Populist Elements of SINGO Discourse and Practice: Unravelling the Undercurrents of the Popular Cultural Event

Alan Tomlinson

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding with ISSN or ISBNChapterpeer-review

Abstract

This chapter explores the rhetoric and the discourse of the SINGO (sport-based international non-governmental organisation), the organisational form of sport governance as typified in the two mega-SINGOs, the IOC and FIFA. The core of the discussion focuses upon how the SINGO’s long-established rhetoric has survived through seismic political, social, and cultural shifts and asks whether that survival can be better understood as a form of globally pitched populism. The rhetoric of FIFA and IOC leaders is examined as a mode of address in which an assumed collectivity is claimed, a universality of appeal (though often restricted to the male constituency) in the name of a purported universality of sport. With reference to several cases of mega-sport events - for instance the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, to be staged in 2021; the FIFA Women’s World Cup staged in France in 2019 - the chapter makes a case for the recognition and conceptual development of a “sportive populism”, and for deeper and wider analysis of where and how such forms of populism arise and are sustained.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPopulism in Sport, Leisure, and Popular Culture
EditorsAlan Tomlinson, Bryan Clift
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter3
Pages41-55
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9780429340840
ISBN (Print)9780367356385
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Mar 2021

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