The field of Olympic Studies exists at the intersection of many disciplines, each of which has its own angle, its own story to tell: the historical sociology of sport; media and cultural studies; the anthropology of performance; urban and community studies; political science, and so on. The field is also traversed by what might be called hyper-disciplines – theories and methodologies that claim to provide general paradigms of understanding for the human sciences viz Marxism, feminism, post-colonial studies, post-structuralism, each of which has its own strategy for topicalising the field, its own preferred reading of the issues centred variously on class, gender, ethnicity or discourse analysis. It is not easy to bring these different approaches into any kind of productive dialogue, let alone concordance, yet that is the challenge and excitement of working in this field.
Below I have compiled some online resources to inform, provoke, amuse and entertain. I hope they will be useful companions to readers who want to set out on this adventure for themselves.
Online Articles:
- A list of key 2012 players
- The Legacyspeak Machine
- The Twenty Twelvers Rough Guide to Useful Post-Olympic Expressions
- Map Readings: a select list of resources for further study
- London New Jerusalem 2012 , a scenario for an alternative opening ceremony based on ideas brainstormed with my Olympic focus groups
- East London-A journey through the ruins gallery
- Body Politics gallery
- Olympic dreams and nightmares gallery
- Gary’s Olympic Game . The full transcript of this interview, discussed in chapter five of the book , with comments designed to be useful in classroom discussion
- LOCUS ( London Olympic Cultural and Urban Studies) A course outline for undergraduate module based on the book
- Lights on for the Territory : a video exploring some of the politics of representation analysed in the book and featuring an interview with John Wallet discussing the issues in making a narrative map of east London and the Olympics. (still to be posted)
