1st Edition

Mega-Events as Economies of the Imagination Creating Atmospheres for Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020

By Rodanthi Tzanelli Copyright 2018
    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    Atmosphere, the elusive ambiance of a place, enables or hinders its mobility in global consumption contexts. Atmosphere connects to social imaginaries, utopian representational frames producing the culture of a city or country. But who resolves atmospheric contradictions in a place’s social and cultural rhythms, when the eyes of the world are turned on it?





    Mega-Events as Economies of the Imagination examines ephemeral and solidified atmospheres in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and the handover ceremony to Tokyo for the 2020 Games. Indeed, highlighting the various social and cultural implications upon these Olympic Games hosts, Tzanelli argues that the ‘Olympic City’ is produced by aesthetic "imagineers", mobile groups of architects, artists and entrepreneurs, who aesthetically ‘engineer’ native cultures as utopias. Thus, it is explored as to how Rio and Tokyo’s "imagineers" problematize notions of creativity, cosmopolitan togetherness and belonging.





    Mega-Events as Economies of the Imagination will appeal to postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers and professionals interested in fields such as: Globalization Studies, Mobility Theory, Cultural Sociology, International Political Economy, Conference and Event Management, Tourism Studies and Migration Studies.

    Acknowledgments





    CHAPTER 1 -- Staging the mega-event: Militourist imaginaries in an Olympic city





    CHAPTER 2 -- Globalising utopias: Imagineering the Olympic event, making the world



    Homo mobilis: Beyond traditional bio-politics





    CHAPTER 3 -- Tomorrow never comes: Rio’s museum of our futures





    CHAPTER 4 -- Choreomobility and artistic worldmaking: Retrieving Rio’s submerged centre



    Shrinking budgets, shrinking worlds?





    CHAPTER 5 -- The Opening and Closing Ceremonies: Migration, nostalgia and the making of tourism mobilities





    CHAPTER 6 -- Tokyo 2020: Urban amnesia and the techno-romantic spirit of capitalism





    CHAPTER 7 -- The Handover Ceremony: Digital gift economies in a global city





    CHAPTER 8 -- Conclusion: Dark journeys and hopeful futures

    Biography

    Rodanthi Tzanelli is Associate Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Leeds, UK