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Jogos de Poder: Uma História Política das Olímpiadas
Boicotes, exclusões, manifestações, atentados e obscuros jogos de bastidores: os Jogos Olímpicos não são só desporto.
São, desde o início, uma poderosa – e por vezes escandalosa – arma política.
O barão Pierre de Coubertin — aristocrata francês que reanimou as Olimpíadas modernas no final do século xix — rejeitava publicamente a interferência da política nos Jogos Olímpicos. Ainda assim, mobilizou agentes do poder político para o ajudarem a estabelecer e a promover os Jogos. Dizer que o maior acontecimento desportivo mundial é alheio à política é, pois, desde o início, pura fantasia.
Este livro, fruto de uma cuidadosa pesquisa, revela o modo como as Olimpíadas da era moderna beneficiam elites políticas e interesses corporativos, em contradição com o propalado mito do ideal olímpico.
São, desde o início, uma poderosa – e por vezes escandalosa – arma política.
O barão Pierre de Coubertin — aristocrata francês que reanimou as Olimpíadas modernas no final do século xix — rejeitava publicamente a interferência da política nos Jogos Olímpicos. Ainda assim, mobilizou agentes do poder político para o ajudarem a estabelecer e a promover os Jogos. Dizer que o maior acontecimento desportivo mundial é alheio à política é, pois, desde o início, pura fantasia.
Este livro, fruto de uma cuidadosa pesquisa, revela o modo como as Olimpíadas da era moderna beneficiam elites políticas e interesses corporativos, em contradição com o propalado mito do ideal olímpico.
352 pages, Paperback
First published May 17, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 4, 2016
I was so fascinated with this book. I initially began it because I was interested in the relationship between sports and politics, entertainment and dissent. For me, this book struck a perfect balance in describing the politics of the times, as well as the people who advocated against the Olympics. It inspired me in a new way and I feel a better person having read it.
June 19, 2022
Olympic games started in 1896,this idea concieved by be ‘Pierre de Coubartin’much before from 1896. though olympic committee started in 1894. before starting his aim was to burnish the rabbles fitness albiet scythe rerrorism and accelarate fraternity.
Social movement
Through this book, you get to know how the intention of the Olympics was before and what is it now. Why and after how many movements were girls included in this? What was the role of LGBTQ, and social activist specially with those who were working for black lives existence and .How Olympic lost its existence and became commercial by resorting to corporate and no such game happened later in which corruption and big incidents did not happen even terrorist attack happened.
“Meanwhile, feminist activists like Emmeline Pankhurst used the Olympics as a platform for suffrage, vowing to interrupt the Games if organizers refused to allow women to participate. They used guerrilla tactics like shoveling up golf courses and leaving behind messages like “No Votes, No Golf.”
Politics and conglomerate
avery brundage was president in olympic committee for long time. his relationship was good with indonesia and china. once he said “Sports cannot be separated from politics. Therefore, let us now work for a sports association on the basis of politics. We do not want to put on any masks; let us create a sports association on the basis of the new emerging forces.”
“Avery Brundage once said: “Business is business and sport is sport. It is impossible to mix them.”Ueberroth and his allies punctured this fiction. As the sport sociologist Alan Tomlinson notes, the 1984 Games were “the pivotal moment when the Olympics were steered down a path toward their Disneyfication,” and not just because they transpired in LA.”“In the early 1970s, 98 percent of the Olympic movement’s revenue came from auctioning television rights.93 TOP changed this. Today only about half of the IOC’s revenue comes from granting television rights, while corporate sponsorship makes up 45 percent and ticket sales only 5 percent.” The Olympic do not merely symbolise or reflect capitalism; they actively produce it.
Displacement( during Beijing Olympic)
“Deploying dubious administrative measures, the government vacuumed up 8,400 acres for the Games, One Beijing resident, after being evicted from his home and receiving meager compensation, told the Washington Post, “Chinese people do support the Olympics, but we also need reasonable compensation.” He added: “The government always blames outsiders for politicizing the Olympics, but domestically they make the Olympics a political issue. We don’t believe that our houses were torn down for the Olympics. The real purpose is moneymaking.”
Communicate capitalism
How Communicative capitalism like Facebook or social sites captures or politics interventions, formatting them as contributions to its circuits of affect and entertainment—we feel political, involved, like contributors who really matter.” She adds, “The intense circulation of content in communicative capitalism occludes the antagonism necessary for politics, multiplying antagonism into myriad minor issues and events.”
Despite becoming suppliars of print media and electronic media, it is a big deal that the activist remains in the stream.
