Welcoming the World

Governing Hospitality in London's 2012 Olympic Bid1

Bibliographic Data

ID2283500
AuthorsDan Bulley (0000-0003-1624-7617, Queen's University Belfast, corresponding author), Debbie Lisle (0000-0003-3413-5109, Queen's University Belfast)
Year2012
Volume6
Issue2
Pages186-204
Publication date2012-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Political Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1749-5679 • E-ISSN: 1749-5687
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1749-5687.2012.00158.x
OpenAlexW1558708123
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited23

London's successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games presented a diverse, cosmopolitan city opening its arms and “welcoming the world.” This article explores the apparently benign gesture of hospitality contained in London's official candidature files submitted in 2004 and asks how such a promise of inclusiveness is managed. We argue that London's depiction of itself as hospitable to every kind of visitor relies on subtle techniques of governmentality in which the subject positions of “host” and “guest” are imagined and produced in ways that make them more governable. By this, we are not referring to acts of authority, coercion, or discipline that exclude subjects or render them docile bodies within a rigid panoptical city. Rather, we are referring to the delicate ways in which the official bid document imagines and produces the ideal subject positions of host and guest and in so doing enables, encourages, and incentivizes certain behaviors. This analysis of urban welcoming takes us beyond reductive oppositions of hospitality and hostility, inclusion and exclusion, self and other. It focuses instead on how London's inclusive welcome produces a variety of host and guest positions (for example, the “Olympic Family,” volunteers, guest workers), segregates them within the city, and then “conducts their conduct” in the areas of planning, security, transport, accommodation, education, and training. By analyzing the techniques of governmentality at work in London's 2004 bid document, this article foregrounds the enabling form of power driving the city's inclusive welcome and exposes its inherent micropolitics

Hospitality · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Tourism · Doping in Sports · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub