Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
124
Iain Lindsay
Brunel University, U.K.
Defended December 2012
Life in the Shadow of the 2012 Olympics: An Ethnography of the Host Borough of the
London Games
On 6
th
July 2005 the London Olympic bidding committee won the right to host the 2012
Olympic Games. Some seven years later London’s Olympic venues were built on time, Team
GB accumulated an unprecedented medal haul and no significant security incidents occurred.
These outcomes facilitated an understandable positive evaluation of the 2012 Games. It would
be churlish not to be positive; Olympic venues when experienced by spectators during Games
are
breathtaking
. World records and Olympic contests are
exciting
. Olympic narratives that
bond competitor and audience alike are
inclusive
and
unifying
. However, the prevalent belief
that Olympic hosting provides unambiguous benefits to local communities is less sound. The
evaluation of this assumption provides the focus for this inquiry, it follows French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu by considering that ‘one cannot grasp the most profound logic of the social
world unless one becomes immersed in the specificity of an empirical reality’ (
The Field of
Cultural Production
. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993, p. 271). Accordingly, this research
contrasted the rhetoric and reality of 2012 Olympic-delivery via an ethnographic inquiry in
the Olympic borough of Newham. This location is defined as a ‘
non-place
’ wherein the
majority of the Olympic restructuring and events occurred. This research addresses Olympic-
delivery issues of inclusion, exclusion, power relations, ideology and identity,
in doing so it
argues that the relatively short Olympic-delivery time-frame necessitated a divisive
segregation between ‘Olympic’ and ‘non-Olympic’ Newham. Furthermore, it is argued that
2012 Olympic-delivery was orientated towards the needs and goals of Olympic migrants, of
various description, rather than enhancing the lives of those living within a community that
was rife with crime, poverty and deprivation. Consequently, this research considers that the
Olympic milieu disseminated the capitalistic norms and values to global, national and local
audiences. The outcome of such processes facilitated a re-negotiation of place-identity and
place ownership within Newham that was orientated toward attracting a future affluent
populace whilst concomitantly vilifying the pre-Games community. This research concludes
that such attempts to re-mould Newham into a post-Olympic utopia where prosperous and
educated families, to follow the Newham council strap line, ‘live, work and stay’ are based