Mankind
“Beyond this, the Rio Olympics rely on an army of volunteer labor. The 70,000 unpaid volunteers at the Games will save some $100 million, and that’s if volunteers were merely paid minimum wage. Moreover, volunteers get free meals and transportation only on days they work. They must pay their own way to Rio and find their own accommodations in the Cidade Maravilhosa, which is also marvelously expensive. When pressed about the issue, Christophe Dubi, the Olympic Games executive director, replied, “It is about the spirit of volunteerism.”“Power isn’t simply a matter of getting people to do things in your interest; it’s also about keeping certain items off the agenda entirely and reinforcing values that limit the scope of debate.”
“Women were not allowed to become IOC members until 1981.”now in 2015 “in one hundred IOC members, only twenty-two were women.”
“Meanwhile the group has managed to maintain its aristocratic flavor. In 2015, ten members were barons, princes, princesses, dukes, or sheikhs. The IOC needs to broaden its membership, especially with respect to class and gender. ”
Social movement
Through this book, you get to know how the intention of the Olympics was before and what is it now. Why and after how many movements were girls included in this? What was the role of LGBTQ, and social activist specially with those who were working for black lives existence and .How Olympic lost its existence and became commercial by resorting to corporate and no such game happened later in which corruption and big incidents did not happen even terrorist attack happened.
“Meanwhile, feminist activists like Emmeline Pankhurst used the Olympics as a platform for suffrage, vowing to interrupt the Games if organizers refused to allow women to participate. They used guerrilla tactics like shoveling up golf courses and leaving behind messages like “No Votes, No Golf.”
Politics and conglomerate
avery brundage was president in olympic committee for long time. his relationship was good with indonesia and china. once he said “Sports cannot be separated from politics. Therefore, let us now work for a sports association on the basis of politics. We do not want to put on any masks; let us create a sports association on the basis of the new emerging forces.”
“Avery Brundage once said: “Business is business and sport is sport. It is impossible to mix them.”Ueberroth and his allies punctured this fiction. As the sport sociologist Alan Tomlinson notes, the 1984 Games were “the pivotal moment when the Olympics were steered down a path toward their Disneyfication,” and not just because they transpired in LA.”“In the early 1970s, 98 percent of the Olympic movement’s revenue came from auctioning television rights.93 TOP changed this. Today only about half of the IOC’s revenue comes from granting television rights, while corporate sponsorship makes up 45 percent and ticket sales only 5 percent.” The Olympic do not merely symbolise or reflect capitalism; they actively produce it.
Displacement( during Beijing Olympic)
“Deploying dubious administrative measures, the government vacuumed up 8,400 acres for the Games, One Beijing resident, after being evicted from his home and receiving meager compensation, told the Washington Post, “Chinese people do support the Olympics, but we also need reasonable compensation.” He added: “The government always blames outsiders for politicizing the Olympics, but domestically they make the Olympics a political issue. We don’t believe that our houses were torn down for the Olympics. The real purpose is moneymaking.”
Communicate capitalism
How Communicative capitalism like Facebook or social sites captures or politics interventions, formatting them as contributions to its circuits of affect and entertainment—we feel political, involved, like contributors who really matter.” She adds, “The intense circulation of content in communicative capitalism occludes the antagonism necessary for politics, multiplying antagonism into myriad minor issues and events.”
Despite becoming suppliars of print media and electronic media, it is a big deal that the activist remains in the stream.
Mankind
“Beyond this, the Rio Olympics rely on an army of volunteer labor. The 70,000 unpaid volunteers at the Games will save some $100 million, and that’s if volunteers were merely paid minimum wage. Moreover, volunteers get free meals and transportation only on days they work. They must pay their own way to Rio and find their own accommodations in the Cidade Maravilhosa, which is also marvelously expensive. When pressed about the issue, Christophe Dubi, the Olympic Games executive director, replied, “It is about the spirit of volunteerism.”“Power isn’t simply a matter of getting people to do things in your interest; it’s also about keeping certain items off the agenda entirely and reinforcing values that limit the scope of debate.”
“Women were not allowed to become IOC members until 1981.”now in 2015 “in one hundred IOC members, only twenty-two were women.”
“Meanwhile the group has managed to maintain its aristocratic flavor. In 2015, ten members were barons, princes, princesses, dukes, or sheikhs. The IOC needs to broaden its membership, especially with respect to class and gender. ”
December 20, 2019
the tightly condensed history of the first half of the book is quite good. Not so the way the author wears his New Left colours on his sleeve in the second half, and how he seems to condemn the Old Left, almost as much as he attacks neoliberalism. There is far too much about Vancouver and London and far too little about everything else
January 22, 2020
Boykoff covers the entire history of the modern Olympic games with a critical leftist perspective. I appreciate the attempt to tell the other side of the story, so to speak, but it's no enough to turn it into a coherent story. It reads more like a collection of anecdotes.
