Event and Security: How Public Events are Protected from Disruption

• In Event: 476 - Section on Sociology of Culture Paper Session. Culture and (In)security in the 21st Century

Abstract

How can we make sense of airport-style checkpoints, military style policing, concrete blocks, chains of fences, surveillance cameras, background checks, military equipment, hidden sharpshooters, and undercover and special forces operations surrounding planned global events? This paper proposes a theoretical framework for cross-cultural, comparative, and historical analysis of these dynamics by focusing on the following: the rise of security to the top of collective priorities in anticipation of the event, role of collective and institutional memory, urge to mobilize all possible resources, expectation that all events participants cooperate, purification of location and participants as elimination of danger, creation of a sterile zone of safety, and legacies of this vision of secure social order. The paper draws on examples from the Olympics.

Author

• Vida Bajc, Methodist University