The quadrennial summer Olympic Games are renowned for producing the world's biggest single-city cultural event. This mega-event attracts a live audience of millions, a television audience of billions, and generates incredible scrutiny before, during, and after each installment. This is due to the fact that underpinning the 17 days of spectacular sporting events is approximately a decade worth of planning, preparing, and politicking. It is during this decade that prospective host cities must plan and win their bids before embarking upon seven years of urban upheaval and social transformation in order to stage the world's premier sporting event. This book draws on seven years of ethnographic inquiry around the London 2012 Olympics and contrasts the rhetoric and reality of mega-event delivery. Lindsay argues that in its current iteration the twin notions of beneficial Olympic legacies and Olympic delivery benefits for hosting communities are largely incompatible.

Complicates many commonly held and officially asserted notions of the effects of the Olympics on the host country and its people Focuses in on the 2012 Olympics while presenting rich ethnographic detail gathered over the course of seven years of preparation Offers a new approach to the study of the 2012 Olympics, one that takes an anthropological approach and examines the impact on the locals over the long term

Autorentext

Iain Lindsay is Visiting Lecturer in the School of Sport and Education at Brunel University, UK.

Inhalt

Preface
Prologue Introduction: In Pursuit of Olympic Gold

1. The New(Ham) World
2. The 2012 Transition: Process and Politics
3. Newham Divide and Document
4. Life in the Shadow of the Olympic Torch
5. Employment and Capital Gains
6. The Rings of Exclusion
7. Securitization: The Olympic Lockdown? 8. Big Game Hunting: Baiting the Hooks
8. Going for the Gold: The All-Consuming 2012 Ethos
9. Conclusion: Extinguishing the Olympic
   Epilogue