This article was downloaded by: [Jorge de La Barre]

On: 22 January 2015, At: 15:38

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Leisure Studies
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlst20

Future shock: mega-events in Rio de

Janeiro
Jorge de La Barre

Department of Sociology and Methodology of Social Sciences,

Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niteri, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Published online: 02 Jan 2015.

Click for updates

To cite this article: Jorge de La Barre (2015): Future shock: mega-events in Rio de Janeiro, Leisure
Studies, DOI: 10.1080/02614367.2014.994551
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2014.994551

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions

Leisure Studies, 2014

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2014.994551

Future shock: mega-events in Rio de Janeiro

Jorge de La Barre*
Department of Sociology and Methodology of Social Sciences, Universidade Federal
Fluminense, Niteri, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

(Received 27 May 2014; accepted 24 November 2014)

In preparation for the mega-events of 2014 and 2016, the city of Rio de Janeiro
has been going through a permanent shock of agenda, characterised by important
urban reengineering projects, population removal and favela (shanty town)
pacication. This essay explores the Rio of (sports and other) mega-events and
questions the place of the social, in a paradigm marked by futurism and by
techno-culture that may be announcing a new political economy: the political
economy of mega-events.
Keywords: mega-events; population removal; Rio de Janeiro; UPPs (Pacication
Police Units); urban reengineering

Introduction: shock of agenda

() Kleins book [The Shock Doctrine, 2008] is a valuable insight into recent history.
What relationship does sport and especially sports mega-events have with disaster
capitalism? () we suggest that [the] sporting spectaculars can be viewed as the twin
of disaster capitalisms shock therapy, involving their own shocks and generating their
own forms of awe. Winning a bid to host a mega-event, putting the fantasy nancial
gures of the bid document into operation, dealing with the proposed location before
and dealing with it after the event has taken place, are just some of the moments when
shock and awe are generated by sports mega-events. The city of Rio de Janeiro offers
an interesting study on the extent to which an Olympic Games and a World Cup will
impact, positively and negatively, on the ecology of a city with massive poverty, crime
and drug use. (Horne & Whannel, 2012, p. 203)

Throughout the decade 20072016, the city of Rio de Janeiro will have hosted
almost one (sports or otherwise) mega-event per year: Pan-American Games (2007),
FIFA Fan Fest (2010), Rock in Rio (2011), Rio + 20 (2012, also the year when Rio
became UNESCOs heritage of humanity in the Cultural Landscape category),
World Youth Day and FIFA Confederations Cup (both in 2013), FIFA World Cup
(2014) and, nally the summum: the 2016 Olympics not to mention the annual
carnivals and rveillons, banal routines compared to this mega-events frenzy.1
Rio de Janeiro is going through a shock of agenda, entirely (pre)dened by the
executive calendar of its mega-events. This shock creates an escape from the present
now reduced to the construction of the future. A permanent escape en route towards
the future of the mega-events, an extraordinary temporality overlaps the slow
temporality of the social. We have a compression, an acceleration of time. As in a
*Email: jorgelabarre@id.uff.br
2014 Taylor & Francis

J. de La Barre

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

time-lapse movie, the city is projecting itself into the future; the present disappears
to make room for the accelerated movement of the transformations for the megaevents. It seems that the future has even arrived that we are already there: For Rio,
the future is today, wrote the architect Srgio Magalhes in 2010. Still today in
2012, we are in this present full of future, and it is likely that we will so remain at
least until the highly anticipated 2016, year of the Olympics.
This experience of a singular present that disappears in favour of a necessarily
better future is not without ambivalence: the future of the mega-events becomes
escapism and the contingencies of the present become escapable. The shock of
progress (urban reengineering in the name of mega-events) justies the shock of
order (Pacication Police Units2 and population removal), and perhaps also
announces at the horizon of a Post-2016 made of digital culture and creative
economy, a techno-cultural, post-human Rio de Janeiro.
Shock of progress: the reengineering of Rio
A few months before his re-election in October 2012, the Mayor of Rio Eduardo
Paes wrote in his editorial to the June 2012 Porto Maravilha newsletter:
The urban operation Porto Maravilha is a planned form of (re)constructing the city.
(). Rio will be excellence in data and voice transmission. Shortly, the residents of
the Sade, Gamboa and Santo Cristo neighbourhoods, just like the companies
established in the port region, will have high-speed connection comparable to the most
modern cities in the world. (Paes, 2012, p. 2)

Thus combined, these two sentences summarise the current city project for Rio de
Janeiro: planned urban reconstruction, and centrality of digital means of communication comparable to the most modern cities in the world. Signicantly, Rio Mayors
editorial titled The New Engineering of the Marvellous City (in other terms: the
reengineering of the Marvellous City).4 Besides the Marvellous City, the urban
renewal project for the port zone is called Marvellous Port (Porto Maravilha), and
described as a dream come true.5
Of all the re prexes applied to the urban (there are many: renewal, rehabilitation, requalication, revitalisation, re-urbanisation, resignication, reinvention,
recosmopolitanism, etc.), reengineering is rarely the rst that comes to mind.6
However, it is perhaps the most telling of an ambition to address the city as a whole,
in order to transform it. The citys neighbourhoods may be requalied, re-urbanised
or resignied, but with its holistic approach, reengineering would apply to the entire
city. In the meantime, we observe that reengineering, applied as it is to the whole
city, applies in fact essentially to the urban and the technological (i.e. infrastructures
and management of ows all types of ows including information). In this context, the mega-events become one of the main motors of transformation. This has
been particularly true over the past two decades.
The visible part of a much broader process, the mega-events become the pretext
to rethink, plan and execute a profound transformation in Rio in order to urgently
make a city of ows, a global, cosmopolitan, intelligent, creative, technological, festive, host city and perhaps most importantly after all, an (even more)
attractive city essentially in fact to the investors and mass tourism. In this sense,
the mega-events represent the mega-rhetoric for all the re mentioned above.
As the reengineering of the city is essentially a techno-urban process, we may
question the place of the social, wondering if the social represents any form of

