Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7tmb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-03T22:08:30.965Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bringing the Circus to Town: An Anatomy of the Olympic Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

William W. Kelly
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Summer Olympic Games is the most watched sports mega-event in the world. It is also the costliest, the most politically precarious, and the most strangely constructed sports mega-event on the planet. At the 2020 Games in Tokyo, athletes and spectators alike will be focused on the elite bodies in motion, in agonistic contests and aesthetic displays of excellence and effort. Behind the scenes, however, is a less apparent but deeply powerful institutional and ideological apparatus—the Olympic Movement—that sets the stage, establishes the rules, and reaps many of the benefits of this quadrennial spectacle. My essay offers an anatomy of the Olympic Movement (OM) through the five ways in which it has come to dominate global sport: through the International Olympic Committee as the apex of a transnational governance structure; through the OM management of the Olympic brand as the most lucrative in global sports; through Olympism as the OM's philosophy of universal sports humanism; through OM's power to define and defend multiple subjectivities—Olympic sports, Olympic genders, Olympic citizens, and Olympic bodies; and through the ability of the OM to orchestrate the rhythms of global sport through Olympic temporal regimes. It would appear from these powers that the OM is unassailable and unaccountable, yet the essay concludes by arguing that the OM is an example (perhaps a rare example) of how powerful interests can be made vulnerable to what we can call “rhetorical self-entrapment” and the revenge of unintended effects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 5 , March 2020 , e3
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2020

