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Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China (The New Media World)
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Manufacturer: Digital Culture Books
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.48
EAN: 9780472050321
ISBN: 047205032X
Label: Digital Culture Books
Manufacturer: Digital Culture Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 424
Publication Date: 2008-02-28
Publisher: Digital Culture Books
Studio: Digital Culture Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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"A major contribution to the study of global events in times of global media. Owning the Olympics tests the possibilities and limits of the concept of 'media events' by analyzing the mega-event of the information age: the Beijing Olympics. . . . A good read from cover to cover."
—Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Asian/Middle Eastern Cultures & Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University From the moment they were announced, the Beijing Games were a major media event and the focus of intense scrutiny and speculation. In contrast to earlier such events, however, the Beijing Games are also unfolding in a newly volatile global media environment that is no longer monopolized by broadcast media. The dramatic expansion of media outlets and the growth of mobile communications technology have changed the nature of media events, making it significantly more difficult to regulate them or control their meaning. This volatility is reflected in the multiple, well-publicized controversies characterizing the run-up to Beijing 2008. According to many Western commentators, the People's Republic of China seized the Olympics as an opportunity to reinvent itself as the "New China"---a global leader in economics, technology, and environmental issues, with an improving human-rights record. But China's maneuverings have also been hotly contested by diverse global voices, including prominent human-rights advocates, all seeking to displace the official story of the Games. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from Chinese studies, human rights, media studies, law, and other fields, Owning the Olympics reveals how multiple entities---including the Chinese Communist Party itself---seek to influence and control the narratives through which the Beijing Games will be understood. digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and its impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating background
Comment: Owning the Olympics provides valuable insights into the non-athletic activities that have made the modern Games a tempting platform for conveying the broadest sort of messages -- of national pride, international brand-name power, and political influence. Academics from the U.S., China, France, the U.K., and Spain step into the real-world controversies over politics, marketing, media coverage, architecture, finances, and the ultimate meaning of the iconic images that the Olympics bring into our living rooms. If you've always wondered what happens behind the scenes to bring the Games to a particular city or broadcasting network, these book pulls back the veil with a fascinating amount of detail and background, although the academic tone may put off some readers. Serious students of contemporary culture will find it a sturdy armchair companion for the 2008 Summer Games.
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Summary: Excellent Overview of China and the Olympics
Comment: This book is a collection of articles on different facets of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, covering various non-sport aspects of the Games. For anyone interested in the development of the Olympics, these articles provide a wealth of information and opinion on topics as wide-spread as Architecture, Public Relations, Economics, and particularly, how the Games can serve as a Media Event for both the host country and non-governmental interests (such as political, environmental and human rights activists. Considered within its pages are such topics as the process of being selected as a host country; the cost to the host country in terms of logistics, security and openness to world media; the place of the Olympics in the development of the host nation itself, and the potential in all these areas for China in particular. Given the historical significance of the Olympics (witness Munich '36 and '72, Tokyo '64, Moscow '80, Seoul '88 to name but a few) and the changes taking place in China and with regards to China's place in the world in the decades to come, this book offers much food for thought. You'll find yourself still thinking about the material long after you put the book down.
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Summary: An excellent examination of the issues surrounding the 2008 Olympics
Comment: Caveat: Owning the Olympics is not for everyone. Readers looking for a simple and friendly pop culture introduction to "the New China" are advised to look elsewhere. But if you're a reader looking for a book that deals seriously and academically with the multiple political, social, and economic issues raised by the PRC's role as host of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, this book will be of immense interest.
The sixteen texts collected in Owning the Olympics explore the ways in which multiple actors--the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee and the CCP, the International Olympic Committee, multinational corporations, mass and underground media, and NGOs--view the role and purpose of the Games, and how they are attempting to mold (and in some cases reframe) perceptions of the 2008 Olympics to advance their own agendas. Obviously, one could fill an entire volume examining just one of these issues, and the editors of Owning the Olympics are to be commended for selecting readings across a wide breadth of issues that each delve deeply into their individual subjects. Topics considered include the multiplicity of actors engaging in Olympic dialogue and their preferred narrative readings of the Games, the intersection of the PRC, the Games, and public diplomacy; BOBICO's construction and framing of its host city bid material, the interplay between Olympic narratives and constructions of Asian/Eastern identity; the role(s) and influence(s) of the news and mass media, and new technologies, in shaping and disseminating Olympic dialogues; and the ways in which Olympism, sport, and nationalism converge in Olympic activities and narratives.
