O poder dos jogos e os jogos de poder: interesses em campo na produção da cidade para o espetáculo esportivo

Abstract

Strong images, rituals and symbolism have been the basic elements that sustain sports competitions. When converted into a development strategy linked to the entrepreneurial model of city management, the production of sports spectacle is capable of producing the widespread mobilization of economic, political and symbolic capital, resulting in disruptions and realignments in various dimensions of social space and territories. Through an approach that uses Bourdieu’s concept of the field as an analytical tool, this work aims to explore the power relations involved in the convergence between the field where sporting spectacle is produced and that where the city is produced, while also analysing the disruptions in the political-institutional dimension resulting from this meeting. From a methodological approach that understands social phenomena as cross-scalar, this research adopts as its main object of observation at the local scale the preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games in the city of Rio de Janeiro, focusing on the strategies, coalitions and disputes between actors that constitute the hegemonic groups in the fields studied. The data collected suggest that in becoming a social universe relatively independent of external pressures, the field within which the sporting spectacle occurs serves as a means to subject the city and its inhabitants to the dominion and pressures of the economic field.