Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how spectacle should be theorized and understood as spectacles, especially sporting spectacles, are deployed throughout Latin America. It considers the importnce of scale, politics, and ideologies underpinning the production and implementation of spectacular events.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the role of national and global sport spectacles in Latin america. It lays out some theoretical concerns regarding spectacle as a political force in the first instance. It then moves on to consider how sport has been harnessed to promote national identities through athletic spectacles in various Latin American countries. It then examines the rise and implementation of global sport spectacles in Latin america. All of these concerns tie in directly to the idea of Latin American modernity and the emergence of modern nations in the Americas. I so doing, it shifts how we understand spectacle from a state-centric perspective to one of broader sociological concern that interrogates the formation of individual personhood. Thus, questions of gender, race, ethnicity, religion as well as citizenship and nationality are all deployed and employed in these spectacles. How they are portrayed and articulated becomes central to reification of power relations in that given locale.