Description
This anthology is an attempt to make sense of conferences and trade fairs as phenomena in contemporary society. The authors describe how these large-scale professional gatherings have become key sites for making and negotiating both industries and individual professions. In fact, during the past few decades, conferences and trade fairs have become a significant global industry in their own right. The editors assert that large-scale professional gatherings are remarkable events that require deeper analysis and scholarly attention.
Table of Contents
1. Individuals and Industries: Large-Scale Professional Gatherings as Ethnographic Fields.- 2. Scheduled Schmoozing: Notes on Interludal Practices at Responsible Investors’ Conferences.- 3. White Corporate Feminine Spirituality: The Rise of Global Professional Women’s Conferences in the New Millennium.- 4. The Therapeutic Square: The Psychotherapy Fair from an Anthropological Perspective.- 5. Establishing the Complexity of Obesity: The Conference as a Site of Understanding Obesity as a Medical Condition.- 6. The Biennial of Dakar: Scales of Art Worlds-Networks.- 7. Beyond Informality: Intimacy and Commerce at the Caravanning Trade Fair.- 8. Traversing Trade Fairs and Fashion Weeks: On Dependence and Disavowal in the Indian Fashion Industry.
