Human Rights and Events, Leisure and Sport

Jayne Caudwell, Darragh McGee, Jayne Caudwell, Darragh McGee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429687501
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derechos civiles en la legislación

This edited book aims to capture the functioning of human rights and civil activism at the level of the relationships between the individual and the social, and in relation to abuses, contestations, and transformations. Chapters cover the ways human rights are denied, articulated, and not realised. Mega-events, either sporting or otherwise (e.g. Gay Pride), tend to be the focus of this inquiry, although there are important contributions on grassroots non-governmental organisations. Overall, a range of research methodologies are deployed; the chapters vary between using primary research, using commissioned research, and presenting theoretically grounded arguments. The tendency is towards approaches that capture the empirical, everyday experiences, e.g. ethnography, autoethnography, interviews, focus groups, and observation.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Leisure Studies.

Understanding the denial of abuses of human rights connected to sports mega-events*

^*This article draws upon research carried out in Brazil and the UK since 2010. It develops presentations originally given at the University of Brighton in 2013, the Leeds Beckett University in 2016, and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 2013 and 2014.

John Horne

ABSTRACT

Academics debate the positive and negative consequences of hosting sports mega-events, and although there is a general recognition that doing so cannot be a panacea for solving other social issues, who wins and who loses tends to be the same. This article considers why mega-events are not more regularly resisted given the routinization of harm to local populations that they tend to invoke. It develops ideas derived from the late sociologist and criminologist Stanley Cohen concerning the relationships between, and the politics of, denial and acknowledgement, with specific attention to the role of academics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media. The article illustrates the difficulties in exposing, contesting and transforming these human rights abuses, but suggests that there are grounds for optimism as new strategies for communicating human rights abuses in connection with sports mega-events are developed.

Introduction

This article attempts to develop a ‘Cohenesque’ framework for understanding contestation over human rights abuses connected to sports mega-events. That is; it explores some of the mechanics and politics of denial and acknowledgement that Stanley Cohen explored in States of Denial ( 2001 ), and elsewhere (see Cohen, 1996, 2002 ). It seeks to illustrate the diffi culties in exposing, contesting and transforming these human rights abuses. It thus links with the Special Issue’s aim of providing insights into some of the dilemmas, questions and challenges facing human rights praxis. Academics have long debated the positive and negative consequences of hosting sports mega-events, often aided by the work of critical investigative journalists (Jennings, 1996, 2006; Simson & Jennings, 1992 ). Although there is a general recognition that mega-events cannot be a panacea for solving other social issues, who wins and who loses tends to be the same. As Zimbalist ( 2015, p. 122) suggests, ‘Hosting sports mega-events … tends to reinforce the existing power structure and patterns of inequality’.

The structure of the article is as follows. First, the discourses involved in struggles over rights and sport, and especially sports mega-events, are outlined. Second, Cohen’s work on the politics of denial is briefly sketched. Third, follows an account of recent discussions about human rights and other abuses connected to sports mega-events. The article then identifies and reflects on a number of reports about human rights abuses in connection with two mega-events, the FIFA World Cup held in Brazil 2014 (hereaft er WC2014) and the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016 (hereafter Rio 2016). Finally the article considers if the conditions conducive to the creation of successful moral panics about sports mega-events generally remain in the prevailing political and ideological climate.

(Human) rights discourse and sport

Rights are seen as inherently political and contingent – taking institutional, legal and discursive forms. Many different struggles in varied social, economic, political and ideological contexts have been wrapped up under the phrase ‘human rights’. Movements concerned with workers’ rights, women’s rights, peace and the environment as well as specifically those involved in human rights campaigns, at different times and in different places, have involved struggles over civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights (Harvey, Horne, Safai, Darnell, & Courchesne-O’Neill, 2014 ). The relationship of these campaigns to sport is sometimes organic, emerging from within sport, and sometimes more superficial, developing outside of sport. It is interesting to note that the development of the concept of human rights shares some of the tensions that underpinned the history of the formation of modern sport, including the Olympic movement, in the second half of the nineteenth century (particularly that between internationalism and nationalism). Yet, no a priori assumption that sport can be a force for human good is supported by the historical evidence, as over the past 150 years sport has been responsible for many exclusionary practices and barriers that have in turn prompted negotiations and resistance (Donnelly, 2008; Kidd & Donnelly, 2000 ).

Harvey ( 2012, p. 3) suggests that, ‘we live in an era when ideals of human rights have moved centre stage both politically and ethically’. Why is that? One view of the formation of human rights discourse is that it is an ‘invented tradition’ (Hunt, 2007 ) stemming from the print culture of the eighteenth century which enabled a new sensibility and sensitivity to suffering to be communicated to the reading public, especially through the novel. Rather than focus on the formal reasoning of philosophical texts, it is possible that the creation of an awareness of wider humanity came about through the power of the imagination that aroused sympathy for oppression (Blackburn, 2011 ). Hence, broadly speaking concerns for human rights refers to concerns about injustice, discrimination and exploitation – or consciousness of humanity (Robertson, 1992 ) – and the desire for a better world.

Human rights, however, have a contested history because, although ‘NGOS working for human rights are not new’ (Freeman, 2011, p. 167), as Moyn ( 2010, p. 20) puts it, the history of the core values of human rights is ‘one of construction rather than discovery and contingency rather than necessity’. Moyn argues that the discourse of human rights only became predominant since 1977, because it provided an alternative to other failed ‘utopian’ projects and grand narratives. Moyn poses the question whether the relationship to previous ‘human universalisms’ should be seen as one of continuity or as rupture. Earlier claims to the ‘rights of man’ were the basis for the construction of the nation-state, whereas contemporary human rights discourse tends to be the basis for a critique of state repression and corporate exploitation.

