Saturday, July 19, 2008

They're No Laff-A-Lympics

We don't know if many people are following the Olympic narratives currently unfolding... it largely seems like they're mostly a non-event for folks outside of journalists, sports enthusiasts, Olympic boosters and those unfortunate enough to live in host cities. And, we guess, those like us with some weird obsession with the intersection of tourism and mega-event found in the modern Olympic Games.
At any rate, some of the stories this past week about Olympics caught our eyes. For example:
The remnants of industrial production coming back to haunt London in its preparation for 2012.
The Australian Press' fears of a sterile Olympics in China.
And reports that over 1600 people have been arrested since June in Hong Kong alone - who knows what the number of arrests are in China at large, but it has included so far some inarguably egregious crackdowns on critics of the state.
We've come across some books that we're looking forward to getting into, in trying to come to a better understanding of the mechanics of the contemporary Olympic Machine and localized resistances to it. A few of the more recent ones that we are particularly excited about are:
Helen Jefferson Lenskyj's Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism that seems to be written from a scholarly position that is simultaneously invested in resistance to the inequities enacted in Olympic host cities.
Mike Weed's Olympic Tourism
Andrew Billings' Olympic Media
and more generally related to the political economy of sport arena construction, Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause's Field of Schemes.

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