Title: Olympic legacies: recurrent rhetoric and harsh realities
Abstract: AbstractThis article traces the genesis of the principle of legacy as it has featured in Olympic discourse, and become enshrined in the expressed philosophy of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), so shaping elements in the process of bidding by cities to stage the Olympic Games, in both their winter and summer manifestations. The article shows how Olympic bidders have increasingly mobilised the idea of legacy, and how event by event over the last quarter of a century, evaluation of the significance of an Olympic Games has been centrally shaped by the legacy debate, in a multitude of applications and contexts. Particular aspects of legacy are focused upon, with reference to new studies, from city impacts to volunteers and workers, spatial politics and communities to gender discourse, and protest and publics. The article is flavoured by a running commentary on legacy claims by academics, politicians and IOC careerists concerning the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and considers the bidding rhetoric of cities beyond Rio de Janeiro 2016, through to Tokyo 2020. In conclusion, it is argued that despite the embeddedness of the legacy idea in Olympic discourse, the reality is that legacy will prove elusive without long-term planning before Olympic events, and remain unproven without systematic post-event research over realistically extended periods. Critical social science remains essential to such an understanding of the gap between legacy claims and the realities of the recurring Olympic narratives.Keywords: Olympic legacyLondon 2012 Olympic GamesInternational Olympic CommitteeAthens 2004 Olympic GamesBeijing 2008 Olympic Games AcknowledgementsThanks to the following: British Sociological Association, for support in staging the Leisure & Recreation Study Group stream plenary Olympic Follies? Promises, Pleasures and Betrayals at the 2012 Annual Conference Sociology in an Age of Austerity at the University of Leeds (11 April). Thanks too to all who attended and contributed to the event, which helped shape this issue of Contemporary Social Science. British Academy, for support on the project 'The construction and mediation of the sporting spectacle in Europe, 1992–2004', Award Number SG:47220, which generated some of the archival sources quoted in this article. Jo Kirrane, for generating an extensive database on the legacy topic from which some key issues could then be discussed and considered in an informed manner.Notes on contributorAlan Tomlinson is Professor of Leisure Studies, and Head of Doctoral Training (Arts), at the University of Brighton. He is co-convenor of the British Sociological Association Leisure & Recreation Study Group.Notes1. Taylor & Francis, publisher of this journal, has significantly contributed to the academic outpouring on the Olympics at the London 2012 moment, by supporting/commissioning Special Issues from up to 50 of its journals, including the issue in which this article appears. This is branded as ROSA (Routledge Online Studies on the Olympic and Paralympic Games). See http://www.routledgeonlinestudies.com/images/docs/ROSO%20Special%20Issue%20Journals.pdf. If I have overlooked, in my overview on the legacy question, vital references that are available within this cornucopia of comment and analysis, then I apologise in advance.2. The International Olympic Committee library/Study Centre has produced a bibliography on impact and legacy studies, Olympic Games: Legacies and Impacts (August 2013, 127 pp., LEGACY LRes_7E.pdf), in which it is stated that 'impacts' are regarded 'as implying an adverse effect or a damaging or destructive result', and 'legacy' is used in 'presenting positive effects … also … in association with those effects that are of longer duration' (p. 3). I have not chosen to adopt or follow this value-loaded distinction.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-04-03
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 51
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