Olympic Idea Nowadays - Perspectives and insights (original) (raw)
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The Olympic idea nowadays. perceptions and insights
2015
Olympic values are the differential element of the Olympic Movement. Today, these dynamic values are subject to rapid changes. Understanding the structure of values from a social and cultural perspective is necessary for all actors and institutions related to Olympism and the Olympic Games. Through this academic project, a research on the structure of values associated to the Olympics has developed in order to identify which values are threatened today, and what values are changing change or remain constant with time. And also taking into account the proposals included in the IOC Olympic Agenda 2020, presented as a strategic roadmap for the future of the Olympic Movement. The book includes the contribution of 23 academics and experts in the field of Olympic studies sharing their reflections on the evolution of the Olympic Movement since Sydney 2000 and the impacts, contributions or changes posed by the London 2012 and Sochi 2014 Olympics.
2020
This paper analyses the recent editions of Olympic Summer Games. It examines the changes and political, economical and cultural dimensions of mega-events, underlining the links among life, culture, mediascapes and cultural identities. The analysis starts with London Olympic Games 2012 and continues with the Games in Rio 2016: the primary changes in urban infrastructures and the social, political and economical transformation of the two cities together with the great impact of Olympic ceremonies in media images are introduced in the paper, with a particular reference to the symbolic representations of opening and closing ceremonies. The above mentioned events are an imaginative tour, which links knowledge, heritage, history and global values, demonstrating the interrelation between sport and other social spheres. Sport mega-events seem to create infinite world, connected with global and local culture. The opening and closing ceremonies represent also new symbolic values, and some ‘ec...
The Modern Olympic Games Movement
This paper looks into the issue of the origin of the Modern Olympic Movement through the various inferences gained by the interpretations of the intentions and actions of its founder – Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Segregated into three distinct sections – with each showing a diverse facet of Coubertin’s personality and his resultant intention, leading to a consequent distinguishable character of the Olympic Games – it is followed, at the very end, by an evaluated deduction of it being true (and, fighting for it) to the noble, establishing motive of – being a medium of interaction across divides.
Thinking of Olympic Studies: Research, synergies and convergence of cultures on Olympism
Sport Libraries Worldwide-Exampleas and & Best Practices, 2014
This paper discusses the role of the Olympic Studies Centre at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (CEO-UAB) as a research, dissemination, and documentation center, where these three main activities feedback on, and mutually enrich, each other. One of the biggest challenges of research on this subject is to combine multidisciplinarity with transdisciplinarity. While a multidisciplinary approach is already taken, a transdisciplinary approach would allow for a greater integration of methodologies and perspectives to enrich the knowledge thus created. Key Olympic studies topics now, and in the near future, are ecology and sustainability, education in values, the need to bring youths closer to sports practice, and gender-related issues in the Olympic Movement. Over the coming years, there will be new challenges connected with the governance of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and with an equitable distribution of power within the Olympic Family. The modern Olympic Movement has developed on the basis of late 19th-century Western and European cultural parameters and a Eurocentric view of the world. Traditional Western thinking and all of its cultural derivatives (objects, institutions, imaginaries) have been constructed in a linear, minimally interconnected and very hierarchical way, with a center and a periphery and, on occasions, very little flexibility. Modern Western thinking, shaped by a manifest individualistic and rational sense of existence, has led to major leaps forward in human progress thanks to scientific advances and the development of democracy and human rights, all of which are inseparable from the idea of progress. The East, however, draws its inspiration from other sources. Its way of thinking is circular; everything is relative, nothing is central or peripheral and everything changes, though the essence remains the same. It also has a more collective view of existence. The globalised world has not yet managed to erase the differences between these two major ways of viewing the world, which leave their mark on countless manifestations of daily life. An Olympic Movement that really wants to be universal should seek out a blend of East and West. However, that the West alone should adapt to and integrate some of the parameters of the East is one thing, and the other is that the East should endeavor to make the most of the undeniable achievements of Western cultures, especially on matters of democratic rights.
The Cultural Dimension of the Olympic Games
The Olympic Games are recognized worldwide as the largest sports mega-event certainly the event attracting the largest amount of media coverage globally. However, beyond a sports event, the Olympics is also a cultural phenomenon that can have considerable infl uence over local, national and international cultural policy. This cultural dimension tends to be represented by the media via popular ceremonial events, such as the Olympic torch relay that precedes the start of the Games, and the opening and closing ceremonies. Beyond these highly recognized aspects, the Games also incorporate a cultural and arts programme that is playing a growing role in defi ning or contributing to respective Olympic host cities' cultural policies, the production of local symbols and the reinforcement of cultural values. Since Barcelona 1992, this programme has become offi cially characterized as a four-year Cultural Olympiad. However, the Cultural Olympiad has failed to attract signifi cant media attention to date and has remained one of the least visible and most misunderstood aspects of the Olympic experience.