TY - JOUR
T1 - The geopolitics of sport beyond soft power
T2 - event ethnography and the 2016 cycling world championships in qatar
AU - Koch, Natalie
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was also supported by the Qatar Olympic Council and Syracuse University’s Office of Sponsored Programs.
Funding Information:
This research was also supported by the Qatar Olympic Council and Syracuse University?s Office of Sponsored Programs. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers and the 2017 Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting. I am grateful for the feedback provided by participants at both conferences as well as Neha Vora and Ingrid Nelson.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2018/12/2
Y1 - 2018/12/2
N2 - State leaders in the Arabian Peninsula have increasingly sought to host globalized sporting events to broadcast a cosmopolitan and modern image of the region. These efforts are typically interpreted as examples of states exercising ‘soft power’. This article challenges the state-centric assumptions built into the soft power approach by employing an event ethnography of the 2016 UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Doha. Advancing a more grounded geopolitics of elite sport in the Gulf, I examine how geopolitical identity narratives about Qatar, and the Gulf region more broadly, circulate at various scales and through countless contingent encounters at the event. I ask specifically how these identity narratives are constructed and challenged, both materially and discursively by athletes, spectators and urban residents. Sporting events, I argue, are key sites of geopolitical encounter: where subjects and spaces are not predetermined, but actively constituted through people’s interactions in the host cities and countries.
AB - State leaders in the Arabian Peninsula have increasingly sought to host globalized sporting events to broadcast a cosmopolitan and modern image of the region. These efforts are typically interpreted as examples of states exercising ‘soft power’. This article challenges the state-centric assumptions built into the soft power approach by employing an event ethnography of the 2016 UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Doha. Advancing a more grounded geopolitics of elite sport in the Gulf, I examine how geopolitical identity narratives about Qatar, and the Gulf region more broadly, circulate at various scales and through countless contingent encounters at the event. I ask specifically how these identity narratives are constructed and challenged, both materially and discursively by athletes, spectators and urban residents. Sporting events, I argue, are key sites of geopolitical encounter: where subjects and spaces are not predetermined, but actively constituted through people’s interactions in the host cities and countries.
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U2 - 10.1080/17430437.2018.1487403
DO - 10.1080/17430437.2018.1487403
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85054921323
SN - 1743-0437
VL - 21
SP - 2010
EP - 2031
JO - Sport in Society
JF - Sport in Society
IS - 12
ER -