Rachel Elfenbein

Trickle-Up Economics

Rachel Elfenbein — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:29:07 +0000

Mega Profits from Sports Mega-Events Entrench a Legacy of Inequality in 2010

While Canadian protesters shout “Homes, Not Games!” to the Olympic torch procession, the same slogan could be shouted at the opposite end of the world, where this year South Africa will also be hosting a different sport mega-event: the 2010 soccer World Cup.

“The New Opiate of the Masses”: Sport as an Ideological Smokescreen for the Looting of Public Resources

dru — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:25:37 +0000

“The New Opiate of the Masses”: Sport as an Ideological Smokescreen for the Looting of Public Resources

In this article, I will use South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup to illustrate how the risk of an international sporting event is subsidized by the state, and by extension onto its citizens who fund the state and receive and depend on its services. Even though the World Cup occurs under the auspices of FIFA, FIFA externalizes the risk of hosting World Cup by making the hosting nation must pay for the development of infrastructure and services for the event. In this way, FIFA– a multinational corporation– is ensured of profiting from the World Cup, while the countries that host it are not. At the same time, the private sector profits from the state’s risk-taking through the rewarding of government tenders for the construction of sport infrastructure and the delivery of services for the sporting event. Public resources are therefore diverted away from building public infrastructure for healthcare, education, water, sanitation, social services, and transport to building infrastructure for international and domestic consumers. Though soccer is proclaimed to be the “people’s sport”, the hosting of the FIFA World Cup facilitates the capital accumulation process and the widening of the gap between rich and poor on both national and international levels.

Email Address:

rae@sfu.ca

The new opiate of the masses

dawn — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:10:14 +0000

“The New Opiate of the Masses”: Sport as an Ideological Smokescreen for the Looting of Public Resources

About the Author:

I am a student

Email Address:

rae@sfu.ca

One-line bio:

My name is Rachel Elfenbein and I am a PhD student in Sociology at SFU, where I also work as a shop stweard for the teaching support staff in my department. For the past 6.5 years, I have also done popular research and education work with civil society organisations in Southern Africa around issues of youth, gender, occupational healh and safety, and human rights.