Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-events

Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-Events addresses the impact of mega-events – such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup – on wider practices of security and surveillance. "Mega-Events" pose peculiar and extensive security challenges. The overwhelming imperative is that "nothing should go wrong." There are, however, an almost infinite number of things that can "go wrong"; producing the perceived need for pre-emptive risk assessments, and an expanding range of security measures, including extensive forms and levels of surveillance. These measures are delivered by a "security/industrial complex" consisting of powerful transnational corporate, governmental and military actors, eager to showcase the latest technologies and prove that they can deliver "spectacular levels of security".
Mega-events have thus become occasions for experiments in monitoring people and places. And, as such, they have become important moments in the development and dispersal of surveillance, as the infrastructure established for mega-events are often marketed as security solutions for the more routine monitoring of people and place. Mega-events, then, now serve as focal points for the proliferation of security and surveillance. They are microcosms of larger trends and processes, through which – as the contributors to this volume demonstrate – we can observe the complex ways that security and surveillance are now implicated in unique confluences of technology, institutional motivations, and public-private security arrangements. As the exceptional conditions of the mega-event become the norm, Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-Events therefore provides the glimpse of a possible future that is more intensively and extensively monitored.

Editorial Introduction Colin J. Bennett and Kevin Haggerty 1. Event Driven Security Policies and Spatial Control: The 2006 World Cup Stefanie Baasch 2. Rethinking Security at the Olympics Daniel Bernhard and Aaron Martin 3. Knowledge Networks: Mega-Events and Security Expertise Phillip Boyle 4. The XX Winter Olympic Games: Torino 2006 Chiara Fonio and Giovanni Pisapia 5. Olympic Rings of Steel: Constructing Security for 2012 and Beyond Pete Fussey and John Coaffee 6. Commonalities and Specificities in Mega-Event Securitization: The Example of Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland Francisco Klauser 7. Mega-Events, Mega-Profits: Unpacking the Vancouver 2010 Security Development-Nexus Adam Molnar and Lauren Snider 8. Surveilling the 2004 Athens Olympics Minas Samatas 9. Secure our Profits!: The FIFA in Germany 2006 Volker Eick 10. The Spectacle of Fear: Anxious Events and Contradictions of Contemporary Japanese Governmentality David Murakami Wood and Kiyoshi Abe