Standout texts include the aforementioned exploration of the explicit and implicit messages encoded in BOBICO's bid material (chapter 5), chapter 9's examination of the political role historically played by "mega-spaces" in Beijing and the intended roles of new mega-architecture constructed specifically for the Games; and chapter 14's examination of the Western media's intentional drawing of dichotomous tensions in its China reporting. Each of these chapters are phenomenal examples of scholarship that will significantly broaden readers' knowledge and understanding of these issues.
There are a few selections, however, that don't meet the high standards set by the majority of the volume's texts. Chapter 10, which seems to be arguing that television broadcasters' adlibbed coverage of Games ceremonies trivializes those involved, has precious little to do with the Beijing Games and contains such a small and biased sample that it is of little use in drawing larger conclusions about Olympic reporting (look to chapter 7 for a much more thorough and topical examination of Games coverage and constructions of Asian identity). Chapter 11, in which a Chinese academic laments the IOC's decision not to include wushu (kung-fu) as an Olympic sport, is clearly an op-ed and does not belong in a book of academic scholarship.
These two texts aside, the editors of Owning the Olympics have assembled a selection of readings of amazingly high quality; a feat all the more impressive given the short time frame in which they had to collect them. Readers interested in sport and Olympism, China, or media studies will all find much to think about in this volume, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in any of the above disciplines, as well as anyone else interested in serious exploration of these issues.
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Summary: The Olympics as Political Theatre
Comment: Much more than a series of sporting competitions, the Olympic Games are a political and media event. The Olympics have a rich history; while the original games date back almost 3,000 years, the Olympic Games as we know them, complete with the governing International Olympic Committee (IOC), have been held every 2-4 years since 1896. Over their 100+ year history, the Olympics have evolved with the times. Increased athletic participation and spectatorship has placed a growing burden on Olympic host cities - but it has also allowed them the opportunity to present their own mediated image to the world. This is steadily apparent as globalization aids the flow of information between borders, so that knowledge knows fewer and fewer boundaries. The advent of the Internet and other new media paradigms have also loosened the grip host countries may previously have kept over their tightly controlled and highly managed constructs (which oftentimes border on outright propaganda).
It is in this context that the authors who contributed to OWNING THE OLYMPICS: NARRATIVES OF THE NEW CHINA examine the looming 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The overarching theme of this anthology is the ways in which China is utilizing the Olympics to affect how their nation is perceived in other venues. For example, Briar Smith views Beijing's relaxed restrictions on journalists as a means for China to counterbalance the negative publicity surrounding the Chinese government's human rights abuses ("Journalism and the Beijing Olympics: Liminality with Chinese Characteristics"), while Alan Tomlinson examines the increasingly corporate/capitalist economy of the Olympics - which stands in stark contrast to the 2008 host city's own Communist system ("Olympic Values, Beijing's Olympic Games, and the Universal Market"). Additionally, there are some fascinating pieces that deal with the role of new technologies on the Games; in "'We Are the Media': Nonaccredited Media and Citizen Journalists at the Olympic Games" (Andy Miah, Beatriz Garcia, and Tian Zhihui), we learn that, starting from the 2000 Games in Sydney, nonaccredited journalists - including "Web-based journalists" - have been allowed greater access to the Games, with their own special (non)accreditation and Media Centers.
The sixteen pieces that comprise OWNING THE OLYMPICS present an interdisciplinary, multicultural lens through which to view what on its face might seem like just another sporting event (the world's largest sporting event, granted, but a sporting event nonetheless) - yet is in fact diplomatic dance, political theatre, and an entertaining competition all rolled into one. The material can be dense at times, perhaps better suited for academics and media studies students than laypeople, but it is an enlightening and timely volume.
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Summary: The Truth About China's Olympics
Comment: This book was received through the Early Reviewers group on Library Thing- and is an advanced copy- This book comes at a critical time for the Chinese- with the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics looming - China is under increasing pressure to conform to international civil rights legislation in regards to their policies towards Tibet and treatment of Tibetans and other Chinese minority groups such as the Muslim Uighur (sic) tribes of Northern China,and members of the Falun Gong movement. This book focuses the eyes of several well-known political and social commentators and researchers on the interactions between, human rights, nationalism, big business and the Olympics at this years summer games. The essays are well-written and supported by evidence not only from research but from reports from the international journalistic communities and diplomatic entities. This books is wonderful if you wish to understand what is going on in China right now due to the Olympics- it focuses much needed critical attention on human rights and the environment in a land that for the most part has neither- This is vital when trying to understand why so many nations have considered boycotting the Olympics, and why there have been so many protests occurring as the torch makes its way to Beijing- these political environmental and human rights issues have made the choice to hold the Olympics in Beijing a controversial one- and this book explains the controversy quite well- The editors have been wonderful at gathering resources from a wide variety of media and disciplines and it has resulted in terrific book- I am looking forward to reading more from this publisher and these author/editors
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