Welcome to the first edition of the new guest speaker series Breaking Barriers by the The Liverpool Centre for Olympic Research on Inclusion (LCORI)! In this session, we welcome Dr. Adam Talbot from the University of West Scotland, where he is a lecturer in the School of Business and Creative Industries. Dr. Talbot has published widely on events management and particularly on around topics of inclusion.
This presentation, drawing together the findings of several projects on sport mega-events, human rights, and social movements argues that we are currently witnessing what Neil Stammers’ calls the paradox of institutionalisation with regard to safeguarding human rights at sport mega-events. This paradox explains how the incorporation of policies and procedures related to human rights can result in rights becoming a tool of power, not a challenge to it.
By exploring the social movement ecosystem related to sport mega-events, the talk explores how struggle concepts among grassroots social movements have been distorted through engagements between human rights advocacy groups and mega-event owners. Across examples from recent summer Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups, this serves to illustrate how limited and relatively superficial engagement with human rights has been used by event owners to whitewash critiques of mega-events by activists in host cities. This focuses in particular on the limitations of the UN Guiding Principles on Human Rights and calls for a more comprehensive approach to safeguarding human rights.
Online participation is free of charge, but you need to reserve a spot on this Eventbrite page.
Any questions? Ask Marcus Hansen, M.H.Hansen@ljmu.ac.uk.
