Sociology

Within this article, I focus on a number of productive scholarly avenues to which sociological analysis of London 2012 might want to attend. Understanding major sporting events – and thus the Olympic Games – as inextricably entangled with the media-industrial complex, I suggest London 2012 as a commodity spectacle that will emphasize gleaming aesthetics, a (sporting) city and nation collapsed into (simple) tourist images, and the presentation of a particular expression of self within the logics of the global market. In so doing, and by peeking behind the seductive, corporate-inspired veil of material and symbolic regeneration, image, strategy and legacy, we, as a field, can ask crucial questions about whose histories, whose representations and which peoples matter to, and for, the sporting spectacle.

There is a disconnection between the top-down, elite, nature of sports mega-events and the ostensible redistributive and participatory sustainable development agendas staked out by BINGOs (Business-based International Non-Governmental Organizations) such as the contemporary International Olympic Committee (IOC). Focusing specifically on the London 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, we argue that, for all the environmental technology advances offered by sports mega-events, their dominant model remains one of a hollowed-out form of sustainable development. Despite significant technical and methodological innovations in environmental stewardship, the development model of the London Olympics remains predicated on the satisfaction of transnational investment flows. We discuss what this means for claims about the staging of a ‘green’ Olympic Games.

This article is based on a cross-national qualitative study of homeless and street-involved youth living within Olympic host cities. Synthesizing a Lefebvrian spatial analysis with Debord’s concept of ‘the spectacle’, the article analyses the spatial experiences of homeless young people in Vancouver (host to the 2010 Winter Olympics) and draws some comparisons to London (host to the 2012 Summer Olympics). Tracing encounters with police, gentrification and Olympic infrastructure, the article assesses the experiences of homeless youth in light of claims made by Olympic proponents that the Games will ‘benefit the young’. By contrast, the authors argue that positive Olympic legacies for homeless and street-involved young people living within host cities are questionable.

Mega-events like the Olympic Games are widely regarded as key opportunities for cities to accelerate large-scale urban development projects through the construction of Olympic Villages. However, in the current global financial climate, these debt-financed urban renewal strategies are not without significant risk for both public and private partners. This article examines how, as a result of the 2008 economic crisis and a number of undisclosed local political commitments, Vancouver inherited the entire responsibility for the construction of the 2010 Winter Olympic Village. In turn, I raise some political questions about the democratic limitations of the entrepreneurial urban policy-making context and the disproportionate transfer of financial risk associated with these developments to the public sector. Finally, I draw parallels between the experiences of Vancouver and the relatively successful public-private partnership for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, and the recent government bailout of the Olympic Village development in London.

When cities host mega-events, such as the Olympic Games, these events change the context in which conventionally local political decisions are considered and made. This article follows Islamic movement Tablighi Jamaat’s proposed plans to build the large Abbey Mills Mosque in Newham, East London, and the controversy that followed. The analysis builds from media accounts, interviews with a leading mosque opponent, and ethnographic observation from religious gatherings at the Abbey Mills site. Taking a scalar politics approach, we investigate how the ‘mega’ scale of the mosque was framed and debated in media and opposition campaign accounts, and how Tablighi Jamaat belatedly responded with counterframes of its own. The ‘Olympics mega-mosque’ controversy would grow to encompass an increasingly broad public sphere and larger anxieties about national identity, government competence, and the integration of Muslims in Britain. We conclude with implications of the case for studying contentious politics, Islamophobia, and contemporary governance.

A paradox between commercialization and the authenticity of the Olympic Games has been identified in the established literature. We add to this discussion but with a specific emphasis on how this paradox is embodied by the athletes involved. We argue that the commercialization of the Games is inevitable in the contemporary media and corporate contexts, whereby the finances available from both are necessary to stage and promote the event. Within these contexts, we suggest it is also inevitable that Olympians become commodities that promote the brand of the Olympics. Representations of their heroism and their modelling of achievement culture provide an authentic credibility for the Games. Moreover, the Olympics add a distinctive dimension to this contemporary authenticity in their appeal to an ancient amateur heritage. We demonstrate, however, that amateurism is a creation of the modern Olympic Movement and is deployed to add another dimension to the general sporting authenticity that is currently invoked to manage the paradox of commercialization.

An important and mounting issue for the contemporary Olympic Movement is how to remain relevant to younger generations. Cognizant of the diminishing numbers of youth viewers, and the growing success of the X Games – the ‘Olympics’ of action sport – the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set about adding a selection of youth-oriented action sports into the Olympic programme. In this article we offer the first in-depth discussion of the cultural politics of action sports Olympic incorporation via case studies of windsurfing, snowboarding, and bicycle motocross (BMX). Adopting a post-subcultural theoretical approach, our analysis reveals that the incorporation process, and forms of (sub)cultural contestation, is in each case unique, based on a complex and shifting set of intra- and inter-politics between key agents, namely the IOC and associated sporting bodies, media conglomerates, and the action sport cultures and industries. In so doing, our article illustrates some of the complex power struggles involved in modernizing the Olympic Games in the 21st century.

This article examines South Korean media coverage of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and concerns the discourse around the unification of North and South Korea, with the emergence of a unitary nationalism as the main theme during this period. Unitary Korean nationalism was becoming a dominant form of discourse on inter-Korean relations and was evident in the South Korean media coverage of the Olympics. Despite this, there exists a gap between sporting nationalism and political nationalism. The mood of reconciliation between the two Koreas is less evident in politics than in sport due to the ongoing political tensions and conflicts in the Korean peninsula. Wider tensions evident in the period leading up to the London 2012 Olympic Games reinforce this conclusion.

Over the last two decades the Paralympic Games have gained a high public profile. As a result there has been an ever increasing commercial marketplace for aerodynamic and feather light racing (wheel)chairs as well as biomechanically and ergonomically responsive prostheses that have helped create a legion of cyborg bodies that is manifest in the image of the sporting supercrip. Mobility devices that enhance performance have also created a divide between different impairment groups and also amongst ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ nations. This article highlights the development of a technocentric ideology within the Paralympic Movement that has led to the cyborgification of some Paralympic bodies. It questions whether the advances in technology are actually empowering disabled athletes.

Olympic analyses typically depend heavily on perspectives built from macro processes characteristically rooted in political economy. Using survey data of city residents gathered at six different points in time during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, this article proposes a focus on what happens within the host city during the Games. While the Olympics were the centre of much debate and controversy before the Games, the data show that attitudes towards the Games became much more favorable thereby providing hard evidence that the Olympics had an experiential urban impact. Regression models revealed that attending free unticketed events and supporting the Liberal party in the last provincial election were the best predictors of positive attitudes towards the Games. It is concluded that the Olympics represent a form of public policy which generates responses related to socio-political factors while also being an interactional event transforming local attitudes towards the Games.

Considerations of Olympic Games’ legacies have focused on economic benefits, with little consideration given to the potential legacy from the substantial number of volunteers involved. This article examines the experiences of volunteers in a programme established as a legacy of the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Its results challenge the dominant social inclusion discourse in showing that volunteering provides social inclusion benefits beyond employability by enriching volunteers’ lives and empowering them to make new choices. Recognizing and valuing this would enable ‘social inclusion’ programmes promoting volunteering at major events, such as the 2012 Olympics, to broaden their objectives.