Leisure Studies

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

concern at all. Unless there is an incompatibility, an antagonism between the social

and techno-urban reengineering, the social as a concern shines in fact by its absence
in the priorities set for urban reengineering. In Rio de Janeiro today, population
removal is the dark side of mega-events and, ultimately, of reengineering. At best,
the techno-urban process at work in the Marvellous City would be giving birth to a
Janus-faced city whose two faces could be called: Re-Marvellous Rio on the one
hand, with its mega-events for global and festive cities, and Dystopian Rio on the
other hand, with population removal and human rights violations.
Business management in the era of new technologies
Reengineering is a business management strategy whose aim is to assist organisations in their rethinking of how they do their work and help them improve customer
service by cutting operating costs, so that they can become world class competitors.
Reengineering means the fundamental rethinking, the dramatic redesign of business
processes in order to achieve improvements in the critical measures of contemporary
effectiveness: cost, quality, service, and speed (Hammer & Champy, 1993). A holistic approach, it aims at achieving, or approaching, total quality7 in which the four
dimensions of organisation, technology, strategy, and people must submit to a vision
in terms of processes. However, the focus is on efciency and technology at the
expense of the people. Thus, reengineering does not mean change only, but radical
change. Born in the context of the increasing globalisation of the economy since the
1990s, reengineering is almost contemporary to the widespread implementation of
information technology in corporations and institutions. The idea was to take advantage of that implementation to rationalise the existing organisational processes.
Because the benets could be very signicant, reengineering was adopted at an
accelerated pace over the 1990s, besides the important risks of failure, and the various
critics of the whole process (dehumanisation of work, increased administrative control, justication for greater reductions in the workforce, and rebirth of Taylorism
under a new nickname). In fact, many companies embraced reengineering as a pretext
to reduce the workforce dramatically. Finally, reengineering really comes down to:
competitiveness which is the justication for all the side effects mentioned above.8
Reengineering is not only contemporary to the new information and communication technologies, and it is the business management of the new technologies era.
Thus, urban reengineering only makes senses within the context of new technologies. In fact, both urban reengineering and new technologies are perfect allies for a
radical and dramatic topdown transformation where the urban territories must literally conform, adopting the contours of the virtual maps (pre)dened by strategic
planning.
The era of legacies: mega-events, the attening of the world and the
acceleration of time
Here I was in Bangalore more than ve hundred years after Columbus sailed over
the horizon, using the rudimentary navigational technologies of his day, and returned
safely to prove denitively that the world was round and one of Indias smartest
engineers, trained at his countrys top technical institute and backed by the most modern technologies of his day, was essentially telling me that the world was at as at
as that screen on which he can host a meeting of his whole global supply chain. Even

J. de La Barre

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

more interesting, he was citing this development as a good thing, as a new milestone
in human progress and a great opportunity for India and the world the fact that we
had made our world at! (Friedman, 2005, p. 7)

In the era of mega-events, the future is always a near future, it is marked by the
extraordinary, urgency and exceptionalism. Thus, the era of mega-events is also an
era of legacies whether past, anticipated or pre-planned. All mega-events must be
hyper-visible and comparable. In the world of the mega-events global media transparency, the at world described by US journalist Thomas Friedman becomes
hyper-at.
Besides their shocking impacts, mega-events produce narratives of legacies.9 Each
mega-event is assessed for its exemplarity as something to be imitated or not by
another mega-event to come in the near future. We may be witnessing a paradoxical
accumulation of exceptionalisms. Yet, each mega-event tends to disappear in favour
of its next coming one. This is how, for example, the royal wedding between Prince
William and Kate Middleton in 2011, considered a success, was also a test in ows
and security management for the Olympics that were to be held in London the following year of 2012. In the hyper-at world of legacies, proper to the mega-event is that
it only comes to represent a (positive or negative) milestone for its next coming one.
Following this logic, Rio will be in competition with itself between 2014 and
2016 whichever the result of the 2014 World Cup may be in strictly soccer terms.
In the meantime, the Marvellous City is now following Londons tracks and will
have to learn very quickly the lessons that () it can take from the 2012 Olympics,
one of the most well-organised in history.10 In the logic of the mega-event, the
result of the game itself is not the most relevant (the big corporations always end
up winning anyway). Thus, besides being a non-event (for being so perfectly
planned as we shall see below), the mega-event is basically an excuse for another
much more powerful game, played in other instances well beyond the values of
fraternal competition and sports nobility.
During the last week of the 2012 campaign for Rios municipal elections, the
former host cities legacy were analysed by the daily newspaper O Globo, in an
Olympic Lessons page. It was clear that the Mayors mandate for 20122016
would be a global one, primarily dedicated to the efcient execution of the 2014
and 2016 mega-events, making in fact of all the other policies a low priority. In its
October 6th edition, O Globo thus described the distinct visions of the traces that
the Olympics should leave, stressing that the 2016 mega-event would set the future
of the city and new Mayors political life, and that this unique opportunity [was] a
challenge that [could not] be wasted by whoever the Carioca [inhabitant of Rio de
Janeiro] may elect.11
We have an alignment, a global formatting of (past and future) host cities, all of
which are supposed to become comparable. The former host cities become models,
representations of themselves for future reference.12 Brand-model, sponsored model,
showcase-model, ad-model: a model that is fashionable and that everyone wants to
imitate.13 Indeed, the form and ability to receive the same global events cannot be
so different from one city to another. Still, for the mega-events, the model cities only
need to conform to a single model called: success (Gaffney, 2011; Silk, 2014).
And there is no other model.
When thinking about legacy, one usually thinks of architectural or urban legacy
more rarely the social (non-)legacy. There is a proper temporality to mega-events,

