Resisting Olympic evictions

Resisting Olympic evictions
Author: Adam Talbot
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2024-05-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1526156288

By tracing the way evictions in a small community of around 600 families made news headlines all over the world, this book explores how activists in Rio protested against evictions at the Rio 2016 Olympics. They constructed the favela as safe, welcoming and homely, directly contesting the myth of marginality – the notion of favelas as havens of crime and poverty which is used to justify slum clearance. In doing so they were showcasing how a different kind of informal community rooted in security and belonging is possible, through a range of social events and other actions. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in Brazil, this book explores how this vision was constructed through collective action, transmitted around the world through both social and traditional media and how it lives on in the Evictions Museum that was created through the process.

Rio 2016

Rio 2016
Author: Andrew Zimbalist
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2017-09-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815732465

" A clear-eyed, critical examination of the social, political, and economic costs of hosting the 2016 summer Olympics The selection of Rio de Janeiro as the site of the summer 2016 Olympic Games set off jubilant celebrations in Brazil—and created enormous expectations for economic development and the advancement of Brazil as a major player on the world stage. Although the games were held without major incident, the economic, environmental, political, and social outcomes for Brazil ranged from disappointing to devastating. Corruption scandals trimmed the fat profits that many local real estate developers had envisioned, and the local government was driven into bankruptcy. At the other end of the economic spectrum, some 77,000 residents of Rio's poorest neighborhoods—the favelas—were evicted and forced to move, in many cases as far as 20 or 30 miles to the west. Hosting the games ultimately cost Brazil $20 billion, with little positive to show for the investment. Rio 2016 assembles the views of leading experts on Brazil and the Olympics into a clear-eyed assessment of the impact of the games on Brazil in general and on the lives of Cariocas, as Rio's residents are known. Edited by sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, the other contributors include Juliana Barbassa, Jules Boykoff, Jamil Chade, Stephen Essex, Renata Latuf, and Theresa Williamson. "

No Boston Olympics

No Boston Olympics
Author: Chris Dempsey
Publisher: University Press of New England
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2017-05-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1512600709

In 2013 and 2014, some of Massachusetts' wealthiest and most powerful individuals hatched an audacious plan to bring the 2024 Summer Olympics to Boston. Like their counterparts in cities around the world, Boston's Olympic boosters promised political leaders, taxpayers, and the media that the Games would deliver incalculable benefits and require little financial support from the public. Yet these advocates refused to share the details of their bid and only grudgingly admitted, when pressed, that their plan called for billions of dollars in construction of unneeded venues. To win the bid, the public would have to guarantee taxpayer funds to cover cost overruns, which have plagued all modern Olympic Games. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) chose Boston 2024's bid over that of other American cities in January 2015-and for a time it seemed inevitable that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would award the Games to Boston 2024. No Boston Olympics is the story of how an ad hoc, underfunded group of diverse and engaged citizens joined together to challenge and ultimately derail Boston's boosters, the USOC, and the IOC. Chris Dempsey was cochair of No Boston Olympics, the group that first voiced skepticism, demanded accountability, and catalyzed dissent. Andrew Zimbalist is a world expert on the economics of sports, and the leading researcher on the hidden costs of hosting mega-events such as the Olympics and the World Cup. Together, they tell Boston's story, while providing a blueprint for citizens who seek to challenge costly, wasteful, disruptive, and risky Olympic bids in their own cities.

Theory of Capital Development

Theory of Capital Development
Author: Paul M. Sweezy
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 1964
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 085345079X

Since its first publication in 1942, this book has become the classic analytical study of Marxist economics. Written by an economist who was a master of modern academic theory as well as Marxist literature, it has been recognized as the ideal textbook in its subject. Comprehensive, lucid, authoritative, it has not been challenged or even approached by any later study.

Evictions and the Right to Housing

Evictions and the Right to Housing
Author: International Development Research Centre (Canada)
Publisher: IDRC
Total Pages: 277
Release: 1998
Genre: City planning and redevelopment law
ISBN: 0889368619

Evictions and the Right to Housing: Experience from Canada, Chile, the Dominican Republic, South Africa, and South Korea

Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage

Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage
Author: Veysel Apaydin i
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2020-02-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787354849

Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage focuses on the importance of memory and heritage for individual and group identity, and for their sense of belonging. It aims to expose the motives and discourses related to the destruction of memory and heritage during times of war, terror, sectarian conflict and through capitalist policies. It is within these affected spheres of cultural heritage where groups and communities ascribe values, develop memories, and shape their collective identity.

Designing the Olympics

Designing the Olympics
Author: Jilly Traganou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2016-04-14
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1317226364

Designing the Olympics claims that the Olympic Games provide opportunities to reflect on the relationship between design, national identity, and citizenship. The "Olympic design milieu" fans out from the construction of the Olympic city and the creation of emblems, mascots, and ceremonies, to the consumption, interpretation, and appropriation of Olympic artifacts from their conception to their afterlife. Besides products that try to achieve consensus and induce civic pride, the "Olympic design milieu" also includes processes that oppose the Olympics and their enforcement. The book examines the graphic design program for Tokyo 1964, architecture and urban plans for Athens 2004, brand design for London 2012, and practices of subversive appropriation and sociotechnical action in counter-Olympic movements since the 1960s. It explores how the Olympics shape the physical, legal and emotional contours of a host nation and its position in the world; how the Games are contested by a broader social spectrum within and beyond the nation; and how, throughout these encounters, design plays a crucial role. Recognizing the presence of multiple actors, the book investigates the potential of design in promoting equitable political participation in the Olympic context.

Brazil's Dance with the Devil

Brazil's Dance with the Devil
Author: Dave Zirin
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2014-05-05
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1608464334

One of the Boston Globe’s Best Sports Books of the Year: “Incisive, heartbreaking, important and even funny” (Jeremy Schaap, New York Times–bestselling author of Cinderella Man). The people of Brazil celebrated when it was announced that they were hosting the World Cup—the world’s most-viewed athletic tournament—in 2014 and the 2016 Summer Olympics. But as the events were approaching, ordinary Brazilians were holding the country’s biggest protest marches in decades. Sports journalist Dave Zirin traveled to Brazil to find out why. In a rollicking read that travels from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the fabled Maracanã Stadium to the halls of power in Washington, DC, Zirin examines Brazilians’ objections to the corruption of the games they love; the toll such events take on impoverished citizens; and how taking to the streets opened up an international conversation on the culture, economics, and politics of sports. “Millions will enjoy the World Cup and Olympics, but Zirin justly reminds readers of the real human costs beyond the spectacle.” —Kirkus Reviews

Favela Media Activism

Favela Media Activism
Author: Leonardo Custódio
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2017-07-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1498530001

What explains the engagement of low-income young people in media initiatives for political mobilization and social change in everyday life? Favela Media Activism: Counterpublics for Human Rights in Brazil responds to this question using an in-depth ethnographic and interdisciplinary study about the trajectories in media activism among young residents of low-income and violence-ridden favelas in socially unequal Rio de Janeiro. Leonardo Custódio provides multifaceted analyses of how favela youth engage in individual and collective media activist initiatives despite social class constraints and neoliberal imperatives in their everyday life. This book details processes experienced by young favela residents while becoming individuals who act to challenge and change patterns of discrimination, governmental neglect and drug-related violence. It is an important resource for scholars interested in the nuances of political engagement among marginalized youth in today’s world of hyper-connectivity, information abundance, and the persistence of racial and social inequalities.