Surveilling and Securing the Olympics

Beschreibung

Surveillance and security have historically served as means by which to cope with the complexities of the Olympics and the uncertainties these generate. Based on empirically grounded analysis of fifteen Olympics starting with Tokyo 1964 and through London 2012, contributed by leading international researchers, the book develops the notion of security meta-ritual. This is a meta-level of framing which enables the organization and communication of security as the adjustable sieve that uses surveillance to select what is permitted to enter the world of Olympic spectacle. In this way, it creates highly controlled conditions under which the Olympics can be performed as planned and without disruption.

This book analyses the relationship between the Olympic Games, with its ethos of openness and collectivism, and the security concerns and surveillance technologies that are becoming increasingly prevalent in the organisation of public events.

Autor*in

Vida Bajc

Themen in »Surveilling and Securing the Olympics«

Security Olympics mega-events sports sociology anthropology criminology London Beijing Vancouver Surveillance Athens Barcelona crime governance

Stimmen zu »Surveilling and Securing the Olympics«

“Bajc’s edited collection, Surveilling and Securing the Olympics, provides a series of critical insights into the complex relationships between sports organisations, the government and military arms of the state, business interests, the media, spectators and the general public. … this text offers much to an under-researched and under-theorised field of research that is rapidly gaining the attention of academics and policymakers alike.” (Neil King, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, Vol. 8 (4), 2016)

With an uncanny capacity for a transversal analysis of a familiar subject - the competition to get the Olympics - Vida Bajc has produced a volume that keeps surprising us. This is a great read, comic and tragic items included.' - Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, USA, and author of Expulsions

'Surveilling and Securing the Olympics is a creative and ambitious work that leads to surprising and somewhat alarming insights into today's world system. By selecting key moments in the development of technologies and practices utilized to secure the world's most complex mega-event, the Olympic Games, this book essentially tells the story of the last half century of world history from a thoroughly novel perspective… The Olympics demand new levels of cooperation between different layers of government, from the local levels of the host city government all the way up to international security coalitions… The most thought-provoking aspect of the argument is that at the core of this development is not the rationality that is claimed in public statements, but a kind of ritual that plays on the human desire to control uncertainty and produce predictability in social behavior. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of globalization by shedding light on a previously dark corner of the world system.' - Susan Brownell, Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA

'Starting from what might seem a minor issue - security - [this] book brilliantly uses it as a short-cut to get to the critical heart of the bureaucratic 'behemoth' called the Olympics. The Foucauldian strength of the book is to show how crucial surveillance and monitoring are to a hierarchy-building institution usually presented as ruled by a disembodied 'Olympic spirit', but in fact characterized by the management of three sorts of visibility: the visibility of spectacle, the visibility ofsurveillance, the visibility of monitoring.' - Daniel Dayan, Marcel Mauss Institute, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France

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