ABSTRACT
Introduction The London 2012 Olympics was hailed as the most ‘ethical’ Games to date. Those officially assigned to ensure that promises of good practice were met had ‘no hesitation in confirming that London 2012 has delivered the most sustainable Games ever’ (CSL, 2012, p. 2). This is, of course, a contested label, in terms of both its meaning and its claim. What is clear, though, is that a strong emphasis was placed on London 2012 delivering a ‘responsible’ and ‘green’ Olympics (see Rojek, 2014, p. 37; Timms, 2012), and this discourse of corporate social responsibility (CSR) was evident in the original bid through to the official documenting of its legacy. London 2012 was also a mega-event targeted by a range of activists, some using the global profile of the Olympics to promote their ongoing cause, such as the Play Fair campaign for the rights of workers making official merchandise, and others focused on issues arising from the hosting of the event, such as those concerned with displacement caused by the building of the Olympic Park. These types of activism contribute to a growing trend of mega-events as sites of struggle (Cottrell & Nelson, 2010; Gotham, 2011), where critical voices are raised, but not always heard (Boykoff, 2011). Just as different mega-events move around the world to new host nations, campaigns are mobile too, focusing on one event and then the next in a type of relay race to pursue issues of social justice, trying to influence practices and raise standards. This chapter addresses a key mobilities question of who and what tangibles or imaginaries travel with the mega-event ‘circus’ (Salazar, this volume) and who and what are less able to. In particular, I ask whether gains made by campaigners on ethics travel well to the next event, so standards are permanently improved, or whether the battles have to be fought again in each place.
