Sociology Professor Investigates Olympic Exclusions
With the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio having just wrapped up, Professor has received an array of media attention for her new book .
ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´ the book — Olympic Exclusions: Youth, Poverty, and Social Legacies
Olympic Games are sold to host city populations on the basis of legacy commitments that incorporate aid for the young and the poor. Yet little is known about the realities of marginalized young people living in host cities. Do they benefit from social housing and employment opportunities? Or do they fall victim to increased policing and evaporating social assistance? This book answers these questions through an original ethnographic study of young people living in the shadow of Vancouver 2010 and London 2012.
Setting qualitative research alongside critical analysis of policy documents, bidding reports and media accounts, this study explores the tension between promises made and lived reality. Its eight chapters offer a rich and complex account of marginalized young people’s experiences as they navigate the possibilities and contradictions of living in an Olympic host city. Their stories illustrate the limits to the promises made by Olympic bidding and organizing committees and raise important questions about the ethics of public funding for such mega-events.
Media pieces featuring Professor Kennelly on the Olympics:
- (scroll down to ‘Olympic fallout’)
ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´ Professor Kennelly:
is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´ University in Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of Olympic Exclusions: Youth, Poverty, and Social Legacies (2016), and Citizen Youth: Culture, Activism, and Agency in a Neoliberal Era (2011). She is the co-author (with J. Dillabough) of Lost Youth in the Global City: Class, Culture, and the Urban Imaginary (2010), and the co-editor (with S. Poyntz) of Phenomenology of Youth Cultures and Globalization: Lifeworlds and Surplus Meaning in Changing Times (2015). Her work has appeared in multiple international academic journals, including Sociology, British Journal of Criminology, Feminist Theory, Ethnography, Visual Studies, Gender and Education and British Journal of Sociology of Education.