In the Shadow of the Spectacle: Security and Policing Legacies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics

• Main Author: Molnar, Adam
• Other Authors: Bennett, Colin J.
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: security; olympics; policing; legacies; Vancouver 2010; militarization; assemblage
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/5362

International sporting events such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cup can affect entire economies, democratic regimes, juridical structures, urban architectures, organizational capacities, and political communities. Whether positively or negatively, undertaking a major sporting event such as the Olympics or FIFA World Cup represents a distinct opportunity for the host-city to embark on the largest ever domestic logistical project ever undertaken within the countries’ borders, which can lead to considerable degrees of short-, medium-, and long-term impacts on a vast array of groups and organizations spanning the public-private divide. Accordingly, the International Olympic Committee has seized on the discourse of legacy to promote and expand the social and political value of infrastructural projects associated with the Games. Over the same period that legacy became a mainstream discourse in the Olympic industry; investment in security, surveillance, and policing infrastructure to protect major sports events simultaneously grew to approximately 20-50% of all expenditures associated with the hosting of an Olympic event. As the discourse of legacy gained currency with Olympic developments, any discourse of security legacies has remained woefully disregarded. Early studies that acknowledge the prevalence of security legacies at major events have focused on event-to-event cases, or have otherwise listed security legacy variables in the absence of any theoretical framework that explains how security governance legacies emerge and endure after the major event has ended. This dissertation presents a robust theoretical framework to address the security governance legacies flowing from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Through empirical case-studies, it details how such investments in security, surveillance, and policing infrastructure often become institutionalized as security governance assemblages that persist after the major event has ended. In particular, the chapters address legacies of redeployable public video surveillance, public-order policing, civilian-military integration, and the legacies of the private security industry. The security governance legacies of the 2010 Games involves significant changes within security, intelligence, and policing assemblages in Vancouver, and Canada as a whole. The dissertation concludes with a discussion on how security governance assemblages from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics might further inform notions of function-creep in the surveillance studies literature. === Graduate === 0615 === 0627