ABSTRACT
Events have been addressed by academics from a range of subjects and disciplines. As chapters elsewhere in this handbook demonstrate, events are studied within the subjects of tourism, leisure and sport, and from the disciplinary perspectives of history, economics, geography, psychology, politics and management. To these lists we might also reasonably add culture and health, two areas which tend to be important ambitions of Olympic and Paralympic hosts (Weed et al. 2009; McCartney et al. 2010). Events have also stimulated a wide range of policy and strategy research, and also research on their impacts and how such impacts should be evaluated (Chalip 2004, 2006; Weed 2010). This provides a rich tapestry of subjects, disciplines, topics and issues for event researchers to draw on. However, this chapter will attempt to draw together the key higher-level themes across events research to move towards an interdisciplinary events research agenda. The boundaries of what Getz (2008) calls events studies are indistinct. Tom Lunt has discussed
event typologies in the previous chapter (Chapter 3). However, Getz (2005) suggests a list of events under eight categories which attempts to provide comprehensive coverage of the ‘planned events’ sector. Table 4.1 adds two higher-level dimensions1 to Getz’s (2005) list of event categories. Table 4.1 suggests that events might be considered public or private. Private events such as
weddings, parties and other private gatherings tend to be on a relatively small scale, with few broader policy implications, and as such they will not be part of the discussion in this chapter. Events may also involve discretionary engagement (i.e. participants or viewers may choose to engage with the events, either corporeally or virtually), or engagement may be required as a consequence of work, education or position. Because issues surrounding events with which engagement is required are largely concerned with the details of managing these events and, in some cases, their resulting media coverage, the focus of this chapter will be on public events with which engagement is discretionary, for which there is a much broader range of research issues. Therefore, throughout the remainder of this chapter, the use of the word ‘events’ is to refer to public events with which engagement is discretionary.
