ABSTRACT
In August 2012 the Summer Olympics and Paralympics were held in London. The last time the games were in London was in 1948, the ‘austerity games’ just after the end of the Second World War. In 1948 it was said that ‘the world came to London’; in 2012 the world was already there. The Olympics may be ‘the greatest show on earth’, but the games are also the most international and globalized spectacle, with 205 participant nations (Woodward, 2012a) at which an affiliation to nation still matters, if only for the duration of the games themselves. Sport is global and it is also an excellent illustration of how globalizing forces operate and how the media culture economy nexus works. ‘Globalization’ has become a familiar term. Alternatives, like ‘transnationalism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ have been used because ‘globalization’ has become a commonplace and over-used term for a whole range of diverse developments in politics, economics and culture, where the term is broadly used to cover the growing connections between societies worldwide. The impact of global networks takes different forms. At one level it seems as if we live in a world where globalization has become part of everyday life. In almost any major world city you can see the familiar yellow M signalling the presence of a McDonald’s fast-food outlet. The high streets and shopping malls of most major towns and cities across the world look very similar, with the same franchises and a uniform display of chain stores. In most UK cities when you walk down the street you see a mix of cultures – in the shops and restaurants and the people who are clearly part of the social world of the street. You can also hear voices speaking a whole range of languages other than English; in Cardiff you might even hear more Polish voices than Welsh ones. Globalization can be seen as focusing on the marketplace and the availability of goods around the world. Brands such as McDonald’s have global status because of their market availability. This is an availability that is the result of the successful promotion of US products across the globe. This has extended to parts of the world that it was previously thought the US market could not reach: for example, Russia, China, the states of what was formerly Eastern Europe. Terms such as ‘McDonaldification’ and ‘Disneyfication’ have been coined to describe, albeit somewhat simplistically, this marketing phenomenon. Latin America and
Africa have been brought into the global economic networks, more notably through agribusiness and land purchase in recent years. In the field of marketing and consumption branding has been a particular feature of US international activity that has been taken up in other parts of the world, for example Europe and Japan. The whole process has become much more sophisticated, as Naomi Klein argues, taking a critical stance on global marketing in her book No Logo. Klein argues that it is no longer possible to identify the signs of US-dominated marketing and we are presented with a cultural mix, what she calls a ‘market masala’. This ‘masala’ involves a cultural assemblage, for example in advertisements targeted at young people in the ‘teen market’ of black and white ‘Rasta braids, pink hair, henna hand-painting, piercing and tattoos, a few national flags . . . Cantonese and Arabic lettering and a sprinkling of English words’ (2001: 120). Klein claims that this kaleidoscope represents a new departure in globalized markets.