Leisure Studies

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

and the current temporality of Rio de Janeiro is integrally (pre)dened by its shock of
agenda. Social time disappears, leaving integral space to a hyper-temporality. The
preparation frenzy for 2014 and 2016 dictates a new relationship to time: the banal
everyday becomes a parenthesis, the past becomes a mere heritage, and the present
an ongoing euphoric escape towards an increasingly technological future.14 We are
out of the present or, better said, we are in a present lled with future. We get a virtualisation effect of direct experience, with relation to an ecstatic (pre)vision and a bid
for a necessarily better future of which land speculation is the most visible (and profitable) manifestation. Progress has a name today: mega-events. And progress remains
the only form of historical causality that justies everything. Thus, the shock of
progress only comes to justify a shock of order.
Shock of order: removals and other UPPs
During the 2011 edition of Rock in Rio (one of the largest music festivals in the
world), the success of the operation was measured in tonnes of French fries and
hectolitres of beverages sold to the thousands of visitors (however, the kilometres of
trafc jam getting to the venue or leaving it were also part of the statistics of
success). For cities involved with ows and their management, the success-factor is
always a quantitative value the higher the better. The mega-event is a mass
entertainment par excellence, and also, success is always expected by the tonnes.
This quantitative paradigm shows a much more sinister face if we look at
another kind of statistics achieved in the name of the preparation for the 2014 and
2016 mega-events in Rio de Janeiro. Despite some resistance and multiple complaints (see, for example, Comit, 2011; Mascarenhas, Bienenstein, & Snchez,
2011; Vainer, 2011), the houses destroyed, the families and communities removed
from their homes already count in thousands. Regarding the pacication process,
the quantitative logic is not so different. In October 2012, there were nearly 30
favelas occupied by the pacifying police the objective of Secretary of State for
Security Jos Mariano Beltrame was to reach 40 favelas with Unidade de Polcia
Pacicadora (UPP) in 2014.15
Rankings era 1: the horizontalisation of singularities
In the name of the preparation for the mega-events, the favela is no longer just a
favela: it is either a favela with UPP, or a favela not yet with UPP. Without knowing, Rios favelas are entering the apparently transparent and highly competitive
rankings era.
Ranking is an operation of accounting in which all experiences of concrete life
get elevated to the level of an abstract model, a mapping. As a mapping form, the
operation of ranking virtualises the territories of concrete life; as a device of classication, it reveals a hegemonic obsession to order and classify any situation according to a hierarchical scheme and according to criteria considered signicant within
the proper logic of ranking. With such classicatory logic, lived experiences in their
singularities and irreducibilities tend to disappear in favour of their modelling and
virtualisation.
With the UPPs, the favelas are subject to a quasi-real time scrutiny which primary
goal is to measure the impact of police occupation with respect to the residents sense
of safety. We are witnessing an increased visibility of some new elements that are

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

J. de La Barre

supposed to be representative of the favela with UPP as an emerging model. Aside

from the context of criminality in which the favelado16 condition was traditionally
perceived, the new UPP era is, indeed, breaking paradigms17 with all its rankings.
However, applied to Rios favelas (whether pacied or not yet), the technique
of ranking operates a profound change in the favelas (self-)representation. Besides
pacication itself legitimately the most visible element in the pacifying policy ,
new dimensions are popping up, measured notably in terms of access to rights and
citizenship (de Oliveira, 2012; Jovchelovitch & Priego-Hernndez, 2012). Noteworthy are also the following: the formalisation of the economy, the modernisation of
infrastructures, the access to new technologies and, perhaps most importantly, the
visibility of the pacied favelas with relation to its surroundings. The politics of pacication being also one of communication, it is not surprising to verify that a new
kind of narrative has been praising the attractiveness of Rios pacied favelas for
the English to see18 and eventually settle down in the favela
One cannot deny the fact that the UPPs contribute to crime reduction in a very
signicant manner,19 and a new sense of safety for the Cariocas be they residents of
the hills (i.e. favelas) or the asphalt.20 The normalisation of the economy and the
access to basic services (electricity, gas, water, ) is also a new reality.21 However,
the new media visibility in the UPPs is also generating their own rankings.22 This is
not the place to make a list of the novelties brought by the UPPs. We will only
quote those that, as noted in O Globo, seem to be signicant of a change in the
representation of the favela.
Speaking of attractiveness, the occupied favelas are bringing in new business
opportunities,23 they are gaining political freedom24 and global visibility25; they
encourage the mixing of the Cariocas in the multiple city.26 The occupied favelas
are becoming touristic points.27 The traceability of the favelas with UPP is also
considered a victory.28 The occupied favelas particularly stand out when it comes to
new technologies.29 For example, we learn, not without surprise, that the residents
of occupied favelas are also the most connected in Brazil as a whole.30 A powerful
symbol of modernity, technology also appears as a factor for peace and equality.31
The ecstasy of techno-culture seems to mark a denitive point in the standardisation of the occupied favelas and, by extension, of the city of Rio in the age of
mega-events. Access to new technologies by the occupied favelas comes in other
words to fully represent the normalisation of the city as a whole. It is believed that
the ows of investments in technology, just as the other tsunamis of actions,32
should give continuity to the ows of pacication. And nally maybe, all the
problems will be solved in a well-pacied Carioca party.33
To end with this tsunami of rankings which, basically, points to the horizontalisation of singularities, let us come back to that South Zone postcard: Copacabana
beach. Besides the UPPs in the hills (the South Zone favelas), crime would be resisting in Rio de Janeiro. Then if Copacabana beach is on the black list of the most
dangerous beaches in the world, it is not because of the (real) tsunamis or because
of other natural phenomena, nor is it because of sharks or human pollution, but
bluntly because of crime.34
Rankings era 2: the verticalisation of the point of view
In rankings era, the horizontalisation of singularities is supported by the
verticalisation of the point of view. Thanks to technology, we manage to extract

