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Olympic Volunteers: Rise of the Super-Citizen

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The Global Cultural Capital

Part of the book series: The Contemporary City ((TCONTCI))

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Abstract

The figure of the Olympic volunteer to which this chapter is devoted signifies for the argument of this book a culmination of the process of transformation in the conceptualization of the democratic urban subject, from beneficiary to producer of culture and of the city, from critical of to consensual with power. A new form of citizen participation was found in them, a particularly convenient one for the institutions as it separated engagement from conflict or dissent, channeling the social virtues of citizen participation to the benefit of hegemonic powers. The Olympic volunteer was the distilled, purest form of tamed subjectivity under democratic local hegemony, the greatest evidence of its success in producing a democratic subject in full agreement with, and indistinguishable from power: a subject willing to invest his/her skills and affects in the service of the hegemonic view of Barcelona.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Another example can be found in Graham-Yooll (1992).

  2. 2.

    For a history of volunteers in the modern Olympic movement, see A.B. Moreno et al. 1999.

  3. 3.

    For more examples, see Clapés (2002: 157–163).

  4. 4.

    This included, in the case of Barcelona, reaching out to the rest of Spain. The campaign to recruit volunteers covered the entire state, and their role was considered important in propagating affection for the Games across Spain: “These volunteers were the great transmitters of Barcelona’s project around the state, creating bonds of affection among all volunteers and, in turn, between the families of these volunteers. We succeeded in making them too own the project” (Clapés 2002: 150).

  5. 5.

    But see Montilla Castillo (1997: 12) for a more balanced account of the number of people leaving the volunteer program before the Games, and of their reasons for doing it.

  6. 6.

    COOB’92, vol II: 101. Figures vary slightly according to the source. Corachán (1992) speaks of 36,500 signed volunteers.

  7. 7.

    For details of the training program in its full extension, see COOB’92, vols II and III; Clapés (1995 and 1992) and Montilla Castillo (1997).

  8. 8.

    In King’s own words: “well-intentioned, charitable consumer-citizens must share the burden of governing and the fulfillment of their needs with the state, the market, and the nonprofit sector” (2003: 305).

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  1. Cultures and Languages, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United Kingdom

    Mari Paz Balibrea

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Balibrea, M.P. (2017). Olympic Volunteers: Rise of the Super-Citizen. In: The Global Cultural Capital. The Contemporary City. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53596-2_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53596-2_10

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53595-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53596-2

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