<i>‘Vassilios Ziakas challenges practitioners and theorists to find new ideas and ways to make events more resilient and sustainable. He argues for holistic, cross-management thinking, and a major shift in emphasis from single, one-time and mega events to healthy portfolios of small events that contribute to placemaking within a chaordic, transdisciplinary frame. Such a profound rethink is timely and necessary.’</i>
- Donald Getz, The University of Calgary, Canada,
<i>‘Ziakas provides a radical and wide-ranging critique of events theory and practice. His style is strident, uncompromising and provocative. While many will take issue with aspects of his approach, his work demands attention and should be seen as a valuable contribution to moving the field forward.’</i>
- Rhodri Thomas, Leeds Beckett University UK,
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.