It is valuable to be reminded that there are fluid boundaries around the concept of human rights, which means that at different moments in time and in different places, the term has been understood and acted upon quite differently. In addition to the formal human rights institutions, bodies and positions that have been established since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 – and possibly comprising the more public face of human rights as part of a global, transnational, social movement – are international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) that monitor, promote and seek to protect human rights. The most well-known of these are Amnesty International (AI), and Human (formerly Helsinki) Rights Watch (HRW). Human rights organisations such as AI and HRW arguably led the internationalisation of social movements (Tilly, 2004, p. 115). They monitored human rights abuses across the world, published regular human rights ratings, reported on these abuses and intervened to call for sanctions from major states and international authorities on human rights abuses. They provided ‘templates, certification, connections and advise to claimants’ (Tilly, 2004, p. 115). According to Tilly ( 2004, p. 115) movements of ‘self-styled indigenous peoples across the

Table 1. A human rights atrocity quadrangle.

Human Rights Violation [Folk Devil/Violators]	Social control agency [The state, municipal government]
Victims (Denied) [The displaced, evicted, children, and/or marginalised people]	Observers (Audiences, journalists, campaigners, social scientists) [Moral Panic/Creators]

world benefitted substantially from identification of themselves as participants in a worldwide cause’. Nonetheless, as Therborn ( 2011, p. 2) suggests, whilst human rights began to emerge as a serious issue in the 1960s, mainly thanks to the formation of groups such as AI, they only reached the ‘geopolitical mainstream’ in the 1970s:

The Western powers had them inserted in the Helsinki Accord of 1975, recognizing the post-Second World War borders of Europe, crucial to Poles and most other East Europeans, communist or anti-communist. In the Americas, human rights also became a key issue in the second half of the 1970s. In Latin America they became a defence in defeat, after all attempts at progressive social change (outside Cuba) had been crushed by military dictatorships. In the USA there was, for once, a positive resonance during the Carter administration. The completely unforeseen unlocking of Cold War diplomacy and US recognition of human rights in the Americas made human rights irremovable from the international political agenda, accepted in violation by the Reagan and the two Bush administrations.

Different movements, campaigns and coalitions therefore constitute the field of human rights. We agree with Stammers ( 2009, p. 160) that it is important to acknowledge the pre-institutional, non-legal forms that existed prior to human rights law and institutions as well as the role that social movement praxis plays in shaping intellectual developments around human rights.

Echoing Moyn above, sport scholar Brownell ( 2012, p. 315) notes: ‘human rights are not pre-given moral truths, they are constructions’. The formal apparatus of human rights and the social movements that espouse and promote human rights transnationally are constantly engaged in this work of construction in what is sometimes referred to as ‘global civil society’. What makes human rights complex is that they are both transnational and intersectional – that is the different minorities and groups involved in separate struggles over rights draw inspiration from the activities of other groups acting inside and outside the boundaries of their nation-states. As Fraser ( 1997, pp. 69–98) argues, social movements are ‘subaltern counter-public spheres’, where oppositional interpretations of identities, interests and needs are debated, discussed and formulated. If the space of human rights discourse is transnational, how might Stanley Cohen’s work be useful for understanding the denial of abuses of human rights in sports mega-events?

Human rights denials and moral panics

Cohen’s earliest research on folk devils and moral panics, investigating the social reaction to young people involved in the Mods and Rockers subcultures in England in the 1960s, revealed that the media play a key role in the struggle for socially just outcomes. Cohen suggests, moral panics might be seen as

condensed political struggles to control the means of cultural reproduction. Studying them … allows us to identify and conceptualise the lines of power in any society, the ways we are manipulated into taking things too seriously and other things not seriously enough. (Cohen, 2002, p. xxxv)

Social scientists have no privileged status in pointing this out and suggesting remedial policies – they are just another claims maker along with activists and critical investigative journalists – but they can expose ‘under-reaction (apathy, denial and indifference)’ and ‘over-reaction (exaggeration, hysteria, prejudice and panic’ (Cohen, 2002, p. xxxiv). Additionally, he noted that some ‘disparities are so gross, some claims so exaggerated, some political agendas so tendentious, that they can only be called something like … “social injustice”’ (Cohen, 2002, p. xxxiv).

In one of his last public lectures Cohen ( 2010 ) suggested that an ‘atrocity quadrangle’ might be used to identify the relationship between folk devils, moral panics, social control and denial (see Table 1).

Whereas the concept of ‘folk devil’ focussed on the symbolic contestation over marginal/deviant subcultures, ‘moral panics’ suggested the exaggerated coverage given to specific episodes/issues involving them. ‘Moral panic’ suggests that something not fully deserving of important and lengthy treatment is acknowledged as critical. Cohen’s States of Denial ( 2001 ) is subtitled ‘knowing about atrocities and suffering’. Denial is about cover-up, evasion, and giving too little importance to some issue or concern. As Cohen noted, ‘every personal life and every society is built on denial. Only an overriding principle – like social justice – can determine which forms of denial matters, which can be left alone’ (Cohen, 2001, p. 295).

In an interview, Cohen said that ‘human rights may now be the last metanarrative we have left ’ (Cohen, quoted in Taylor, 2007, p. 24). Elsewhere, he wrote that: ‘my own cultural politics entails … encouraging something like moral panics about mass atrocities and political suffering – and trying to expose the strategies of denial deployed to prevent the acknowledgement of these realities’. Moral panics can become a ‘critical tool to expose dominant interests and ideologies’ (Cohen, 2002, p. xxxiii).

Cohen ( 2002, 2010 ) thus identifies the basis for a cultural politics of moral panics and suggests that anti - denial movements may seek to develop their own moral panics about injustices. There is a need to ‘purposely recreate the conditions that made the Mods and Rockers ...