Host Cities and the Olympics

An Interactionist Approach

Harry Hiller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415522410
• eBook ISBN: 9781136326745
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Rather than interpreting the Olympics as primarily a sporting event of international or national significance, this book understands the Games as a civic project for the host city that serves as a catalyst for a variety of urban interests over a period of many years from the bidding phase through the event itself. Traditional Olympic studies have tended to examine the Games from an outsider's perspective or as something experienced through the print media or television. In contrast, the focus presented here is on the dynamics within the host city understood as a community of interacting individuals who encounter the Games in a variety of ways through support, opposition, or even indifference but who have a profound influence on the outcome of the Games as actors and players in the Olympics as a drama.

Adopting a symbolic interactionist approach, the book offers a new interpretive model through which to understand the Olympic Games by exploring the relationship between the Games and residents of the host city. Key analytical concepts such as framing, dramaturgy, the public realm, and the symbolic field are introduced and illustrated through empirical research from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, and it is shown how social media and shifts in public opinion reflected interaction effects within the city. By filling a clear lacuna in the Olympic Studies canon, this book is important reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology of sport, urban studies, event studies or urban sociology.

1
Building an interpretive model

From macro to micro

In the popular mind, the Olympics are all about competitions between the world’s best athletes every two years, alternating between the summer and winter games in different host cities. Analysts, however, have been quick to point out that there is much more to the Olympics than that. There are the ideals of the Olympic Charter that establish sport as a philosophy of life promoting peace, human dignity, and universal ethical principles, principles that are constantly being tested by public scrutiny, thereby challenging the structure of the International Olympic Committee and its affiliated organizations. There is also the link between the Olympics and marketing programs that align the Games with globalization and corporatization. The Olympics can also be viewed as caught in the crucible of international politics, reflecting ambitions or antagonisms between nation-states, ideological shifts, or new phases of economic development. More recently, the Olympics have been shown to be at the forefront of emerging trends such as in surveillance and securitization. In all these instances, the Olympics are understood as more than sport and not just an event that lasts seventeen days. Instead, the Olympic Games are positioned in relation to wider global processes and issues that are more typical of macro analyses.

The macro approach to analyzing the Olympics has been very fruitful. It has led to a focus on institutions and structure as well as global shifts and evolving trends and how these matters are reflected in Olympic activities. It has become clear from such analyses that not only are the Olympics at the forefront of conflict and change in the Olympic Movement’s own operations, but the Games as mega-events participate in other global processes of conflict and change. Key themes and concepts such as transnationalism, corporate capitalism, urban entrepreneurialism, neoliberal ideology, post-industrialization and urban regeneration all point to macro processes in which the Olympics operate, and help to explain how the Games have evolved and the purposes for which they are used. Notwithstanding all that can be learned from a more macro perspective, and especially the lens of political economy, is there room for a more micro approach to understanding the Olympics? Rather than institutions, structure, and global processes, the Olympics also involve people in interaction. And the host city is a critical location where this interaction can be observed.

The Olympics as a mediated event

How does the public encounter the Olympics? For most people, the Games are a mediated event because they are not physically present and they depend on reports presented by others, either electronically or in print. These reports are filed by the official media but are now increasingly being represented in the social media. There are four dominant ways in which the public encounters the Olympics through these forms of mediation. First, the media inform the public about the athletes and the events in the Olympic sport competitions as well as the results of the riveting contests of victory and defeat. Television ratings in particular show a broadening global audience for the Games. Most people do not have direct access to athletes or to the events in which they compete, so they depend on the media to tell them. The primary focus in these reports is on athletes representing the country in which a member of the receiving public lives, but there are also narratives that go beyond merely reporting the results to the personal stories of athletes that humanize the Games and create wider public interest. Again, the media play an enormous role in making the Olympics into a drama that heightens viewership or readership.

Second, the public also encounters the Olympics through controversies that keep the Olympics high on the public radar. Again the media play an enormous role in informing the public about the Olympics as an issue or a matter of crisis or debate. In contrast to the Games themselves, these issues, whether IOC, National Olympic Committee (NOC), or International Sport Federation disputes, scandals, various forms of cheating or corruption, or controversies related to bidding cities or the host city preparation process, are all constantly under public scrutiny in non-Olympic years as well as Olympic years. So, not only are the actual Games a mediated event for most people, but also the media (and increasingly the non-official media, as represented by the role of the internet) keep matters pertaining to the Games in public consciousness even outside the period of the Games itself. While some people tend to view the Olympics primarily in terms of their sporting aspects, it is clear that other members of the public view them more in terms of the controversies and issues in which the Games becomes embroiled.

