Sport as a Social Harm - Dissertation Example

 Sport as a Social Harm Introduction Sports and games are without doubt some of the most important elements of human tradition, cultures both modern and antiquated across geopolitical boarders invariably participated in some kind of sport. Sporting activities are considered vital for human interaction and in most learning institutions more, so primary and high school, some form of participation is mandatory for students. The list of advantages of sports ranges from; health, promoting nationalist and international relations, spreading culture and enhancing health competition between people of different ethical and racial background. To many, it is a civilized substitute of war, which it ironically mirrors in so many ways albeit in a much less destructive or fatal way. Mega sporting events are as old as organized sports dating back to the arenas in Rome and the legacy of the mythical Olympus games (Boyle and Haggerty, 2009). Today, many countries engage in international sporting competitions for various games such as soccer, tennis and basketball. Many of these take place in mega sporting events such as the FIFA world cup most recently in Brazil and the London Olympics. However while conceding that sports have considerable advantage, one must take to consideration the various disadvantages and harms both to the sporting community of players fans and organizers and to the society in general. These include but are not limited to, security concerns especially in the post 9/11 terror prone global community and general insecurity such as match violence and hooliganism. This paper contends that while mega sporting events are undoubtedly beneficial to the host countries, the culture of securitization due to constant security threats pose a serious challenge to their enjoyment. In many cases, mega events such as Olympics, and the Tour De France are often presented for not just for the games that are played but also for their legacy and memorability. Every city tries to outdo the one before by hosting a more impressive show than the one before. The bidding of for the events is often highly competitive and policy makers and various governments engaged in cutthroat competition to host them. For most of the participating countries, hosting the events comes with significant benefits such as promoting the tourism industry and bringing significant amounts of foreign income. In addition, hosting such events serves to stimulate the economy of a country since many industries are opened up to carter for the influx of visitors (Santo, 2005). Hosting international events comes with refurbishment of infrastructure, increased income and numerous other financial benefits. In addition, there is the diversification of culture which happens when different cultures come together to celebrate their identities through the various event. For example, after London won the bid for the Olympics, there appeared to be a common agreement among commentator and politicians that this would go a long way in re-establishment of Britain’s greatness. While sports tend to make participants feel as if they are one this is only one side to it, this is because on the downside, it can also be very divisive since sometimes fans take their devotion to their teams to extremes (Merkel, 2013). Rivalries at time escalate into violent confrontations as fan attack each other after games especially when victors celebrate their victories by mocking the other side. Securitization of sporting events is a major course of concern because it is apparent that in nearly every mega event there are numerous security fears as the event provides many opportunities for terrorist attacks. On 29 December in 2013, a bomb was detonated at the entrance of a train station in Volgograd Russia while the Winter Olympics were ongoing in Sohi over 700 Kilometers away. Give the threats of external militants on the county and event in particular; this was widely touted as a threat to the safety of the games. This is because despite the relatively rare incidence, terror is seen as a core possibility in mega sporting events. As a result, complex security structures have to be put in place near any venue of such game and this has gradually forced organizers to fit the events around the security needs instead of the other way round. The levels of alertness during mega events were especially increased after 9/11 and 7 July Bombings that occurred barely a day after the London Olympic bid was successful. Ergo, security concerns were a key consideration to organizing subsequent events such as the Olympics. In Athens, the security budget is estimated to have been at least four times what was spent in Sidney 4 years before. This has resulted in a gradual globalization of security where countries hosting mega events adopt the same security strategies as the others both for the areas where events are held and for the nation at large. To create a clear framework of understanding the tendency for terrorist to strike at mega sporting events, it important to first understand the definition of the concept. In most cases, terrorisms is seen as a means to certain social or political ends with states being the targeted adversary. According to Thomas C Schelling (1984), terror is used as a form of brutal bargaining and too many it is an overt bargaining process that applies the power to hurt injure and intimidate as a substitute for military force (Crenshaw, 1987). Unlike conventional war, terrorism is meant to change the mind-set of governments rather than weaken its military capacity. For the perpetrators of terror activities, their actions are based on calculated benefit or value in the long and short term to be gained from the attack, their perception of what will happen if they fail to act and the ultimate risk factor. However, some extremist organisations may