Japan's Sporting Diplomacy: The 1964 Tokyo Olympiad

At a time when Japanese foreign policy was constrained by the legacies of war and the exigencies of the Cold War, hosting the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was conceived as an alternative means of engagement with the international community. The sporting diplomacy of the Tokyo Olympics centered around elevating Japan’s international position by engaging the people of the world on a grassroots level. The pervasive notion that sports are separate from politics helped smooth Japan’s return to the international community, while concerns about the image presented to foreign audiences motivated efforts to internationalize Japan, in terms of both the physical infrastructure of the capital and attitudes of the people. The development of infrastructure for the Games—including new buildings, roads, and trains, and even a satellite to facilitate live international broadcast—all contributed to making Japan more “international.” The event was a great success for Japan, both athletically and diplomatically, and sports diplomacy became a lasting component of Japan’s foreign policy, still used today to promote international connections and develop greater knowledge and understanding of Japan. At the same time, this build-up of soft power also cleared the way for the development of greater hard power by Japan.     

Democratization and museum policy in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This article examines the two distinct historical policy paths taken by the South Korean government in the late twentieth century towards the democratization of museums. One was based on the creation of a museological public sphere as an extension of the political democratization movement of the 1980s. This demonstrated the potential to become a valuable component of the wider incipient national public sphere within which civic subjects could discuss their individual and collective historical memories. However, despite this potential, a museological public sphere failed to influence the general trajectory of national policy regarding the democratization of museums that had been in development since the early 1980s. This other policy path towards cultural democratization was triggered by the award of the Seoul Olympics in 1981. It was based on public participation and entitled the ‘cultural Olympics’. An important strategy of the cultural Olympics was the construction of a new institutional infrastructure to expand the public right to enjoy culture. This path facilitated an increasing entanglement with neoliberalism in 1990s. Finally, the 1997 IMF crisis furthered the association between a superficial idea of democratization through institutional expansion and the practices of neoliberalism, a trend which continues within South Korean museum policy today.     

"人文奥运"与当代北京城市建设

北京为申办和举办2008年奥运会提出了"绿色奥运、科技奥运、人文奥运"理念,而其中的"人文奥运"有着极其丰富的内涵,我们不但要从与时俱进、发展创新的角度来看待它,还要从使北京走向世界、让世界了解北京的角度来理解它,从促进北京发展、推进北京社会文明进步和加强北京城市文化环境建设来落实"人文奥运",在保护好北京这个历史文化名城的基础上,展现给世人一个将现代化建设和古都风貌完美结合的大都市.     

全景技术在文化遗产传播领域的应用前景展望

全景摄影的虚拟现实技术在奥运、世博传播工作中得到了成功应用,该技术的发展为文化遗产的虚拟展示开辟了新的平台。结合数字奥运、掌上世博项目实例,详细叙述了工作流程和成果,对全景技术的应用价值有了逐步的估量,进而对该技术在文化遗产传播领域尤其是"数字博物馆"项目的应用进行了可行性分析,并对潜在问题提出了新的思路。     

The Sydney 2000 Olympics and Urban Entrepreneurialism: Local Variations in Urban Governance

Hallmark events are important redevelopment tools utilised by entrepreneurial governments. The features of these events are analogous to those of entrepreneurial urban governance. This study examined the local impacts of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, particularly in relation to its social and political legacies, in three local government areas which hosted Olympic venues. It also investigated the nature of urban governance in Sydney, Australia, as it was manifested in the planning of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Examples of entrepreneurialism in planning for the Olympics included the centralisation of planning powers, the increasing involvement of the private sector in government activities, and the relaxation of planning processes, resulting in reduced openness, accountability and public participation. Examples of resistance to the anti–democratic tendencies of entrepreneurialism were however evident in some areas, with managerial and democratic concerns remaining important to some local governments. Local community activism was imperative to achieving civic participation and ensuring commitment by local government to these managerial and democratic concerns. Activism also enabled some local communities to secure significant benefits from the Olympic Games.     

