Mega-Events and Civil Societies
Queen Mary, University of London, on Thursday 26 and Friday 27 June 2008
Keynote speakers
John Horne, University of Central Lancashire, UK; Arthur Mol, Wageningen University, Netherlands; Kris Olds, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
Conference Programme
Please click here for the conference programme, here to read the abstracts and here to read a selection of the draft papers.
Registration Form
Please click here for the registration form. Please return the registration form either by email to Adam Fagan, or by post to The Department of Politics, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS by Thursday 12 June 2008.
Sporting mega-events, such as Olympic and Commonwealth Games and World Cups, have over the last two decades become increasingly central to the design and implementation of urban renewal strategies and the projection of local civic cultural and social identities to global audiences. They are widely held to act as key showcase opportunities for attracting external income investment, implementing major infrastructural development projects, creating new employment, reinforcing cultural democratisation and constructing enduring physical and symbolic legacies. They also, increasingly, function as key international governance regimes for the dissemination of current expressions of universal worldviews, such as human rights, civil equality, and environmentalism: indeed, major international tournaments, from World Cups to Olympic Games, now routinely demand the integration of sustainable development principles into event staging.
Yet for civil societies, sporting mega-events are also inherently problematic and controversial. Their staging has recently been associated by a number of academics and social actors with the channelling of public resources to transnational corporate interests, the attendant privatisation of public space, the suspension and loss of civil liberties, the reduction of democratic accountability, the downgrading of social policy priorities, and the entrenchment of social polarisation.
This project therefore is bringing together academics from across disciplines for an international cross-disciplinary workshop, to be held on the Mile End campus of Queen Mary, University of London, on Thursday 26 and Friday 27 June 2008.
Dr Graeme Hayes (Aston University, UK)
Dr John Karamichas (Queen's University Belfast, UK)
Dr Adam Fagan (Queen Mary, University of London, UK)