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

Leisure Studies

ourselves from reality and see it from a different point of view; we believe that this
change of point of view can magically solve the problem observed.
In June 2012 during Rio + 20 (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development), the Carioca public walking by Cinelndia (a neighbourhood in the
city centre) could enjoy an exhibition by French photographer Yann-Arthus
Bertrand, named The Earth From Above. Coming point nomm in these days of
reafrmed environmental awareness, the exhibition featured dozens of photographic
panels standing in Praa Floriano in front of Theatro Municipal, exhibiting some
rather aestheticised aerial views of our planet where one could contemplate both the
lush beauty of natural landscapes and some ecological disasters and pollutions
caused by the human industries. What was expected from this exhibition (at least in
the photographers eye himself, who has been working in this sense for over twenty
years), was that a global public concern for the issue of planetary sustainability
would arise and assert itself, encouraging change and a more conscious attitude
with relation to our human responsibility towards a planet under threat.35
Thus, The Earth From Above seemed to suggest that the solution to our
planets problems began with a much needed change in our point of view and our
capacity to extract ourselves, uproot ourselves at least momentarily, in order to gain,
thanks to the appropriate technology, a global vision the only vision capable if
any, to initiate change in our own attitude. In its own way, the cable car ying over
the Complexo do Alemo (one of Rios largest complex of favelas) participates in
this new vision. By not addressing the complex indeed favela problem, it at least
allows for a renewal of point of view, softening the asperities while, perhaps,
aestheticising them a little. Again, from The Earth From Above to the favela from
above, it is just a matter of point of view
Beyond the rankings: hyper-exible reexivity
The Museu do Amanh (Museum of Tomorrow) project seems to mark a step
further: its goal is to foster an interactive reexivity with the public in order to
encourage future innovations and stimulate the visitors imagination, so that they
would hopefully produce new futures in the future. Future icon of the port area
revitalisation according to Mayor Eduardo Paes,36 the Museum, whose opening is
scheduled for 2014, will be a Museum of possibilities (CDURP, 2012), a device
lled with exible architecture and interactive technology capable of encouraging
the creation of things that will not yet exist. In other words, it is meant to represent
the opposite of the traditional museum that could only (re)collect all that as ever
existed in the past. This should at least remind us what (the belief in the power of)
creative imagination (to create new worlds) owes to technology today.
In the exible and interactive environments of our next futures smart cities, we
will be able to talk to the walls without looking like we are crazy prophesied
recently not without irony Museu do Amanhs curator Luiz Alberto Oliveira
during a seminar on Cities, Possible Futures.37 Jeudy (2005) noted the spectacular
power of reexivity of our contemporary societies, where patrimony becomes the
only guarantee for the time consistency and thickness. Also, the dimension of the
Symbolic is now (reduced to) the exclusive service of heritage conservation. As it
seems, the future project of the Museu do Amanh will be performing an inversion
or, better, an overrun of such process. Besides the symbolic economy (Miles, 2007),
that accelerates the permanent patrimonialisation of the past as it recycles it in the

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

J. de La Barre

present, the creative and hyper-reexive economy of the future Museu do Amanh
will pro-actively patrimonialise the future as it is being invented, anticipating and
internalising it in (quasi-)real time.
The Museu do Amanh project was presented to the public during Rio + 20 in
an exhibition held in Fort Copacabana that I had the occasion to visit on its very last
day. A sort of cabinet of curiosities for future reference, the exhibition ://HUMANIDADE2012 will have me suggested what could be a patrimony for the future,
regardless of the (possible) future of patrimony itself. It is as if in 2012, humanity
(at least the one represented by the curators of the exhibition) had attempted to
deposit all of the human knowledge accumulated over the centuries in a space-time
capsule for the future generations, in case who knows? humanity itself would
disappear during Rio + 20. A suggestive name indeed ://HUMANIDADE2012
good enough for the thinking and imagining: what if humanity itself already
became the patrimony of humanity in 2012 (i.e. the patrimony of itself)?! Could
it be that we would enter in a post-humanity in 2013? In any case, the humanity
model for a possible post-2012 future did not last longer than the 15 days bonanza
of Rio + 20. Finally, the spectacular space-time capsule had been ephemeral.
In this last day of the exhibition, the human mass was compact and all we could
do was keep walking with no possible way of stopping the ow that was our own.
At every 15m, a security guard gently intimated (to no one in particular) a repeated
Follow the ow please! It was all movement, ow and we, the human ow, were
the movement. Werent we, after all, the ://HUMANIDADE2012, a permanent and
fascinated ow? Yes, the idea was exactly this: to just keep walking. The owing,
non-stop parading mass could hardly see anything, walking up and down the metallic hallways that lead to dark rooms only lit by the screens reection, where, there
also, paraded the innite ows of digital information of our world in virtual movement: Earth, Brazil, biodiversity, the human, nature, Endless statistics no one had
even time to read. And the ow of us walking through the various themed rooms,
whose main theme was always: technology the new and integral centrality with its
politics of participative immersion and massive-festive enchantment; a technology
that invited each and every one of us individually to reinvent ourselves and multiply
our new styles and complex cultural hybrids at the innite thus revealing our
techno-happiness and facility to be fascinated techno-culturally.
Against the apparent harmony of this endless show of world statistics parading
in real time, a symbolic response to, perhaps, the continuous ow of digital information: the random ashes of photographic cameras and the public, still human after
all, attempting the impossible, to immortalise the moment(s). As the visit was coming to an end, we soon had to leave the premises, still following the ow. And perhaps the human ow kept expelling itself towards the post-humanity of 2013. And
there was no way to go back, in case we had lost some information. The information
ows themselves were gone. They had already been updated, and re-updated.
Shock treatment: the planning of the extraordinary
The (mega-)event does not happen per se. Proper to the (mega-)event is that it is perfectly devoid of any eventuality. Ideally, the (mega-)event is perfectly predictable, and
it must proceed in exactly the same way as it has (or will have) been planned. In this
sense, the (mega-)event is essentially a non-event or, better said, a non-happening.
Proper to (mega-)events is the fact that they do not happen, they do not create noise