There were bits that were interesting--in particular the origin of the importance of "amateurism." The original definition of amateur used in the Victorian era excluded anyone who made a living with his body, by working in the fields, in a factory, etc. this kept the riff raff out of the leisure class's sports. The first Olympics only excluded athletes who were paid for their sport. Along with the exclusion of women and the racist exhibitions and policies, Boykoff details how the early Olympics was a project of reinforcing existing social hierarchies.
The middle section is largely about how the IOC struggled (and failed) to keep the Olympics free of political controversy in light of the global disputes and human rights abuses of member nations. There's definitely something interesting to be written about the tension between the inclusive, universalism ideal of the Olympics and the reality that the participating athletes and countries will inevitably clash over issues of racial equality, etc. and be embroiled in hot and cold wars and trying to remain "neutral" often in actuality means taking a side. But I'm not sure this is that book.
Finally, Boykoff ends his book with a description of recent games and the then-upcoming Rio games. This section is the most coherent and original. His thesis is that the Olympic games in their current incarnation can be described as something called "Celebration Capitalism." Large projects where private interest reap large financial rewards and public resources are used to eliminate financial risk for those private interests. And in the end, the public always ends up paying way more than projected. He also gets into the rise of private/public surveillance in host cities and the repression by the host government of dissent by locals.
This is interspersed with one-off riffs on environmental issues, transgender and intersex athlete issues, etc. I think one problem with this book is that events are presented mostly in chronological order, and a more thematic organization could have helped.
There were bits that were interesting--in particular the origin of the importance of "amateurism." The original definition of amateur used in the Victorian era excluded anyone who made a living with his body, by working in the fields, in a factory, etc. this kept the riff raff out of the leisure class's sports. The first Olympics only excluded athletes who were paid for their sport. Along with the exclusion of women and the racist exhibitions and policies, Boykoff details how the early Olympics was a project of reinforcing existing social hierarchies.
The middle section is largely about how the IOC struggled (and failed) to keep the Olympics free of political controversy in light of the global disputes and human rights abuses of member nations. There's definitely something interesting to be written about the tension between the inclusive, universalism ideal of the Olympics and the reality that the participating athletes and countries will inevitably clash over issues of racial equality, etc. and be embroiled in hot and cold wars and trying to remain "neutral" often in actuality means taking a side. But I'm not sure this is that book.
Finally, Boykoff ends his book with a description of recent games and the then-upcoming Rio games. This section is the most coherent and original. His thesis is that the Olympic games in their current incarnation can be described as something called "Celebration Capitalism." Large projects where private interest reap large financial rewards and public resources are used to eliminate financial risk for those private interests. And in the end, the public always ends up paying way more than projected. He also gets into the rise of private/public surveillance in host cities and the repression by the host government of dissent by locals.
This is interspersed with one-off riffs on environmental issues, transgender and intersex athlete issues, etc. I think one problem with this book is that events are presented mostly in chronological order, and a more thematic organization could have helped.
November 15, 2022
An excellent critique that really puts to bed the myth that hosting events like the Olympics benefits the general populace of the host cities. Over riding this is the fact that the public purse covers the risk while the private sector takes all the profit- basically socialism for the rich. It also illustrates how winning an Olympic bid is an open invitation to militarise policing and surveillance and once this happens there is no going back.
Boykoff also highlights how "keep politics out of sport" is a ridiculous slogan, since at the very heart of it, a decision to bid to host an Olympics is political. Also while the IOC members were delighted by the displays put on by the Nazis in 1936, they were apoplectic with rage around Carlos and Smith's brave protests in 1968 and took action.
This will be uncomfortable reading for many, particularly those twee centrists in the UK who elevated London 2012 to the heights of some sort of utopia, ignoring the upheaval and housing clearances that preceeded it (whoch they would have protested had it been in any other country), but it encapsulates the whole idea of "celebration capitalism" where style overrides substance, and many buy into the myths around spectacle. Overall a well structured peek behind the curtains, to see how the sausages are made (to mix my metaphors) but rather than face up to the issues highlighted, it will just have many shrugging their shoulders and writing it of as a "lefty polemic" and get back to watching millionaires kick footballs about and assuming it is perfectly natural to hate other humans simply because they support another team.
Boykoff also highlights how "keep politics out of sport" is a ridiculous slogan, since at the very heart of it, a decision to bid to host an Olympics is political. Also while the IOC members were delighted by the displays put on by the Nazis in 1936, they were apoplectic with rage around Carlos and Smith's brave protests in 1968 and took action.
