Olympics seven moments worth revisiting1/23/2024 ![]() In order to grasp the global implications of the Olympic industry's infringement of civil rights, as well as to identify their partners world over, this paper is also situated within the field of International Relations (IR). Following the work Antonio Gramsci and his intellectual descendants, we argue that the process by which such intrusions upon civil liberties are normalized, reproduced, and contested are best theorized and understood via the Italian Marxist's reconceptualization of hegemony. ![]() Throughout the twenty-first century, Olympic hosts have used the Games to generate a temporary period of exceptional circumstances, using the distractions afforded by the world's largest multi-sport mega event to justify acts of surveillance, securitization, and displacement. Finally, we close by asserting that the current formulation of the Olympics are not ‘the best we can do.' Instead, through the counterhegemonic potential of critical approaches and engaged, strategic action, a transformation of critical consciousness - and the Olympics, into something to be proud of - remain a live and entirely possible option. In doing so, we demonstrate how the International Olympic Committee (IOC), their partners and host cities are wedded in a symbolic and symbiotic courtship that manufactures local consent for and normalizes human right infringements simultaneously providing the architecture for the spread and imposition of neoliberal order on the citizenry, while masking the damage done by and through the Olympics. From Sydney 2000 to Rio de Janeiro 2016, we explicate the consequences, contestedness, and evolution of repressive techniques applied at each Games using theories of hegemony espoused by Antonio Gramsci, Robert W. Situating sport within the field of International Relations, we outline these civil and human rights intrusions across successive Games. ![]()
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