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

Leisure Studies

(in the sense used by the physics of turbulence); they cannot even have eventualities
(in the sense of unexpected events). Contrary to the happening which takes place or
comes to reality unexpectedly (as does chance or eventuality), the event is organised
by experts (a party, a show, a celebration, etc.), and its goals are usually institutional,
community-oriented, or promotional. With the event, and even more so the megaevent, what is expected after all is that nothing will take place.
We are in a (mega-)event paradigm which only reveals the willingness to plan,
organise and institutionalise everything according to the extraordinary, the spectacular and the exceptional just to make sure that nothing will take place. The (mega-)
event obeys to the ethics of responsibility and adopts the discourse of necessity. In
contrast, whatever takes place comes from chance, and the much more radical ethics
of conviction. The mega-event is an ideal show, whose transparency and attractiveness must be unquestionable, provided that once again, nothing will take place.
Whatever may happen remains in fact unpredictable; it may always arise before,
during and after the event and in the most extreme forms: accident, violence, hooliganism, crime, terrorist attack, catastrophe, hazard, human or natural disasters and
other misfortunes. As it represents everything that stands out of the plan of the
planned, the happening produces a contrast, a retour du rel (return of the real).
If Rios future is entirely (pre)dened by mega-events, which after all are
mega-(non-)events as we have seen, how shall we dene this particular future? And
what would a future that is integrally (pre)dened by its mega (non-)events be like:
a non-future?!
Mega-events extreme other: the social in question
From the moment that the city is seen as a commodity, selling it becomes the basic
objective of local governments. There are multiple clients, but the preferred one is the
big international capital. In this sense, urban marketing becomes the model of city
management. (). The important thing is not what the city is, but what it offers to
attract capital. So we start selling images. In Rios strategic planning for example, it is
written that one of the problems of the city is that the homeless people are too visible.
That is, the bad thing is not that there are lots of people without housing, but the fact
that these people are all too visible. If we can hide them, our problem is resolved.
Misery becomes a mere problem of landscape. In this sense, the city is thought of as a
luxury commodity; not just anyone can afford it. (Vainer, 2010 our translation)

The city project being entirely hyper-realised by mega-events, its extreme others
the homeless, the favelado need to be shut down and become invisible. In the era
of mega-events, the social becomes marginal, secondary, disposable and escapable.
The social looks pretty much like the dark side of the mega-events. Most relevant in
the mega-events era are the ows, the masses, within which the social tends to
disappear all the like.
How to dene the changes that Rio is going through without deep feeling a
ambivalence? Shall we dene these changes in terms of festive and futuristic
mega-events, or rather in terms of population removal and criminalisation? We are
witnessing two parallel processes, two antagonistic temporalities: the hegemony of
the accelerated planning and urban reengineering for the mega-events, and the
temporality of a social human condition that is (still) inscribed in the historic course.
Both may represent the two faces of this Rio de Janus, indeed a real mutant
marvel38: a Rio Re-Marvellous (for whom?) on the one hand, and a Dystopian
Rio (for all!) on the other; which for the Carioca implies living with the permanent

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

10

J. de La Barre

awareness that very soon an ephemeral agenda of mega-events will deagrate in the
city. What exactly is the thrill of being under the eyes of the world?39
The change of attitude towards an escapist present now reduced to the promise
of a better future is notable in the city spaces and in the language and conversations,40 and in the emerging formulations regarding a new imaginary in/of the city.
The shock of agenda generates a shock of divergent representations. We may have a
reversal of perspective: the social-residue (of a life that once was direct, immediate
and contingent, made of struggles, antagonisms, conicts, dynamics, etc.) becomes
the mega-events extreme other.
Thus for example, the resistance of the cracudos (crackheads), invisible from
the verticalised point of view of the rankings, contradict the civilising order of the
mega-events. Some titles from the O Globo newspaper after the police occupation
of the Jacarezinho and Manguinhos neighbourhoods in October 2012 suggest that
the passive resistance of these invisible is highly undesirable:
Four hours after rescue action, users return to cracolndia [literally: crackland] at
Parque Unio.41 Ten hours after occupation of Manguinhos, users return to
cracolndia by the railway line.42 Cracolndia resists in Jacarezinho and Manguinhos.43 Cracolndia in Manguinhos resists to the presence of security forces.44
Crack users are back using the drug in occupied communities.45

The new paradigm/economic cycle of the mega-events would succeed in expelling

the social, leaving only a few social shop windows: the UPP Social, the social
networks windows, the social entrepreneurship, social business, social technologies of the creative imagination, etc. In a hyper-connected world so techno-culturally
over-determined, it is not superuous to question the relevance of the social as a
factor of explanation and/or transformation of historical processes. (Over-)Exposed to
mega-events, the social would no longer be a priority and should become exible,
following that movement of inevitable progress and adapting at any cost to the new
dynamics or simply die at the end of the crack line. In fact the inevitable agenda of
mega-events challenges the social.
The priorities in social policies (health, education, housing, ) tend to disappear,
leaving an integral space for the festive-participative politics in the city of megaevents. The politics of pacication are being sold to the world as a form of civilisation
(access to rights, justice, citizenship, ). Hence, we get a new form of pro-active
civilisation, boosted for and by its mega-events. Searching for the place of the social
in the mega-events era, we may be wondering if it is not being in fact merely
(re)dened:
 either negatively: increased cost of living (housing, transportation), population
removal, the criminalisation of poverty and of social movements;
 or in a hybrid-ambivalent form:
 either in business terms: the emergence of new businesses thanks to the
UPPs, (dis-in-formalisation of the economy and services, increased competitiveness of spaces and territories, gentrication; and
 or in techno-cultural terms: social networks, connectivity, interactivity,
virtual communities.
Can the social identify with these residual (re)denitions that the mega-events
logic seems to be drawing? Against all odds, the struggles against population

