Description
Book SynopsisWhy do professionals keep attending face-to-face industry gatherings when digitization offers cheap, fast and time-saving technological solutions for professional interactions? This book sets out to explain such a phenomenon by analysing the reasons why professionals go to professional events, the role of events on individual careers and the way events can be instrumental in structuring emerging professions and (re)affirming stable, shared professional identities.
Showcasing original research on the role of events in the structuration of careers and professions, this book focuses on professional events as a lens to analyse the transformations of professional worlds. It highlights the explanatory effect of career stage on event participation and use and the way events craft sociability to strengthen professions and careers. Different economic sectors are explored including new business lines, such as transmedia, Fab Labs and TV show and globalizing sectors, such as, business representation, fine dining and international trade exhibitions. Mature economic sectors such as craft fairs, film festivals and the events sector itself are also analysed.
Providing an empirical and multidisciplinary approach to professional events and a diversity of case studies, this book will be an ideal read for sociologists interested in business, human resources and organization.
Trade Review‘Over hundreds of years fairs have signified festivities and a break with the ordinary, and they have long been a site for social interaction between professionals and lay-people. In this timely and excellent volume, the focus is on trade shows. We learn from the many sparkling chapters, capturing the varieties of themes and forms trade shows can take, just how important they are for professionals, individually and collectively. This highly relevant book addresses the more recent phenomenon of online events and what they bring, while simultaneously showing why physical events seem to be here to stay.’ -- Patrik Aspers, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
Table of ContentsContents: 1 Introduction: the role of professional events in structuring careers and professions 1 Sidonie Naulin and Anne-Sophie Béliard PART I THE EMERGENCE OF AN OCCUPATIONAL COMMUNITY 2 Festival sociability and professional careers: the role of TV festivals in structuring the series scriptwriting profession 21 Anne-Sophie Béliard 3 Fab City Summit: structuring makerspace collectives around event preparations 41 Flavie Genatio 4 Wedding business events: career tool and emerging market sustainability solution 60 Tatiana Rubtcova 5 Failing to configure? The life and death of Forum Blanc 81 Romain Gandia and Charles-Clemens Rüling PART II THE PERPETUATION OF AN OCCUPATIONAL COMMUNITY 6 From small craft fair to international interior design trade show: how Maison&Objet structured fine crafts in France (1949–2021) 104 Anne Jourdain 7 Place your bets, all bets are off! Film festivals as devices for the construction and management of uncertainty for distributors and arthouse cinemas 123 Olivier Zerbib 8 “Not working … networking!” Scripting and shaping conviviality in trade events 140 Victor Potier PART III THE TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF A PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY 9 International trade before globalization: the invention of international trade shows in France in the 1960s 158 Romain Lecler 10 B8, B7 and B20 summits as professional events: business as usual or new opportunities for business organizations? 179 Marieke Louis 11 The role of professional gatherings in the globalization of a professional space: the example of international food festivals 199 Sidonie Naulin 12 Afterword: Covid-19 and the digital quarantine of event-based sociabilities 217 Victor Potier Index
