Abstract

With the emergence of a new global political economy in a polycentric world, nation-states have adopted strategies to reposition themselves. This has included hosting and investing in global sporting events and ecosystems. Historically, nation-states have engaged in sport diplomacy, using events and sportspeople to foster favourable public images, globally. But in recent years, the use of this strategy by non-democratic states, with questionable human rights records, to rebrand their global images has been condemned as sportswashing. This is too simplistic. Traditionally, sport evolved within racial and colonial hierarchies that have been increasingly challenged since the late 1960s. This challenge is seen in the rise of the oil-rich Gulf States as revenue sources and sites for global sporting events. Sport has been used to brand the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Dubai and Abu Dhabi as Disneyfied places of spectacle and excess. Similarly, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have diversified oil revenues into sport, challenging the traditional hierarchies in golf and football. This challenge has been accompanied by mounting Western criticism of the regimes’ labour and human rights records with sport perceived as a means by which these states wash their abuses. This constitutes an Orientalist use of the term, washing away the challenge the states pose to sport’s traditional racial and colonialist hierarchies. Seemingly, the West engages in sport diplomacy, ignoring its own human rights abuses, while the East merely sport-washes. The West’s control of the discourse washes away the real point; the Saudi and Gulf States’ challenge to sport’s traditional order.

Presenters

Tom F Heenan
Lecturer, Monash Intercultural Lab, Monash University, Victoria, Australia

Sam Duncan
Assoicate Dean, Higher Education, Sport, Holmesglen Institute (Associate Dean) and Swinburne University of Technology (Adjunct Research Fellow), Victoria, Australia

Lucas Moreira dos Anjos Santos
Lecturer, Monash Intercultural Lab, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University, Victoria, Australia

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Sporting Cultures and Identities

KEYWORDS

Sportswashing, Human Rights, Political Economy, Saudi Arabia

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