ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book attempts to introduce to events management the same kind of interdisciplinary, socio-cultural critical thinking that has transformed leisure studies. This is a polemical research monograph for critical thinkers, whether they are undergraduate and postgraduate students on events management and related courses, or scholars interested in understanding the ways in which events are constructed by the social, the cultural and the political. It is the first research monograph that deals explicitly with the concept of what we call critical event studies (CES) the idea that it is impossible to explore and understand events without understanding the wider social, cultural and political contexts of those events. The framework at the book's core, however, has developed little since its first articulation. Its approach is one that focuses on events as a neo-liberal economic driver and construes events as depoliticized.