Leisure Studies

11

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

removal and the criminalisation of poverty are in fact rejecting an ideology that,
much more toxic than crack, intends to sell mega-events as the only solution for the
promotion of Brand Rio the RJ brand, already registered.46
Brazil is (still) the country of the future? The hyper-realised future of megaevents
If Brazil is the country of the future, the future has arrived. (Barack Obama).47
During his visit speech in Rio de Janeiro in 2011, US President Barack Obama
pronounced (probably unknowingly) a similar formula to the one that Srgio
Magalhes had used the previous year (For Rio, the future is now, quoted at the
beginning of this text), extending the apparent paradox from Rio to Brazil as a
whole.48 If, by chance, the year of 2011 marked also the seventieth anniversary of
the publication of the classic Brazil, Land of the Future, by Stefan Zweig (1941),
the main reason for the future having arrived to Brazil with such synchrony was
more clearly hyper-signied by the advent of the 2014 and 2016 mega-events.49
This time, Brazil could only do right.
For Brazil, now a country of the future in the present, it was as if the megaevents came to document the countrys tremendous and much needed soft power
capability (Grix & Lee, 2013), also announcing the advent of a new economic cycle
in the context of the advanced global modernity. Suddenly, the mega-events were
becoming the miraculously perfect metaphor to the current political economy, whose
major axes service economy, symbolic economy, creative industries, digital culture
and the recreational economy of entertainment became perfectly synchronised and
hyper-realised. Perhaps the mega-events even managed to perform some sort of
structural adjustment now necessarily (re)framed within the prerequisites of the
sustainable development buzz. For only a shock treatment based on a consumerist
and festive frenzy coupled with the adequate technologies of surveillance (Horne,
2011) could possibly solve everything. As an effect of the verticalisation of the point
of view, such change in attitude was being ofcially reafrmed and approved
internationally.
As Vainer (2010, 2011) demonstrated, mega-events generate a state of exception,
a city of exception where exception is the new rule. The politics of mega-events
are an integral part of the citys politics; the city policy becomes the mega-events
policy. As a priority for the city and a new centrality, the city project boils down to
the mega-events:
If the process of transformation of the city into a commodity, company and country is
the process of de-politicization of the city (), a mega-event () achieves this to the
extreme and generates what we may call the city of exception, by analogy to the state
of exception. It is the city where the rules of urban living no longer apply, because
another reason takes over. In such city, there is a direct control of capital over the
direction of the city. In the end, the city of exception penetrates the whole urban fabric,
permitting to conceal poverty and allowing the criminalization of this poverty. (Vainer,
2010 our translation)

If the city of exception is the ideology, then the mega-event is the paradigm. In addition to the city of exception, we have also a future of exception marked by the
extraordinary. The perfect identication between Rio, Brazil, and the future, is integrally (pre)dened and over-determined by the mega-events of 2014 and 2016; in
fact these become omnipresent in a present lled with a near future. Indeed it looks

12

J. de La Barre

like we have left the present, and were rushing towards that future. And indeed the
problem is that there is no exit from such model of a hyper(pre)dened future.
This ecstatic escape from the normal, the present, the thickness of social time
into a (probably excessive) promise of an exceptional and extraordinary future gives
body to the city of exception, with its dreams of a non-stop and transparent partytime for all during the mega-events. Interesting is to think about the repetition of
these two mega-events: not just 2014 or 2016, but 2014 and 2016. As it seems, this
is shock treatment and future shock; as if one mega-event was not enough for Rio to
awake from a more than 40 years sleep of abandon, and began to believe (again?) in
a dream come true, as the slogan for the project Porto Maravilha said.50

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

Conclusion: terminal escape towards the post-human? Post-2016 Rio

If you have any doubt as to whether you are post-human or merely human, take a look
at the following parts of your body: the city, the house, the car, the iPhone, the laptop,
the iPod, the pillbox, the non-esh surround. (Codrescu, 2009, pp. 23).

Sold to the population as a unique opportunity (one may ask: for whom?), the
mega-events also appear as a challenge (for all), inviting anyone to push the boundaries of their merely human condition. The political economy of mega-events is also
a politics of festive participation, an invitation to an overcoming that must involve
and delight everyone. One more exit, one more escape from the present and the contingent reality of the human condition: the prosaic and hyper-realised gures of the
Olympic athlete-Superman, the hybrid man-network, and the civil construction
worker-athlete. With his smartphone in hand, this new kind of solipsistic posthuman is indeed hyper-connected to the whole world, yet at the same time perfectly
disconnected from all forms of socio-historical process. The city that reinvents itself
for the mega-events is also the stage to a general invitation for all to reinvent
everyone self and without distinction as one.51
In the ineluctable march towards the revolution of the mega-events, the civil
construction workers involved in Pharaohs works of the Olympic Village, the
Olympic City and the Maracan become athletes, heroes of the city. Co-opted as
they are, they exhibit at pleasure the famous commercial smile of the service economy total quality style.52 The mega-events appear as a gigantic advertising
calling for the Superman in each and everyone of us. In the narratives about the city,
the mega-events, athletes or workers, the performativity of such discourse of overcoming is in fact over-determined by the permanent transparency and over-exposure
that the technologies of communication tend to inict.53
In a different register, a new line of convergence seems to conrm the profound
transformation of the Cariocas mindset in the mega-events era. Betting (rightly so!)
in the power of the creative imagination to transform historical situations and
processes, the emerging narrative about the new Rio attempts to put an end to the
old clichs about the divided city inventing new ways of living and relating to each
other (Silva, Barbosa, & Faustini, 2012). Incidentally, an old theme of the Chicago
School is re-actualised (the city as a state of mind), and perhaps also a renewed
attempt to think the classical opposition between segregation and mobility.54 If the
city is no longer divided, it is because of the new Cariocas mobility. Such mobility
is a reality, and it is also and at the same time a utopia that must concretise. So as it
is, the new Carioca cannot be dened by a specic sociological prole, nor can he

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

Leisure Studies

13

be by a mere geographical location in the city: the new Carioca is a tendency, an

