The Contemporary Olympic Games — Commercial Juggernaut or the Price of Progress?

  • Stephen Wagg
Chapter
Part of the Global Culture and Sport Series book series (GCS)

Abstract

When I mentioned to her, in the summer of 2014, that I was planning to write a book about the politics of the London Olympics of 2012, my daughter, worldly-wise and in her later 30s, told me to be careful: these Games were, after all, very popular — no sense, therefore, in my making myself some kind of pariah by criticising them in print. This (perfectly sound) piece of advice prompts a number of important prefatory comments.

Keywords

Civil Liberty Olympic Game Gold Medal Daily Mail Public Opposition 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

  1. 1.
    James Lee Burke, In the Moon of Red Ponies (London: Phoenix, 2005), p. 172.Google Scholar
  2. 4.
    See Rick Gruneau, ‘Commercialism and the modern Olympics’, in Alan Tomlinson and Garry Whannel (eds.), Five Ring Circus: Money, Power and Politics at the Olympic Games (London: Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 1–15, p. 2.Google Scholar
  3. 5.
    Rick Gruneau and Robert Neubauer, ‘A gold medal for the market: the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the Reagan era and the politics of neoliberalism’, in Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and Stephen Wagg (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 134–162.Google Scholar
  4. 7.
    See Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000).Google Scholar
  5. 8.
    John Hargreaves, Freedom for Catalonia? Catalan Nationalism, Spanish Identity and the Barcelona Olympic Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. 10.
    Charles Rutheiser, Imagineering Atlanta: The Politics of Places in the City of Dreams (London: Verso, 1996), p. 282.Google Scholar
  7. 13.
    Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000).Google Scholar
  8. 14.
    Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, The Best Olympics Ever? Social Impacts of Sydney 2000(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).Google Scholar
  9. 15.
    William McTeer, ‘Review of Lenskyj (2002)’, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, Vol. 12 (2003), pp. 63–64, p. 63.Google Scholar
  10. 28.
    Mitt Romney and Timothy Robinson, Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004).Google Scholar
  11. 38.
    Sophy Chan, ‘Unveiling the “Olympic Kidnapping Act” homelessness and public policy in the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games’, in Janice Forsyth, Christine O’Bonsawin and Michael Heine (eds.), Intersections and Intersectionalities in Olympic and Paralympic Studies, Twelfth International Symposium for Olympic Research (30–31 October 2014) International Centre for Olympic Studies, Western University Canada, London, Ontario (2014), pp. 43–47.Google Scholar
  12. 40.
    See Christopher A. Shaw, ‘The economics and marketing of the Olympic games from bid phase to aftermath’, in Lenskyj and Wagg (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies, pp. 248–260. For a full account of the Eagleridge Bluffs affair see David Whitson, ‘Vancouver 2012: The Saga of Eagleridge Bluffs’, in Graeme Hayes and John Karamichas (eds.), Olympic Games, Mega-Events and Civil Societies: Globalization, Environment, Resistance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 219–235.Google Scholar
  13. 43.
    See Vyv Simson and Andrew Jennings, The Lords of the Rings: Power, Money & Drugs in the Modern Olympics (London: Simon and Schuster, 1992)Google Scholar
  14. Andrew Jennings, The New Lords of the Rings: Olympic Corruption and How to Buy Gold Medals (London: Pocket Books, 1996)Google Scholar
  15. and Andrew Jennings and Clare Sambrook, The Great Olympic Swindle: When the World Wanted Its Games Back (London: Simon and Schuster, 2000).Google Scholar
  16. 47.
    Richard Giulianotti, Gary Armstrong, Gavin Hales and Dick Hobbs, ‘Sport megaevents and public opposition: a sociological study of the London 2012 Olympics’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues (2014) and Phil Cohen, On the Wrong Side of the Track? East London and the Post Olympics (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2013) are good examples. See also Jules Boykoff, Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Stephen Wagg 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Stephen Wagg
    • 1
  1. 1.Leeds Beckett UniversityUK

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