The mega-event, or large-scale mass event, has held an enduring level of popular and political support in modern society since their creation in the late 19th century. In the current period of intense globalization, the importance placed on mega-events by national governments and global corporations has increased considerably—with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on both the bid process and the marketing, advertising, and branding of a given event. Mega-events also provide people with unique opportunities to participate in collective projects of urban regeneration, identity formation, and conspicuous consumption. This dissertation is situated within a focal area on the global phenomenon of sport mega-event. Here I draw from an interdisciplinary perspective to demystify the popular discourse on the even legacy and its related political economy implications associated with the two Olympic Games in Beijing. So far, legacy has been gaining wider currency vis-à-vis the hosting of mega-events, and there has been increased scholarly focus on related topics such as the governance, evaluation, and leveraging of legacy. In this dissertation, I examine legacy as both substantive element (e.g., urban renewal project & facility construction) and discursive discourse (e.g., the public pedagogy underpinning the circulation of certain ideological values and meanings). Being the first city ever to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics, the idea of fully capitalizing on the legacy of the previous 2008 Olympics for the future 2022 Winter Olympics has been repeatedly addressed by Beijing throughout the bidding and planning process thus far. A comprehensive evaluation of the legacy of the 2008 Olympics is beyond the remit of this project; however, by attending to the primary, publicly-promised legacies of the 2008 Olympics, an important context for post-2008 mega-events can be revealed. Thus, in this study, I consider numerous features of legacy discourse of the Olympic Games as sensitive indicators of shifting interests, power relations and ideologies at micro, meso, and macro levels in contemporary China. To do this, I structure my project within a modified “circuit of culture” model, which focuses on the articulations of interrelated moments of production, representation, and consumption (Hall, 1980; Johnson, 1986; du Gay et al., 1997). Such a framework thus provides a heuristic model to stress the situational particularities inscribing and deriving meanings and values in and through legacy discourse. As such, the analysis of each moment will be situated within a broader context of the post-2008 Olympics era and the correlative political economic landscape. In this project, I find legacy discourse as an evolving and dynamic concept that is both context-specific and influenced by multiple social actors. It is simultaneously ascribed with a variety of explicit or implicit political and economic interests. Grounded on qualitative analysis at the three moments of the circuit—representation, production and consumption—both commonalities and contradictions of the legacy discourse encountered and understood by different social groups (e.g., residents, government, and corporate) are identified. With regard to the popular legacy discourse of the 2022 Winter Olympics, an emerging neoliberal paradigm is further unveiled, which provides a viable arena to examine the political economy of sport mega-events in a post-2008 era and the associated interplays of market capitalism and state socialism in contemporary China, which have been in a state of transition. Based on the findings of this study, the appeal of mega-events to the state of China is not only underpinned by the pursuit of symbolic politics, it further entails a form of shock of spectacle that relies on the “dramatological” and “exceptional” features of modern mega-events to legitimate and further a broad spectrum of state agendas and policies (e.g., urban regeneration, economic growth, & environmental governance). Compared to the identity-politics-driven 2008 Summer Games, the legacy discourse surrounding the 2022 Winter Games is also found to be embodied with more complicated while explicit economic interests. And such economic interests are situated within an intimate interaction with consumerism, developmentalism, commercialism, with an emphasis on the rule of market. This marks a significant transition, as the previous nation-building function of the Olympic Games, appears to be complemented by, if not replaced by, a new market-building goal in the case of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. This study therefore contributes to an indigenous and more comprehensive understanding of sport mega-events in China, particularly the interactions between the global capitalism and local politics as manifest in the dynamic legacy discourse. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Sport Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / July 11, 2017. / Beijing 2008, Beijing 2022, Legacy, Mega-events, Olympic Games, Political Economy / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael D. Giardina, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jennifer M. Proffitt, University Representative; Joshua I. Newman, Committee Member; Jeffrey D. James, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_552334 |
| Contributors | Pu, Haozhou (authoraut), Giardina, Michael D., 1976- (professor directing dissertation), Proffitt, Jennifer M. (university representative), Newman, Joshua I., 1976- (committee member), James, Jeffrey D. (Jeffrey Dalton) (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Education (degree granting college), Department of Sport Management (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (266 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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