idea, an ideal-type, a creative utopia, a performance. Inventing new bridges to his
mobility, the new Carioca may also be (re)inventing the post-divided city now a
reconciled, integrated, entire city.55
Another possible way to transcend the old clichs: through techno-culture. The
future is being integrally (pre)dened, scanned literally, by digital culture and other
creative economies in our smart and sustainable cities. Thinking already in the
Post-2016 a Legacy Development Committee was created, to plan the future of
the Olympic area.56 Unsurprisingly, the Committee is already foreseeing the transformation of the press centre buildings, in a pole of companies in the creative and
digital industries.57
Already conrmed, the performative (and somewhat presumptuous) anticipation
of the next future, including the (pre)vision of a legacy that will most likely be
dened integrally by digital culture and other creative and recreational economies
all so naturally interactive and participative, all so inclusive and democratic. The exit
from the reality of the present is also an escape from the (non-)place of a social that
is now being scanned integrally by digital surveillance. The reign of the post-human
to come, the next advent of the (not so) awaited Post-2016 would be conrming
the end of the social. Migration, exodus, escapism: towards the euphoric future, the
techno-cultural ecstasy! Things will never be the same? But of course not!
Post-2016 Rio will be post-human or nothing!
Notes
1. Translated (and slightly adapted) by the author, this article was originally written in Portuguese and published in: O Social em Questo, Rio de Janeiro: Pontifcia Universidade
Catlica do Rio de Janeiro PUC-Rio, Ano XVI, No. 29, vol. 1, 2013, pp.4368.
Original title: Choque de futuro: o Rio dos megaeventos.
2. Pacication Police Units, or Unidades de Polcia Pacicadora (UPPs). Since 2008, in
preparation for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, the state government of
Rio has adopted, as a rst-step solution to deal with the urban cycle of violence, the
installation of permanent security police units in most of Rios favelas.
4. The city of Rio is also known as the Cidade Maravilhosa (also the name of a song,
Rios civic anthem).
5. Porto Maravilha: um sonho que virou realidade. Porto Maravilha. Rio de Janeiro:
Companhia de Desenvolvimento Urbano da Regio do Porto do Rio de Janeiro
(CDURP). Available online at: http://www.portomaravilha.com.br/web/sup/OperUr
banaApresent.aspx. Accessed January 28 2014.
6. Judging by the references on urban studies in Brazil, the book Reengenharia na cidade
(Reengineering in the City) by Coelho (1995) went almost unnoticed. I use the term
reengineering here, well aware that it is originally a concept in business management in
the US.
7. Total quality management is another name for reengineering.
8. Risk management is also another name for reengineering.
9. Horne and Whannel have noted: () the aftermath or repercussions of sports megaevents are often discussed now in terms of their legacies, rather than their impacts.
(Horne & Whannel, 2012, p. 202).
10. Sob os trilhos de Londres, O Globo, 26 October 2012 (our translation).
11. Vises distintas da marca que as Olimpadas devem deixar no Rio, O Globo, 6 October
2012.
12. Think of the absolute standard model past, present, and future , represented by the
city of Barcelona, which hosted the Olympics in 1992. However, this standard model
may be updated after Londons recent success in organising the 2012 Olympics.

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

14

J. de La Barre

13. Let us remind here the profound ambivalence of the model: it is reproducible (or
desirable), replicated (or copied), disposable (or forgotten); let us also remind the consequent ephemerality of the models lifecycle.
14. At the time of the accelerated march in preparation for the mega-events that are likely
to change so dramatically the face of the city, it is signicant that in parallel Rio won
UNESCOs world heritage title in July 2012, in the new Cultural Landscape category.
15. To get a sense of scale of the pacication process let us note that, according to the 2010
Census of the Brazilian Statistic Agency (Instituto Brasileiro de Geograa e Estatstica,
IBGE), every fth inhabitant of Rio de Janeiro lives in a favela. Out of the 6.3 million
Cariocas, 1.4 million dwell in one of the 763 favelas (Armed Peace: The Pacication
of Favelas in Rio de Janeiro with UPPs. Available online at http://contario.net/armedpeace/. Accessed 3 October 2014).
16. Favelado: favela resident (pejorative).
17. Beltrame diz que UPP da Rocinha vai quebrar paradigmas, O Globo, 19 September
2012.
18. On the recent nomination of the city of Rio de Janeiro as patrimony of humanity,
Raquel Rolnik purposely asks: how to consolidate these favelas when they are now
facing the hurricane of real estate valuation that is plaguing Rio de Janeiro, and that this
very nomination of patrimony of humanity helps boosting so much? (Rolnik, 2012
our translation).
19. According to O Globo, by September 2012, 250 lives were spared thanks to the UPPs:
Nova realidade nas favelas: 250 vidas poupadas, O Globo, 22 September 2012.
20. Segundo pesquisa de percepo do Rio Como Vamos, sensao de segurana aumenta
entre cariocas, O Globo, 29 June 2011.
21. Light segue UPPs na regularizao do fornecimento de energia, O Globo, 21 June
2010.
22. As melhores e as piores UPPs: o ranking da pacicao, O Globo, 31 March 2012.
23. Pesquisa aponta crescimento de 23% em negcios de cinco favelas com UPPs,
O Globo, 17 Oct de 2012.
24. Liberdade poltica reforada com implantao das UPPs, O Globo, 10 November
2012.
25. Projeto da UPP mudou a cara do Rio para o mundo, arma Paulo Storani, O Globo,
Oct. 14th, 2012; Ocupao de favelas no Rio destaque nos principais jornais do
mundo, O Globo, 14 October 2012.
26. UPPs fazem cariocas se misturarem pela cidade, O Globo, 10 November 2012.
27. Favelas com UPP so pontos tursticos da vez, O Globo, 3 December 2011.
28. Favelas com UPP entram no mapa ocial do Rio, O Globo, 14 October 2012.
29. Internet sem o chega Rocinha em maro, O Globo, 2 Feb 2010; UPP da Rocinha
a mais tecnolgica do estado, Globo TV, 21 September 2012.
30. Moradores de reas com UPP tm mais celulares que a mdia da populao do pas,
O Globo, 20 July 2012.
31. Portela vai mostrar como a tecnologia pode ser um instrumento para a paz e a igualdade, O Globo, 14 February 2010.
32. Beltrame quer pressa em investimentos sociais ps-UPPs: Nada sobrevive s com
segurana, O Globo, 28 May 2011; A UPP tem que ter um tsunami de aes
(interview with Secretary of State for Security Jos Mariano Beltrame), Metro Rio, 10
October 2012.
33. Alziro: policiamento e choque de ordem ajudam a festa, O Globo, 20 Jun 2010.
34. Lista das praias mais perigosas do mundo inclui Copacabana: crime, O Globo, 20
September 2012.
35. Who arrived in Rio by Tom Jobim International Airport (Galeo) during Rio + 20 also
found, upon exiting the airport, a corridor of banners with messages calling for a reection on the theme of sustainability: Future Rio has a future, Recycle your attitudes,
Didnt you want to change the world?, and Is your consciousness sustainable or
guilty?.
36. Museu do Amanh ser o cone da revitalizao da Zona Porturia, diz Paes,
O Globo, 2 May 2012.