Competition or exhibition? The Olympic arts and cultural policy rhetoric

Though they are widely forgotten today, the modern Olympic Games once offered competitive medals for art. This tradition, which lasted through the seven summer Games held from 1912 to 1948, found artists competing for gold much as athletes do now. These artists represented their nation in judged competitive events showcasing artistic works. In its initial form, the ‘pentathlon of the muses,’ as it was called, included competitive events in Architecture, Musical Composition, Sculpture, Painting, and Literature. This paper considers the history of these arts competitions and their eventual demise as a study in cultural policy, arguing that no understanding of cultural policy is sufficient unless it considers the rhetorical factors that contribute to its formation. Without abandoning the Foucauldian backbone of cultural-policy studies, this argument makes an interdisciplinary plea to open cultural policy studies to the field of rhetorical scholarship, which it has almost wholly neglected to date.     

London’s Olympic waterscape: capturing transition

The waterways of London are an essential component of the city, with the River Thames playing a prominent role in the heritage, history and identity of place. The upcoming 2012 Olympics are highlighting the Lea Valley waterways in east London as another important part of London’s waterscape, expanding London’s global presence as a ‘water city’. As part of the Creative Campus Initiative, we undertook a project based on the broad themes of water, London and the Olympics that would give voice to the changes taking place. The result is London’s Olympic Waterscape, a 20-minute film comprising both ‘expert’ interview material discussing broad themes and developments and an embodied record of our engagement with the Olympic area during a brief period in the construction process. The present article is about the journey we took through and around the east London ‘Olympic’ waterways as we attempted to capture this transitional moment on video.     

Counting eyeballs,soundbites and ‘plings’: arts participation,strategic instrumentalism and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad

This article examines cultural participation, its metrics and ‘drivers’ as they are defined through cultural programming for the London 2012 Olympics. The meanings and interpretation of these terms are considered by examining the development of an evaluation framework for the We Play programme in the North West of England, an initiative funded by Legacy Trust UK and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It argues that in spite of the dissonance between arts and sports within Olympics programmes and claims of the deleterious impact on arts funding, particular within the regions, London 2012 has engendered creative programming which strategically deploys the Cultural Olympiad to satisfy local cultural policy objectives as well as meeting broader interests in ‘legacy’ from the Games. Such ambitions require the development of appropriate methodologies for understanding arts participation and engagement for the purpose of evaluation and evidence-based policy making, a particular challenge for such a complex range of activities, sites and settings for arts participation.     

2008年奥运旅游效应与中国奥运旅游圈构想

举办奥运会最大的经济受益点是旅游业,中国旅游业应充分抓住奥运给旅游业带来的各种效应,充分利用良好的区位条件,合理确定和设计旅游区位,确立"一个核心、多中转辐射地、五圈共享"的"中国奥运旅游圈"区位开发模式,构建北部历史古迹都市文化核心旅游圈、东部东方文化现代都市旅游圈、南部经济特区热带风情都市旅游圈、中西南奇山丽水民族风情旅游圈、西部神奇景观旅游圈,实施整体形象设计与促销战略、多等级多系列产品战略、网络化大交通战略、信息化战略、区域协作战略、规模化战略、可持续发展战略,把握机遇,发挥奥运旅游的最大效应。     

Store Wars: Changing Retail Ownership in Beijing

Two U.S.-based economic geographers analyze recent changes in retailing activity in Beijing, focusing on changes in store ownership. More specifically, they investigate declines in state ownership in the retail sector since the early 1980s in conjunction with the rapid growth of the domestic private sector and foreign ownership. The paper outlines a new geography of successful (and not-so-successful) retailers that has emerged due to rationalization of the industry, marketization, globalization, as well as government policies at a variety of levels. Changes in store ownership provide insights into the complexity of China's transition, the evolving relations between state and capital, and the role of the local state in the country's economic reforms. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: D23, L20, L81, O18. 2 figures, 3 tables, 1 appendix, 114 references.