Although the academic study of events is a relatively young field it is currently going through an intense period of evolution and development. Critical approaches to the analysis and critique of events (Sometimes referred to as critical event studies, or CES) have emerged as part of a movement that seeks to radically reconceptualise event studies through seeking to examine and articulate the philosophical foundations of the field. Rather than locating it as simply the servant of an operationally dominated event management, it also champions strong ties with other areas of academic inquiry, such as cultural studies, leisure theory, the sociology of sport, media studies, political sociology, and philosophy (Moufakkir & Pernecky, 2014; Spracklen & Lamond, 2016). These developments are producing a growing interest in conceptual inquiry within event studies theory; drawing in academics from other fields of scholarship while encouraging event studies researchers to consider, ever more widely, how their work fits into a richer spectrum of the social sciences and humanities. Over the last five years the literature associated with these developments has grown significantly (e.g. Finkel, Sharp, & Sweeney, 2018; Lamond & Platt, 2016; Moufakkir & Pernecky, 2014; Pavoni, 2017; Roche, 2017; Walters & Jepson, 2019); however, there has, as yet, been no text within event studies, or CES, that has placed the concepts of liminality and the liminoid at the very centre of its work—this book addresses that gap.
Etymologically ‘liminality’ derives from the Latin Limen (singular) or Limina (plural), which referred to a threshold, a somewhat disruptive and disorientating state that marks a boundary between two phases of a ritual, which van Gennep (1960) recognised as central to our anthropological understanding of spiritual rites of passage: The pre-liminal (rites of separation), and the post liminal (rites of incorporation), where the individual is in a cultural/spiritual state of being betwixt and between one mode of being and another. It is, however, through Vitor Turner’s revisiting the concept (Turner, 1969) that it begins to become a key idea across a broader spectrum of social and cultural theory. In order to distinguish it from the associations liminal had with van Gennep’s more religiously based threshold experiences, Turner (1974) proposed the term Liminoid. But, even in these foundational studies, liminality was understood as reaching beyond the sociocultural and psycho-affective boundaries in which it can be described. Spatial elements have also always had a significant place in understanding liminal/liminoid processes.
Liminoid, spaces (Lie, 2003), rituals (Thomassen, 2009), landscapes (Tufi, 2017), and experience (Szakolczai, 2015) provide us with insight into how to grasp the way the threshold and the passage form an intrinsic part of society, where play, flow, and ritual become secularly entwined as ‘…settings in which new symbols, models, and paradigms arise’ (Turner, 1974, p. 60), where ‘…the liminoid can be an independent domain of creative activity’ (ibid., p. 65). The application of these ideas to event studies theory, however, has only recently begun to surface. Patterson and Getz (2013) apply Turner’s construal of the liminal and liminoid in their discussion of the interconnectivity of leisure and event studies when they consider the production of liminal zones at events, and how liminal states are induced in event participants. ‘The liminoid’, they suggest, ‘…is associated with fun, revelry, and entertainment that occurs in a variety of leisure and event settings’ (p. 234), whereas Ziakas and Boukas (2014) argue that the paucity of research that considers liminality and the liminoid in events management is symptomatic of a neglect of the ‘…experiential, existential and ontological dimensions of events’ (p. 57) emergent from a lack of consideration of the role phenomenology can play in our understanding of events. ‘(T)he celebratory nature of events’, they claim ‘…can engender a liminal/liminoid space/time where people feel more comfortable, uninhibited and open to new ideas…(which) enables a sense of social bonding and camaraderie, suspending normal rules and social boundaries’ (p. 59). This connection, between revelry (Patterson & Getz, 2013) and inhibition (Ziakas & Boukas, 2014), is echoed in the association of liminality and the carnivalesque that appears in the discussion of festival space in Pielichaty (2015), the heterotopic articulation of festival and event tourism spaces (such as Tufi’s analysis of Venice), and Torres, Moreira, and Lopes’s (2018) recent consideration of why people participate in mass crowd events. Tropes resonate strongly with Foucauldian ideas of spaces of otherness (Foucault, 1986) and the spatial theories of Lefebvre. His construal of theatrical space as a space of performativity draws together the other elements of his tripartite fields of the production of space (le perçu; le conçu, le vécu), while his description of Venice ‘…where water and stone create a texture founded on reciprocal reflection [where]…everyday life and its functions are coextensive with, and utterly transformed by, a theatricality’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 74) almost frames that city as a space of pure liminality. These discussions represent part of an emerging voice within event studies, one that offers a very different pathway from the functional and commodified colonisation of ‘experience’ and ‘memory’ derived from applications of Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) analysis of the experience economy. One that encourages a deeper understanding and critical evaluation of the role of experience within events research. But what does CES add to this development?
