Towards a sociological analysis of london 2012

Authors: Silk, M.

Journal: Sociology

Volume: 45

Issue: 5

Pages: 733-748

ISSN: 0038-0385

DOI: 10.1177/0038038511413422

Abstract:

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. © The Author(s) 2011.

Source: Scopus

Preferred by: Michael Silk