References

Boykoff, Jules. 2016. Power games: A political history of the Olympics. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Brittain, Ian, and Aaron Beacom, eds. 2018. Palgrave Handbook of Paralympic Studies. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Thomas F. 2012. “The Olympics as Sovereign Subject Maker.” In Watching the Olympics: Politics, power and representation, edited by Peter, John and, Sugden Tomlinson, Alan, 55-68. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
DaCosta, Lamartine. 2006. “A never-ending story: The philosophical controversy over Olympism.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 33 (4): 157–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chappelet, Jean-Loup, and Bayle, Emmanuel. 2016. “From Olympic administration to Olympic governance: Challenges for our century.” Sport in Society 19 (6): 737–738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Featherstone, Mike, and Tomoko, Tamari. 2019. “Olympic Games in Japan and East Asia: Images and Legacies: An Introduction.” International Journal of Japanese Sociology 28 (1): 3–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geeraets, Vincent. 2018. “Ideology, Doping and the Spirit of Sport.” Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 12 (3): 255–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, John Robert, and Gold, Margaret M., eds. 2017. Olympic cities: City agendas, planning, and the world's games, 1896-2020. Third edition. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sachie, Hamada 浜田 幸絵 2018. 〈東京オリンピック〉の誕生: 一九四〇年から二〇二〇年へ [Formation of the “Tokyo Olympics”: From 1940 to 2020]. Tokyo: 吉川弘文館Google Scholar
Hoberman, John M. 1986. The Olympic crisis: sports, politics, and the moral order. New Rochelle, NY: Arstide D. Caratzas.Google Scholar
Holt, Richard C., and Dino Ruta, eds. 2015. Routledge handbook of sport and legacy. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horne, John, and Whannel, Garry. 2012. Understanding the Olympics. Abingdon [England] and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houlihan, Barrie. 2012. “Doping and the Olympics: Rights, responsibilities and accountabilities (Watching the athletes)” In Watching the Olympics: Politics, power and representation, edited by Peter, John and, Sugden Tomlinson, Alan, 165-181. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Howe, P. David. 2012. “Children of a lesser God: Paralympics and high-performance sport” In Watching the Olympics: Politics, power and representation, edited by Peter, John and, Sugden Tomlinson, Alan, 166-181. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
International Olympic Committee. 2019. Olympic Charter. June 26.Google Scholar
International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (TOCOPG), Host City Contract.Google Scholar
Yuji, Ishizaka 石坂 友司 2018. 現代オリンピックの発展と危機 1940-2020 [Development and crisis in the modern Olympics, 1940-2020]. Kyoto: 人文書院.Google Scholar
Yuji, Ishizaka 石坂 友司, and Hideki, Matsubayashi 松林秀樹. 2018. 一九六四年東京オリンピックは何を生んだのか [What did the 1964 Tokyo Olympics bring forth?]. Tokyo: 青弓社.Google Scholar
Jansen, Joost, Oonk, Gijsbert, and Engbersen, Godfried. 2018. “Nationality swapping in the Olympic field: Towards the marketization of citizenship?” Citizenship Studies 22 (5): 523–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, William W. 2013a. “Japan's embrace of soccer: Mutable ethnic players and flexible soccer citizenship in the new East Asian sports order.” International Journal of the History of Sport 30 (11): 1235–1246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, William W. 2013b. “Adversity, acceptance, and accomplishment: Female athletes in Japan's modern sportsworld.” Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science 2 (1): 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, William W. 2017. “Sport and the artifice of nature and technology: Bio-technological entities at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.” Global Perspectives on Japan 1 (1): 155–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerr, Roslyn, and Obel, C.. 2018. “Reassembling sex: reconsidering sex segregation policies in sport.” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 10 (2): 305–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidd, Bruce. 2010. “Human rights and the Olympic Movement after Beijing.” Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics 13 (5): 901–910.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kietlinski, Robin. 2011. Japanese women and sport: Beyond baseball and sumo, Globalizing Sport Studies. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krieger, Jörg, Pieper, Lindsay Parks, and Ritchie, Ian. 2019. “Sex, drugs and science: the IOC's and IAAF's attempts to control fairness in sport.” Sport in Society 22 (9): 1555–1573.Google Scholar
Lenskyj, Helen Jefferson. 2008. Olympic industry resistance: Challenging Olympic power and propaganda. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Lenskyj, Helen Jefferson, and Stephen Wagg, eds. 2012. Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacAloon, John J. 2006. This great symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the origins of the modern Olympic Games. London: Routledge. Second revised edition.Google Scholar
McFee, Graham. 2012. “The promise of Olym;pism.” In Watching the Olympics: Politics, power and representation, edited by Peter, John and, Sugden Tomlinson, Alan, 36–54. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Miah, Andy. 2010. “Towards the transhuman athlete: Therapy, non-therapy and enhancement.” Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics 13 (2):221 - 233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naul, Roland. 2008. Olympic education. Oxford: Meyer and Meyer.Google Scholar
Niehaus, Andreas, and Max Seinsch, eds. 2007. Olympic Japan: Ideals and realities of (Inter)nationalism, Bibliotheca Academica Soziologie. Wurzburg: Ergon Verlag.Google Scholar
Pieper, Lindsay Parks. 2016. Sex testing: Gender policing in women's sports, Sport and society. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sailors, Pam R. 2016. “Off the beaten path: Should women compete against men?” Sport in Society 19 (8-9): 1125–1137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schanen, Naomi. 2016. “Celebrating Japan's multicultural Olympians: Meet the athletes flying the flag and challenging traditional views of what it is to be Japanese.” Japan Times, August 17.Google Scholar
Shachar, Ayelet. 2011. “Picking Winners: Olympic Citizenship and the Global Race for Talent.” Yale Law Journal 120 (8 (2088)): 523–574.Google Scholar
Satoshi, Shimizu 清水諭, ed. 2004. [Olympic Studies: Discrepant Experiences and Politics]. Tokyo: せりか書房.Google Scholar
Schantz, Otto J. 2016. “Coubertin's humanism facing post-humanism - implications for the future of the Olympic Games.” Sport in Society 19 (6): 840–856.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sugden, John Peter, and Alan Tomlinson, eds. 2012. Watching the Olympics: Politics, power and representation. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Kevin, and Wamsley, Kevin B., eds. 2005. Global Olympics: Historical and sociological studies of the modern games, Research in the Sociology of Sport. Amsterdam and Boston: Elsevier JAI.Google Scholar
Zirin, Dave. 2007. “The Olympics: Gold, guns, and graft.” In his Welcome to the Terrordome, 126–147. Chicago: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar