An Academy of Social Sciences Seminar supported by the ESRC as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science and organised in cooperation with the University of East London.
The economic and social impact of the London 2012 Olympics Games is the focus of this debate. It will explore the significance in contexts of symbolic meanings of sport, competition between cities, international tourism, emergence of new hybrid global organizations and how the London Olympics highlights urban regeneration and cultural diversity.
Chaired by Mike Rustin, speakers include:
Registration is essential. For more information on registration, please contact the AcSS office. AcSS 30 Tabernacle Street London EC2A 4UE Tel: 020 7330 0897 administrator@acss.org.uk or http://www.acss.org.uk
The Rt Hon Stephen Timms, M.P. - ‘The Significance of the 2012 Olympics for London.’
Stephen Timms was appointed Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform at the Department for Work and Pensions in January 2008. Until this he was Minister for Competitiveness from June 2007 at the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform. Before this he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, following his role as Minister for Pensions Reform in the Department for Work and Pensions. Stephen entered Parliament in 1994 as MP for Newham North East, and has been MP for East Ham since 1997. He was elected to Newham Council in 1984 and served as Leader of the Council from 1990 to 1994.
Maurice Roche -‘Putting the London 2012 Olympics into perspective: The challenge of understanding Mega-events’
The London 2012 Olympics is a complex and multi-dimensional event. Nevertheless academic, policy-making and public discussions are likely to be dominated by changing assessments of the balance between its costs and its benefits, assessments which are likely to be informed by versions of an economic perspective. This brief presentation suggests that the future research and inquiry into this event needs to go beyond the economic. It needs wider perspectives, which would aim to recognise, in addition, the event’s political, cultural and media dimensions. With this in mind the field of the sociology of mega-events is discussed, in particular the analysis given in ‘Mega-Events and Modernity’ (Maurice Roche, 2000, Routledge). Based on this it is suggested that a perspective on and study of the 2012 Olympics as a media event would be particularly interesting and relevant.
Maurice Roche is Reader in Sociology at Sheffield University. He was Director of Sheffield University’s interdisciplinary research centre on European Social and Cultural Studies (ESCUS) 2003-6. Since the 1980s his research interests have been concerned with the sociology of popular culture and cultural policy, particularly focusing on major sport and cultural events, and with the sociology of citizenship and European society. He is author of Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture 2000, Routledge; and Sport, Identity and Popular Culture 1998, editor, Meyer & Meyer Verlag, among many other works.
John Urry - The Olympic Games and Contemporary Tourism
John Urry will consider some of the connections between the Olympic Games and contemporary tourism. He will argue that the Olympic movement is now a tourism movement and has little to do with individual sporting success or achievement. The competition is now about landing the Games and then delivering the Games so as to move that city closer to the centres of global power and status.John Urry is Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University. He is a member of the Council, Academy of Social Sciences and a former RAE Panel Chair. He is author of many books including The Tourist Gaze (1990/2002), Economies of Signs and Space (1994), Consuming Places (1995), Sociology Beyond Societies (2000), Performing Tourist Places (2004), Mobilities (2007).
Iain MacRury - Gift or Commodity? Competing Conceptions of the 2012 Olympics
Iain MacRury will examine competing conceptions of the London 2012 Olympics: as 'gift' and as 'commodity'. He will argue that for aspirations connected to improved social and cultural engagement, legacy and the sustainable regeneration of East London to materialise, it is important that governance and delivery of the Games sufficiently integrates two orientations: one to cost benefit input-out economism; the other, to a raft of progressive and developmental cultural values surrounding this mega event.
Iain MacRury is Director of the London East Research Institute and the co-editor, with Prof. Gavin Poynter, of Olympic Cities: 2012 and the Remaking of East London (Ashgate 2008, forthcoming) and co-author of A Lasting Legacy for London, a report for the London Assembly on prospects for a good Olympic legacy for London.
The Seminar will be chaired by Michael Rustin, Professor of Sociology at the University of East London, co-editor with Phil Cohen of London’s Turning: the Making of Thames Gateway. Ashgate March 2008.
© 2008
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