This will be uncomfortable reading for many, particularly those twee centrists in the UK who elevated London 2012 to the heights of some sort of utopia, ignoring the upheaval and housing clearances that preceeded it (whoch they would have protested had it been in any other country), but it encapsulates the whole idea of "celebration capitalism" where style overrides substance, and many buy into the myths around spectacle. Overall a well structured peek behind the curtains, to see how the sausages are made (to mix my metaphors) but rather than face up to the issues highlighted, it will just have many shrugging their shoulders and writing it of as a "lefty polemic" and get back to watching millionaires kick footballs about and assuming it is perfectly natural to hate other humans simply because they support another team.
November 29, 2020
This is a lefty critique not of the concept of the Olympics as an international celebration of the concept of sport, but as a capitalist event series that destroys local communities and municipal fiscal health with little sustainable gain to show for it at the local level. It's like a book version of the articles that crop up like mushrooms two weeks before every Olympics, and I'm glad it's compiled here to have the (pretty damning) throughlines visible in one place. He does include a number of suggestions toward the end, but I wish they were sharper and more specific, perhaps tying them to ideas from other megaevent organizers. I liked the structure of going through the history Games by Games, but would have liked a more consistent narrative structure to make comparative learning a little easier, and occasionally a tighter edit would have made he writing sharper.
May 30, 2023
A definite must read for people like me who love watching sports, especially mega events, but also hate the IOC and everything about the process. I wish there were updates as this book was published in 2016.
February 21, 2018
There’s great information in this book, but about halfway through it the narrative gets bogged down in minutia.
December 16, 2021
The history presented in the first half was great, the political arguments in the second half were impassioned but not particularly interesting.
June 9, 2016
Power Games chronicles the litany of abuses that that the Olympics has inflicted upon the cities that have hosted it. From corrupt bidding process to commercialization to environmental abuses and human rights glossing over the Olympics’ ugly warts are displayed for all. The book beings with a history of the Olympics and the racist start for the games to show that white athletes could beat the various non civilized peoples of the world. As the games began to get more organized and more inclusive the main debates centered around the professionalization of the athletes and keeping them from being paid thus ensuring a class divide. The next phase is the modern phase where big money is made off the Olympics and corporations provide much of the funding and the cities that host lose out. Huge public debt, securitization of police forces, and useless buildings are all the hallmarks of holding the Olympics today. It is little wonder that primarily counties who are authoritarian keep winning the bids as most democracies look at the cost and the people say No! Boykoff does a good job of making his case in a readable fashion and for those interested in the history of the politics in the game and willing to have their image of the perfect Olympics shattered than this is a great book.
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August 8, 2016http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2016/0...
Review by Jacqueline Kennelly
As all eyes turn to Rio in anticipation of the 2016 Summer Olympics, those of us who have even the smallest inkling of the negative impact of the Games on host city residents can only shudder.
In light of the typical parade of maudlin media tributes to athletic prowess and Olympic success, it is refreshing to read Jules Boykoff's brisk and powerful account of political resistance to the Olympic behemoth, past and present, Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics.
Spanning from the start of the modern Olympics in 1896 to pre-Games resistance in Rio, this book provides a much-needed antidote to the recurrent and nauseating claim by the International Olympic Committee that the Olympics are not political. Because the Games are political, and always have been.
Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2016/0...
Review by Jacqueline Kennelly
As all eyes turn to Rio in anticipation of the 2016 Summer Olympics, those of us who have even the smallest inkling of the negative impact of the Games on host city residents can only shudder.
In light of the typical parade of maudlin media tributes to athletic prowess and Olympic success, it is refreshing to read Jules Boykoff's brisk and powerful account of political resistance to the Olympic behemoth, past and present, Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics.
Spanning from the start of the modern Olympics in 1896 to pre-Games resistance in Rio, this book provides a much-needed antidote to the recurrent and nauseating claim by the International Olympic Committee that the Olympics are not political. Because the Games are political, and always have been.
Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2016/0...
January 27, 2022
An interesting look at what the various governments as well as the IOC did to bring about the games in certain cities. I was aware of some of what happened at certain winter & summer games, but I was surprised to read that even ones I thought above board weren't necessarily so. As the book was written back in 2016 I'd be curious to know the author's thoughts on the postponement of the Tokyo Games and the controversies surrounding the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics.
June 18, 2017
The book charts the brief history of the Olympics through to the ever increasing costs to stage a modern games. I wonder how long if the IOC does not reform fewer and fewer cities will want to host the games.
Worth a read
Worth a read
February 8, 2022
This was a pretty interesting and pretty good book.
A book that really makes you think...
Very well researched by Boykoff.
Would recommend it!
Enjoying my Olympic reads lately. My eyes are glued to books these weeks!
4.3/5
A book that really makes you think...
Very well researched by Boykoff.
Would recommend it!
Enjoying my Olympic reads lately. My eyes are glued to books these weeks!
4.3/5
June 17, 2017
I have reviewed Power Games for
Red Pepper.
February 12, 2025
Unbelievable
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews