This rich collection of papers on fairs and festivals is a theoretical and empirical exploration of institutions that have thus far been largely ignored by social scientists. They are ignored because their economic role is generally seen as peripheral, and they are ignored because their internal processes, not to mention their relationship to the field in which they are situated, are variously classified as ‘field-configuring events’ (FCEs) (Lampel and Meyer, 2008), ‘tournaments of values’ (Moeran, 2010), ‘tournament rituals’ (Anand, Chapter 13; Anand and Watson, 2004) or ‘temporary clusters’ (Maskell et al., 2006; Bathelt, and Schuldt, 2008).

A natural response to this state of affairs would be to formulate a definition that stipulates what is meant by ‘fairs’ and ‘festivals’. But this, as the diversity of views in this book show, would be difficult, and would, in any case, divert attention from what is truly important about fairs and festivals: fairs and festivals are sites where social, economic and ideological processes, situated predominately in specialized contexts, interact openly and explicitly. In fairs and festivals the full range of economic, social and symbolic resources are in play; contexts where we can observe economic, social and symbolic resources being valued and converted into each other more directly than in other institutions such as markets or firms where this conversion is indirect or illegitimate.