The 'Summer of Discontent': Exclusion and Communal Resistance at the London 2012 Olympics

Mike Duignan, Ilaria Pappalepore, Sally Everett

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    44 Citations (Scopus)
    141 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    London 2012 promised local small businesses access to lucrative
    Olympic event-tourism and visitor trading opportunities. However, as
    urban spaces were transformed to stage live Games, many local
    stakeholders found themselves locked out. We focus on one 'host'
    community, Central Greenwich, who emerged negatively impacted by such
    conditions. 43 in-depth interviews and secondary evidence reveal that
    this was a community determined to resist. Few papers have extended the
    concept of resistance to the context of mega-events so we examine why
    communities resisted, and how physical tactics and creative resistance
    were deployed. Although efforts afforded some access for local businesses
    - they proved too little, too late. We develop and present a 'tactics for
    resistance' approach, a series of 'hard' and 'soft' tactics businesses
    could use to encourage proactive, as opposed to reactive, communal
    resistance required to protect local interests and afford access to
    opportunities generated by temporary mega-event visitor economies
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)355-367
    Number of pages13
    JournalTourism Management
    Volume70
    Early online date15 Sept 2018
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Feb 2019

    Bibliographical note

    NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Tourism Management. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Tourism Management, vol.70, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2018.08.029

    © 2017, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

    Keywords

    • Communal resistance
    • Exclusion
    • Hard and soft tactics
    • Host community
    • London 2012
    • Mega-event
    • Olympic tourism
    • Small businesses

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Development
    • Transportation
    • Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management
    • Strategy and Management

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