ignore the last element seeing that for many of them, the ultimate success of an attack is self-sacrifice whereas they “take with them” as many people as possible in suicide bombings. These particularly makes the targets vulnerable since unlike the ordinary terrorist, a suicide bomber will be undeterred by threats to their life or safety and will be willing to take far greater risks (Crenshaw, 1987). The strategic perception of terror is founded on the element of surprise, this is because given the small size of the groups, and they must be able to act out in compensation for their diminutive size. In most cases, the element of surprise can be explained because of the defenders insufficient preparation of the terrorist’s level of determination and preparation. Sometimes, politics plays in the issue of terrorism since in some cases, even when intelligent about terror has been gathered and presented politicians may opt to ignore it. In most cases, surprise is simply a means designed to bringing about quick and cheap victory. It creates an illusion of government weakness and terrorists use it to pressure states to back down from a previously publicly held position with the intention of making it sound weak. The objective of surprise has informed the terrorist agenda for over half a century, since the 60s terrorist have developed what many as a new methodology of warfare see, they came up with complex methods such as hostage taking, taking over consulate and embassies kidnaping prominent members of society and other tactics that ensured surprise and publicity. However, with time these became less surprise-worthy given the fact that governments had studied them and come up with appropriate responses. Missing their edge, terrorists then move on to other tactics were the element of surprise and brutality could weigh in. These include bombing public facilities, storming and shooting in places where there are civilians and other brutal tactics that have both ensured shock and massive destruction of property and human life (Green, 2000). It is at this stage of the terror metamorphosis that sporting events are caught up. The very idea of global terror is finds an instant target on globalized audiences and participants of sporting events. For example, when terrorists target an Olympic event where there are over 100 nations in attendance, they essentially attack each of the 100 countries, which serve to give them more international attention and a bigger platform for their demands. Therefore, while it may be argued that tourists are targeting mega sporting events for the sake of their strategic vulnerability, it is also likely that they are motivated to attack such events for the publicity their notoriety gets. Coffee (2014) posits that one of the ways terror is directly connected to sporting events is the provision for what many deem to be disproportional security provisions, which come at a very high financial cost not to mention disruption of the events. International Olympic competitions have for example been in recent years characterized by dystopian images of cities under terrorist siege, which has resulted in deployment or previously unprecedented security measures. A perpetual state of military lockdown has become part of what the public expects in Olympic competition with thousands of soldiers and police patrolling the streets and stadia in the cities the games are scheduled to take place. As observed in the Greek Sweden progression, security measures keep being increased with the emergence of new terror organisations and methods of perpetuating violence on massive crowds. For example after London won the Olympic bid in 2005 (Berman, 2010), there were several coordinated bomb attacks across the city which resulted in the security budget being inflated to about four times what it was originally from 225 million pounds to slightly over a billion. In this case, however, it has been easier than for most cities since the Olympic terror concerns have been simply grafted over an existing security infrastructure that has evolved over several years due to the perpetual threat of the Irish republican and other forms of regional terrorism. Before delving into considerations for the group affected by the social harm that is underpinned in sports, it is important to understand why the term applied is social harm rather than simply crime which after all terrorism engenders. The events have attracted significant attention in various disciplines such as criminology, sociology and political science since they provide opportunity for the police to study the security planning process (Cohen, 2001). According to Hillyard and Tombs (2007), the criminological notion of social harm can be deemed to emerge from a broad and inclusive depiction of human suffering and the global harm that encompasses the scope of traditional crime as defined by criminologists. On these grounds, the consideration of the scope of harm emerging from crimes is not simply from its direct effect but also the social environmental and ideological institutions. The mainstream of criminological enquiry has been critiqued for its failure to be reflective in that it only examines the crime but hardly the inherent repercussions or the long-term and short-term effects on community (Button, 2008). They provide a more inclusive argument of crime that presents a more inclusive and imaginative image of the harms that affect individuals or societies (Hillyard, Pantazis and Gordon, 2004). They are opposed to the notion that criminologists deign to define why some people commit crimes against others despite proof that crime is a socially constructed concept. However, the posit that thinking of crime from a social harm context may be more comprehensive in that it creates a more effective depiction of the range of harms and causes of human suffering. Naturally, the securitization