ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a review of Durkheimian influences in studies of media and large-scale public events, with specific reference to Dayan and Katz's analysis of media events and to recent assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of their work. Social theorists acknowledge that the Durkheimian legacy has provided insight into ritual meanings, symbolization and modes of collective identification. But there is growing recognition that this has occurred at the expense of analyzing logics, inequities and conflicts associated with capitalist accumulation and neoliberal globalization. In a global capitalist world where many commodities are increasingly ephemeral, the production of such highly mediated events in many parts of the world has come to rival the more traditional making of things. Sporting mega-events have become much more than sites for expressions of aggravated individual cyni cism. Rather, they are now among the world's most prominent forums to protest and debate the irrationalities of neoliberal capitalist globalization with its accompanying modes of exclusion and marginalization.
