Cultural events imply specific relationships to time and space. Methodologically speaking, we can't study them without taking into account the social and perceptive contexts of the forms of cultural life, as well as the practices that produce them. However, cultural events seem to be more and more disconnected from daily realities. The development of certain techniques, in the fields of information and communication, the triumph of the virtual worlds tend to deconstruct artificially the concrete contexts of cultural life and to replace them by an invented, imagined "hyper-reality".

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This paper aims at renewing studies on festive and leisure practices in the contemporary Western societies. In order to overcome the classical opposition marking a break between ordinary time and festive time, we first question the notions of event and leisure. The analysis of festive periods as an expression of specific conceptions of time and space has allowed us to link several characteristics and functions of contemporary festivals: closer to leisure, standardized and merchandised, it has remained a source of beliefs and empowerment. Fairs and festivals contribute to the construction of Personal identity, in offering the body a way of expression, wbile providing a territorial ideology, as well as trivialization and negation of places.

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