Third, some members of the public primarily encounter the Olympics through their pageantry and ceremonies. The television audience for the opening and closing ceremonies is usually the highest for any of the Games activities and obtains an audience far beyond the sporting world. There is often much media discussion of the contents of the ceremony as representing not only Olympic traditions but especially the host nation’s culture (de Moragas et al. 1995). Images of these ceremonies are quickly flashed throughout the world and easily attract persons not normally interested in sport. For example, the acceptance of the Olympic flag at the closing ceremonies of the Turin Games by Sam Sullivan, the wheelchair-bound quadriplegic mayor of Vancouver, the next host Winter Olympic city, had an impact that went far beyond sporting circles.¹ The parade of athletes from all participating countries is also part of the pageantry and engenders interest from among those in each nation looking to observe their own representatives in this international forum.

Fourth, the public also encounters the Olympics through advertising, particularly from those corporations that have become official sponsors (TOPS) and have exclusive access to advertising opportunities. The use of the Olympic rings in their advertising helps to make these rings one of the best-known brands in the world. Organizing committees also enlist as sponsors large numbers of national and local businesses that want to use this affiliation to accomplish their own marketing or public relations objectives. Since sponsors use the media to link their own brand with the Olympic brand through various forms of saturation and strategic marketing, the public encounters the Olympics in relation to the goals of corporate capitalism. Winners and losers, controversies, big show, and advertising – these are the predominant ways in which the Olympics as a mediated event are encountered by the general public.

If most people around the world experience the Olympics as a mediated event, then being a resident in a host city potentially changes that relationship to a more direct experience. People who are part of the Olympic family/industry – whether associated with the IOC or NOCs, athletes, coaches, sponsors, or various consultants, or a layperson with the financial means to travel to the Games and access to tickets – are members of a select group who always have the opportunity of experiencing the Games directly. But it is host city residents who experience the Olympics in a different way in that they discover that the Olympics as a project intrude into their own urban space and dominate their city’s agenda. They are a project that shapes civic political debate, affects urban planning and urban finances, may reorganize part of the urban landscape, and may rearrange some people’s activities. Moreover, local media always play a major role in making the Olympics a prime topic of discussion within that city. The preparation period, in particular, can generate considerable anxiety about how the Olympics as an event will change people’s normal routines as announcements are made about disruptions that will occur. While some may see the Olympics as an intrusion into their normal routines and an unacceptable selection as a city project, others view the Olympics as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to host a unique, highly sought-after event. To be chosen to “host the world” is a perspective that warrants considerable exceptions to the normal urban agenda and legitimizes action and the mobilization of resources. In either case, host city residents discover that the Olympics are almost inescapable and that they will have some kind of direct experience with the Games as a civic project, and in some way be subjected to their impact. Clearly, not all aspects of the Olympics will be directly experienced and some mediation will still occur, but residents of an Olympic city have a unique vantage point that has often been overlooked.

Developing a micro perspective

The host city is an important place to start for this analysis because it can move us away from structure and help us focus on the people who inhabit the city. Typically the Olympic host city has been interpreted more as a location or a context, or at best a political entity, rather than as a community of people. Beijing, Salt Lake City, Athens, or Sochi may be unique places understood in terms of the local or national culture but usually their residents are only understood as people to be mobilized for the Olympic event and the hosting of visitors. As Roche (2000:222) notes, staging the Games in itself requires such a wide range of participation that it is “an effective model of collective action.” Rather than the Olympics being a project just of urban elites, the residents of the host city are an integral part of the event as individuals and within groups. They participate in the Games in multiple ways, both directly, as in the case of official volunteers or employees, and indirectly, as in the case of food service workers, security staff, residents living near competition sites, patrons of bars and restaurants, and consumers of the myriad forms of merchandising, among others. Baby-sitters of parents who volunteer for the Olympics are part of the Olympic interaction just as much as politicians who support the Games or those who choose to protest the Olympics either during the Games or in the months or years preceding the Games. Announcements about road closures or the creation of special Olympic lanes, the reconfiguring of working hours, or the rebuilding of parts of the city to the neglect of other parts clearly impact urban residents directly or indirectly. Olympic rhetoric fills the air, and most host city residents would truly agree that the Olympics have an inescapable presence. Without the many forms of participation and interaction that come from local residents, and without their presence, indeed it is difficult to imagine the Games being what they have become. People in host cities often report about the mood transformation that they experienced during the Olympics, and much of this came from the awareness that they were not spectators but active participants in what was happening. The host city is not just a location, nor is it just a context; instead, it is a community of diverse people who interact with the Olympics as a dominating urban project that impacts their world. While there is often tacit recognition of this element of the Olympics, there has been little room for it in our theorizing or our analysis.

