RAPID: Impacts of State Security Responses to Global Sporting Events on Marginal Social Groups and their Informal Economies

Williams College, Williamstown MA

Investigators

Abstract

Major international sporting events are seen as highly lucrative economic opportunities that raise the profile of the municipalities and states that host them by opening them to new forms of investment. Governments spend billions on getting the rights to host the event, and the infrastructure necessary to support it. At the same time, these events evoke public and official concerns about a potential inflow of illegal and socially and economically disruptive activities. Local governments respond to such concerns with increased regulation; but what kind of regulation best serves the public interest often is unclear. For both regulators and social scientists, reliable data is hard to collect. This project addresses this problem by using an intensive, ethnographic research methodology to get a ground-level understanding of the problem. Given the massive public expenditures that are made by states and municipalities to host such events, an adequate understanding of the costs and benefits associated with regulation and local-level responses to regulation is critical to assessing the conditions under which such investments improve the economic competitiveness of the localities in which they take place. As the U.S. makes significant contributions to global security efforts, especially around international sporting events, the project will also provide valuable data to law enforcement officials. Dr. Gregory Mitchell of Williams College explores contemporary approaches to policy, governance and state security through of an examination of the security coalitions engaged in the 2014 World Cup and the preparations for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. The researcher will interview policy makers, laborers, and Brazilian and U.S.-based law enforcement with respect to security mobilization efforts. The research relies on conventional ethnographic data collection methods such as participant observation and interviews. Existing research on security practices has tended to focus on security studies and theories of organizational behavior and management. This project seeks to collect empirical evidence about the everyday experiences that are not easily quantified or captured by statistics, nor easily understood at the macro-level of organizational behavior. In so doing, this work will provide clarity and nuance to existing approaches to security data. The project realizes the Cultural Anthropology Program's long term goal to support investigations into the causes and consequences of human mobility and displacement, including migration, economic and cultural globalization, and the impacts of technologies.