Spectacular Security: Mega-Events and the Security Complex
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: In Discipline and Punish Foucault famously declares that “our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance.” Our theoretical aim in this paper is to problematize Foucault’s strict demarcation between spectacle and surveillance through an analysis of urban mega-events. In the process, we detail emerging features of contemporary mega-events that shape and are shaped by shifts in the field of security and surveillance more broadly. Three dynamics in particular warrant consideration: the move toward a precautionary logic among security planners, a “semiotic shift” wherein security iconography is integrally bound up with the production of contemporary urban spectacles, and various forms of security and surveillance legacies that circulate beyond the spatial and temporal frame of the event itself. While mega-events support Foucault’s assertion of the dispersal of discipline across the social field, they also suggest that this dispersal occurs in concert with, not in spite of, the power of the spectacle in contemporary society.
Authors: Philip Boyle, Kevin D. Haggerty
Institution: University of Alberta
Language: English
Topic: Sport and Mega-Event Impacts
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2003403106