This was a highlight of my year. I’ve long admired the work on soft power and mega-events by Jonathan Grix and friends, and I had some ideas on soft power myself. But I intended these ideas as a refinement of the notion of soft power, not as a criticism per se of Grix et al. I wanted to suggest that there were a few ways that we could augment our traditional understandings of soft power in order to account for…
It’s out in the world! I’m very happy about this paper. While it flows from the same place as my doctoral research, it’s a separate piece that stands on its own. Here, I advance the concept of Potemkin Neoliberalism, exploring various dimensions of superficiality in the articulation of the 2018 Men’s Football World Cup in Russia. Starting from the idea that mega-events are an expression of neoliberal urban entrepreneurialism, I uncover how – unlike many other mega-events – this World…
This booklet is a rarity. Shipped all the way to Zurich from a legendary leftist bookstore in San Francisco (“fighting commodity fetishism with commodity fetishism since 1981”), this is a Soviet broadside against Reagan’s America, seen through the lens of the 1984 Summer Olympics. Back when I was living in Russia, a good friend once shared his secret for detecting nationalist media bias. I was complaining about the difficulties in writing critically about Russia because I was worried about playing…
I went to Minsk. I never thought I’d get to see it, especially after my unfortunate encounters with the Russian security and migration authorities. But I was invited by a good friend at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and so, I thought, why not try? Aside from the desire to see Belarus, this would be a good opportunity to check my status with Russia. Russia and Belarus share security architecture, among much else, so if I’m on a list in one…
If this project were a movie, this would be the part where the main character slogs through the endless desert – I’m thinking Gobi, but feel free to fill in whatever wasteland you wish. Parched, exhausted, merciless sun beating down, shirt wrapped over the head, stumbling down a dune. You know the drill. I have expanded my outline to encompass 9 chapters instead of the 8 that it was previously. Right now the title is “For the world, for our…
Another challenge in writing this dissertation is the idea that I also have to lay the groundwork for the next phase of my academic career, such as it is. So aside from the fact that I have to believe in myself and my potential for doing good work – despite the barrage of self-reproach that I too often inflict on myself because I’m swimming in the mud of dissertation writing every day – I simply have to find the time…
More than a year after I got in trouble with the Russian Migration Service and the FSB, and 11 months after I was featured in some trashy and sensational articles that claimed I was a foreign agent bent on disrupting the 2018 World Cup, here I am back in the news once again. I’m reluctant to give these people any more clicks, but here we go anyway: so, alongside some fine journalists and scholars (and, unfortunately, some less scrupulous journalists…
I was asked to write a quick op-ed for USA Today on winning the so-called NAFTA bid for the 2026 World Cup. Obviously I’m hugely in favor of investing in and improving international relations, particularly as the USA is in such a delicate situation at the moment. I have my doubts, however, about the wisdom of investing so much hope and money in the World Cup as an agent of change. In the op-ed, I mention some of the costs involved…
In preparation for my talk at this year’s American Association of Geographers annual conference I’ve been thinking about Sochi several years after the Olympics. I think it’s worth taking a look at the city after the circus has left town, when the international spotlight has largely moved on to other events and other places. Sochi 2014 was never just about the sport. Beyond the aspirations to reframe public perceptions of Russia inside and outside the nation, there was a clear attempt…
Mega-events are mega expensive – this is nothing new. And while there are exhaustive lists of the high costs of preparing for the Olympics or the World Cup, there is also evidence that in some cases these are better understood not as the costs of a sporting event, but rather as massive development projects with a sporting event attached. In my view, there is some validity to this argument. In Russia, for example, the 2018 World Cup is clearly being…