One of the central characteristics of CES is the problematisation of the referent event within event studies, arguing that all events are fundamentally contested and best understood from a perspective of multiplicity, and an outpouring of multiplicity within that multiplicity (which Badiou, 2008 [1992], might refer to as the evental). One of the primary foci of the CES project has been a consideration of the heterotopic and discourse, in a Foucauldian (2003) sense; however, recent work by the editors (Lamond, 2018; Moss, 2016) has drawn on the importance of space and time in CES research, embracing what Heidegger (2012) would refer to as Erfahrung (the feeling of experience) and Ereignis (event as rupture). This moves the focus of research associated with event management and event studies to allow for deeper discussions around power, authenticity, considerations of manipulation and exploitations, and the possibility of resistance.
Through drawing together, in a single volume, a body of research and reflection that concentrates its attention on the liminal/liminoid from within a CES perspective, we can address the growing interest in Turner’s work within event studies, while encouraging new thought and theory generation within the field. The contributions made in this book enrich the body of knowledge within event studies while also facilitating stronger links to other disciplines, progressing event studies/CES as a truly interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary field.
This edited collection brings together academics from around the world who are researching events from a multi-disciplinary perspective; placing their work within the context of Victor Turner’s (1969, 1979) theories of Ritual, Flow, Liminality, and Performance. Our objective, through the breadth and diversity of their inquiry and reflection, is to conceptually explore the relationship between the scholarly study of events and Turner’s conceptual framework, while not avoiding a prescription of application. The scope of this book is to provide an inclusive approach to a topic that is both wide-ranging and far-reaching.
Structurally the book is split into three parts. Given both editors’ interest music, and our shared sense of how music can articulate a liminal state, we have given each part a title that alludes to the theme of the chapters it contains through a musical reference. The first, Overtures, is composed of two chapters; one documents a conversation between the two editors and explores our own journey into a liminal realm where we discuss our own evolving and shifting connection to the relationship between liminality and event studies. Our diverse research interests in events, Jonathan’s are mainly in music and festivals, while Ian’s are in dissent and the media representation of protest events, go on to form the umbrella themes for the other parts of the book. The purpose of the other chapter, written by Peter Vlachos, is to review and assess the ways in which the concept of ‘liminality’ informs and relates to the study and teaching of events management within higher education. First, he conceptually reflects on the aesthetic and subjective aspects of the events experience. Tensions are unpacked between the intrinsic, sensual, and at times even Bacchanalian experience of events such as social phenomena, and the instrumental, rational management of them. The analysis is underpinned by Turner’s (1974) notion of liminal time and liminoid spaces, theories of subjective place experience (Lefebvre, 2004; Tuan, 1977), and Debord’s (1999) idea of psychogeographic flow. Second, he argues that the localisation of event studies, particularly those in business faculties within higher education institutions, has resulted in an over-emphasis on managerial functions at the expense of the more creative and subjective elements relevant to liminality. An indicative historical survey of academic textbooks is employed, using an analysis underpinned by Foucault’s theories on the archaeology of knowledge, to illustrate the evolution of ‘events management’ as the prevailing disciplinary frame within the dominant discourse of the ‘experience economy’ (Pine & Gilmore, 1998, 1999). Teaching and research on the aesthetic and design elements of live events has thus either been abandoned to art and design faculties (who themselves have shown little interest in expanding into the events discipline), treated as a self-teachable, or easily out-sourced elements, despite their centrality to the liminal power of the event. The chapter concludes with a call for a more unified, multi-disciplinary, and subjectivist approach to the field of event studies.
Each of the remaining sections begins with a short introduction that sets out the context of its focus and introduces the reader to several themes that cut across the chapters they contain. Where possible we have attempted to begin with a chapter that can, to a varying extent, act as a link between one section of the book, and the next.
The second part of the book, Oratorios, addresses the liminal and liminoid in culture and cultural and sports events. We felt Oratorios gave the section a sense gravitas with which such events would resonate. There are seven chapters in this section. In Liminality and Event Design, Ashley Garlick and Nazi Ali suggest that while it has been argued that ritual has been sacrificed to give way to modern event management techniques that prioritise economic viability and stakeh...