein’s (1951) later work. However, Bourdieu moves beyond the limits of those concepts to an analysis of the forces at work within the field.

For Bourdieu, the dynamics of the field are manifestations of the struggle of the actors within it to occupy a dominant position. That struggle concentrates on the control of capital within the field (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). With his collaborator Wacquant, Bourdieu identified three forms of capital which, they argue, are the centres of the competition for dominance within and between fields. They refer to those forms as: economic capital; cultural capital; and social capital. Before we proceed, it is worth outlining how Bourdieu and Wacquant use those terms.

Economic capital is used in a sense that is consistent with much main-stream economic theory; it is that in which an investment is made in order to generate an income. In classical economics it was principally used to suggest the equipment a business would purchase in order to produce its goods or services. In more recent economic thinking, particularly that of Gary Becker (1964) and the Chicago School – which Foucault (2008) calls ordoliberalist – the concept has been extended to encompass other classical factors of production, specifically land (material resources) and labour.

For Bourdieu and Wacquant (2002), cultural capital refers to any asset that can be used to mobilize cultural authority. As such, it can encompass skill sets, recognized competencies and capacities, as well as less tangible indicators of authority and responsibility within a field or set of interactions. How social actors actively engage and deploy their cultural capital, through the symbolic systems of their practices, becomes an essential element in the sustainability and reproduction of a field’s structures of domination and the articulation of its own legitimacy.

Social capital covers those additional resources that accrue from the existence of a stable network of actors. These are held together by a more or less conscious awareness of internally institutionalized relationships of acquaintance, while also embracing a recognition of the actor’s location and role within the network (ibid.).

The interplay between those three forms of capital forms the symbolic systems of the actors within a field. Symbolic violence is the means by which one group of actors can, consciously or not, impose their symbolic system as that which is dominant within a field (Bourdieu, 1992). In so doing the actual arbitrary nature of the social order is overlooked, ignored or assumed as having a deeper connection, one that is construed as the natural order – and thus mundane. This is very similar to Gramsci’s conceptualization of hegemony.

Gramsci was arrested for anti-state activity in Mussolini’s Italy on 8 November 1926 (Fiori, 1990). While in prison he extended and developed his thinking about how capitalism sustains itself in a series of notebooks. In these, the concept of hegemony emerges as the means by which capitalism is able establish and maintain control. Gramsci argues that, unlike the systems of the past, which sought dominance through the application of violence and coercive intimidation, the bourgeoisie sustains its position of power through its dominance over the language of culture. In so doing its world view becomes embedded and proliferates. Its normative frame of reference ceases to be simply its own to become embraced as common sense, and as such the values of the middle classes assume the role of the values of everyone. In so doing capitalism becomes incontestable and reproducible, and the status quo is maintained (Gramsci, 1973). This seems a rather bleak concept: in a dominant hegemony the oppressed are fatalistically trapped in a world where their actions serve only to perpetuate their own oppression. We seem to have returned to the bread and circuses we encountered when discussing the colonization of the lebenswelt in Habermas’s theories.

Gramsci, however, suggests a possible escape. If capitalism has become hegemonically dominant by controlling the language of culture, then the working class should develop its own counter-culture. In an argument that was later echoed in the pedagogic ideas of Paulo Freire (1970) and Augusto Boal (1998), Grams...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Critical event studies: theories and practices
• 2 Events and contested space (real and virtual)
• 3 Event mediatization
• 4 Events and power
• 5 Events and memory
• 6 Commodification of events
• 7 Protests as events
• 8 The colonization of event discourse
• 9 Resilience and events
• 10 Events and misrule
• 11 Can there be an emancipatory event studies?
• 12 Events histories and narratives
• 13 Conclusion
• References
• Index