of mega sporting events has to some extent affected everyone that takes part in them in one way of another. The most overtly affected are the citizens of the hosting country in two major ways. For one, they are indeed prone to attacks at the time since terror agenda between various outside nations and terrorist organisations may result in domestic problems. For example in the recent world cup in Brazil, there were players and teams from many parts of the world (Alba, 2014). One of the reasons it was so important to deploy tight security is that organisations such as Al Qaeda may take advantage of the low security levels in the host country to attack some visitors. Given the current situation between the US and Middle Eastern extremist groups, it quite possible and likely for them to target Americans on a foreign land as the security situation in the US is much more controlled. Secondly, on the security angle hosting nations have to bear the burden of huge spending on security for the events. As aforementioned, the budget for the London Olympics was well over the billion-pound mark. Although there were expectations of various benefits, it is unlikely to recover such amount and this will ultimately be pushed down to the taxpayer. The fans, citizens and even the sports people are also negatively affected by the secularization of events since they constantly feel as if they are under siege and it increases their fear for attack. Thousands of police and soldiers patrol the streets and the stadium cities and one would be forgiven to think that the areas are under martial law. In the FIFA world cup, brazil’ streets were beset by over 25,000 police who had been deployed to protect the venue, in addition there was a tableau of sophisticated weapons such as anti-aircraft guns, and bombs detecting robots all which were needed for the protection of the participants (Alba, 2014). However, while this is necessary for the sake of security, it makes the venue look more like a warzone than a stadium where people come to celebrate sporting glory. The impact of the London Olympic alertness levels affected both Londoners and visitor and harassment was commonplace as the police pursued both real and imaginary threats. There was a case of a fish photographer who was arrested. In addition, the lockdown that was experienced during the events bring out questions as to exactly what is the proportion of the security effort and the level of consultation of the people who were going to be adversely affected by them (Graham, 2012). It is unlikely that the people will be in a position to control what happens after the Olympic touch has gone off. However, one may ask what harm can come from this, since it is designed to keep fans safe, however, there this secularization tends to make people more anxious and exaggerates their fear. In addition, it increases the level of isolation since it tends to bring about discrimination of already discriminated people. This emerges from police to attempt to get rid of undesirables, such as beggars and street families, while admitting this is a problem that requires to be fixed homeless people cannot just be wished away or in this case bullied off by the cops. Creating space for stadiums is often used as an excuse to render people homeless to create room for Olympic villages. These measures are however justified by governments and organizers since it is assumed they will remain in place after the events. The CCTV cameras will still be there after the events and the routes will have become more secure not to mention the added infrastructure. However, critics have pointed out that most of the infrastructure is deployed in promotion to the expected security officers; therefore, after the games most of it either becomes redundant or defunct because of poor maintenance. Kennelly (2013) argues that the trend has increased the tendency for over policing of young people who will grow up in an environment reminiscent of a police state. The police are constantly confronting them and this creates an atmosphere of perpetual strife and potentially makes them rebellious. In the end, the youth end up seeing police as perpetuators of violence rather than protectors and are less likely to corporate with them. Conclusion Over the past few decades, here have been several researches and studies carried out on the nature of security concerns in mega events which are becoming more intricate and bigger with time (Giulianotti & Klauser, 2010). However, it is worth noting that there has been very little incisive and empirical research on the same, which reduces the scope of understanding for the matter. To some extent, the deficiency of in-depth research can be explained by the fact that security around the events is often conducted with a great deal of secrecy, which is an inevitable aspect of any competent security operation. However, based on what one can perceive through available information it is evident that there is a great deal of controversy and conflict between government and the some members of the community with the later insisting that the events were primarily for show and do little financial value for the country. In conclusion, weather mega sporting events have a positive or negative impact on security and the welfare or society cannot be outright determined on current information. It is however critical that in considering and planning for such events that the stakeholders consider the diverse security concerns and their impact both on events, and the participants. References Alba, M. 2014. World Cup Security More Focused on Crime, Protests Than Terrorism. ABC News. [Online] Avaialble at: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/world-cup/world-cup-security-more-focused-crime-protests-terrorism-n128981[accessed 19 Dec.2014] Berman, G 2010. 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