There are, then, three conclusions that result from this approach. One is that the host city must be understood as a community of people with diverse interests who interact with the Games through all aspects of the Games cycle, from bidding, to planning and preparation, to the actual event itself. Their story begins not with the opening ceremony but many years before and continues well after the Games (Hiller 1998). Second, people do not respond to the Games as one voice but with a plurality of voices. They interact not just verbally but through a variety of symbolic forms that indicate their approval, disapproval, apathy, or indifference, and these responses often change over time. Third, from this perspective the Olympics are not just about officially sanctioned events but include the myriad “unofficial” ways in which people respond to the Games. These actions and reactions show how the Olympics provoke and evoke a variety of forms of responses and participation. Virtually none of these responses occur in isolation; rather, they are social in nature. The question is, how can this approach be included in our Olympic analyses?

The analysis proposed here builds from a micro perspective. Instead of a top-down perspective that focuses on structure and power, the approach taken here is a more bottom-up approach that emphasizes interaction and agency. The fundamental question in this approach is how do host city residents encounter the Olympics? It is answered by saying that they encounter the Olympics through interacting with other people about the idea of the Olympics and its appropriateness for their city as well as announced operational plans and ultimately the event itself. All of this occurs through interaction with significant others in homes, with peers at work, with neighbors across the fence, with friends in bars and restaurants, and even with the public in general through the mass media. Residents develop their own opinions, attempt to determine how and whether they will be affected, and need to decide in what way they might respond. Their assessments are based on their interpretations of what they see and hear, their interpretations of leaders and advocates of the Olympics as a local project, and their interpretations of the Olympics as represented by IOC leaders and national Olympic officials, as well as athletes. Rather than beginning with multinational organizations and global processes of change, we begin more fundamentally with individuals in interaction at the level of the host city.

The Olympics are typically understood from a political economy and organizational perspective. The International Olympic Committee or international sport federations are understood as powerful international bodies dealing bureaucratically with other powerful organizations such as national governments or multinational corporations following protocols, regulations, and established policies. Even host cities are understood in terms of the power relations that have emerged to support the Games, whether they be local or regional governments, local business and real estate elites, or the boards that are created to endorse or deliver the Games. People in power roles who head all these organizations do not make decisions in a vacuum but interact with others in order to accomplish objectives. Numerous accounts of the experiences of leaders of bid cities or leaders of organizing committees of the Olympic Games (OCOGs) are replete with stories of who talked to whom, and when and where, as part of their account of the Olympic project in their city. Books written by the CEOs of OCOGs or bid leaders demonstrate the importance of face-to-face interpersonal relationships (Ueberroth 1985; McGeoch with Korporaal 1995). Analyses of the IOC and how it works have also stressed the role of interpersonal relationships (Pound 2004). The failure of some cities that have bid for the Games, particularly in the Third World, has even been attributed to the lack of strong interpersonal relationships with power brokers (Swart and Bob 2004). The Olympic movement is best understood as people encountering one another as human beings in relation to this common focus. Even the IOC as an organization is primarily interpreted through its leaders (e.g., Juan Antonio Samaranch or Jacques Rogge), whose personalities, backgrounds, style, and use of words in interaction with others communicate much more than the official policies and procedures.

At each level of the Olympics as a multidimensional entity, there are numerous interpersonal encounters that shape outcomes, involving individuals ranging from athletes to officials to representatives of media and host governments. The story of virtually every Olympics is that there are always local people who initiate, organize, mobilize, and energize others through interaction with them. This interaction brings about support, opposition, or uncertainty, responses that help us to understand the outcomes. The purpose of this study is to use this approach to understand how host city residents encounter the Games. While it is tempting to view the hosting of the Olympics as merely a top-down decision, it is in reality much more than that. Host city residents respond to the Games through interpreting and negotiating meanings about the Games with others.

The analysis of cities and the Olympics needs a fresh start. The focus for too long has been on the questions of why cities want to host the Olympics, who promotes that agenda, and whose interests are served by hosting the Games. The answers invariably are all the same, namely that cities want to host the Games to obtain global recognition that will result in economic b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Building an interpretive model: from macro to micro
• 2 The Olympics as dramaturgy
• 3 Framing: interpreting the Olympics project
• 4 The public realm
• 5 The host city as a symbolic field
• 6 The social media and urban interaction
• 7 The consequences of interaction: public opinion and the Olympics
• 8 Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index