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

Leisure Studies

15

37. Cidades, futuros possveis, international seminar, Casa da Cincia/UFRJ, 1617 Aug
2012.
38. Maravilha Mutante, O Globo, Special feature on the occasion of the 447 years of Rio
de Janeiro, 1 March 2012.
39. Sob os olhares do mundo, Revista Globo, Special Rio + 20, 10 June 2012.
40. The already famous Imagine during the Cup has become, as it seems, the only horizon
for the (non-less famous) jeitinho carioca (carioca knack). Or, at least, it appeared in
the 5 August 2012 cover of Revista Globo, with the following title: Imagine during the
Cup! The catchphrase of the moment inspires exclusive texts from ten personalities on
Rio in 2014.
41. O Globo, 17 October 2012.
42. O Globo, 14 October 2012.
43. O Globo, 12 October 2012.
44. O Globo, 13 October 2012.
45. O Globo, 15 October 2012.
46. On the website RJ: Rio de Janeiro Marca Registrada do Brasil, we learn that Rio has
many qualities that you only nd here. Each person, tourist or resident, has their favourite, which lls with pride and makes our State the best place in the world. Thats what
makes Rio a unique place. Thats what makes Rio Trademark of Brazil (our translation). Available online at: http://marcarj.com.br/. Accessed 28 January 2014.
47. Se o Brasil o pas do futuro, o futuro chegou, diz Obama, Revista poca, 20
March 2011.
48. On the choice of Rio as the host for the 2016 Olympics, Obama also declared at the
time: Now you may be aware that the city was not my rst choice for the Summer
Olympics. But if the games could not be held in Chicago, then theres no place Id
rather see them than right here in Rio. (Revista poca, 20 March, 2011). Let us remind
en passant that during the bid to host the 2016 Olympics, the popular committee No
Games Chicago argued that the city of Chicago had other priorities for public money
spending (hospitals, housing, schools, trains, ), and was in fact supporting Rios
bid. The poster Chicagoans for Rio 2016 said: It would be exciting to host the
Olympics here in Chicago. But you know what would be even better? Rio de Janeiro.
Just let Rio host the 2016 Olympics. We dont mind. Honest.
49. The following year during the Rio + 20 in June of 2012, a banner message on the exit
corridor of Tom Jobim International Airport (Galeo) conrmed, no less paradoxically,
the apparent omnipresence of that future in the present: O Futuro do Rio tem Futuro
(Future Rio has a Future).
50. Cf footnote 5.
51. Not by accident, the coalition of no less than 20 political parties which led to the
re-election of Mayor Eduardo Paes in October 2012 was named Somos Um Rio (We
are One Rio, yet also suggesting We are a [one] River). Talking about the city of
ows
52. Francisco de Oliveira writes: () the trick is a way of adopting capitalism as an
incomplete solution at the periphery of the system. Incomplete, because capitalism has
brought here the revolution of productive forces, but not the formal solutions of
civility. (Oliveira, 2012, p. 32 our translation).
53. About the spectacle of cities that are permanently reinventing themselves under the
inuence of their own representations, Jeudy (2005) speaks of metaphoricity and
meta-language.
54. In 1925, Robert E. Park, one of the founders of the Chicago School of urban sociology,
wrote: Not only transportation and communication, but the segregation of the urban
population tends to facilitate the mobility of the individual man. The processes of segregation establish moral distances which make the city a mosaic of little worlds which
touch but do not interpenetrate. This makes it possible for individuals to pass quickly
and easily from one moral milieu to another, and encourages the fascinating but dangerous experiment of living at the same time in several different contiguous, but otherwise
widely separated, worlds. All this tends to give to city life a supercial and adventitious
character; it tends to complicate social relationships and to produce new divergent individual types. It introduces, at the same time, an element of chance and adventure which

16

J. de La Barre

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

adds to the stimulus of city life and gives it, for young and fresh nerves, a peculiar
attractiveness. The lure of great cities is perhaps a consequence of stimulations which
act directly upon the reexes. As a type of human behaviour it may be explained, like
the attraction of the ame for the moth, as a sort of tropism. (Park, 1925, pp. 4041).
55. In an article suggestively titled Gringo 2.0, journalist Maria da Luz Miranda suggests
that the Carioca himself has entered the list of Rios wonders (however, without specifying whether she is talking about the new Carioca or the old): Feeling of safety, better
services and optimism for the coming years attract a new prole of tourists, which narrow ties with the city and include the Carioca himself in the list of Rios wonders.
(our translation). poca Rio de Janeiro, special edition 2016 cidade olmpica (2012,
April), p. 104108.
56. Lies olmpicas: em Londres, custo menor e racionalidade, O Globo, 5 October
2012.
57. Ibid.

Notes on contributor
Jorge de La Barre did his PhD in Sociology from cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences
Sociales (EHESS), Paris (2004). He is an associate professor at Universidade Federal
Fluminense (UFF), Department of Sociology and Methodology of Social Sciences (GSO).
He is a researcher at the Ncleo de Estudos Cidadania, Trabalho e Arte (NECTAR/UFF), a
researcher at the Laboratory of Metropolitan Ethnography (LeMetro/IFCS-UFRJ), and an
associate researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology Center for the Study of Music and
Dance (INET-MD/UNL). He is Acting on the following themes: urban culture, urban
renewal, cultural globalisation, techno-culture, music and city.

References
Companhia de Desenvolvimento Urbano da Regio do Porto do Rio de Janeiro. (2012).
O museu das possibilidades [The museum of possibilities]. CDURP Operao Urbana
Porto Maravilha. Retrieved October 2, 2014, from http://portomaravilha.com.br/web/esq/
imprensa/pdf/16.pdf
Codrescu, A. (2009). The Posthuman Dada Guide. Tzara & Lenin Play Chess. Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Coelho, Eliomar. (1995). Reengenharia na cidade [Reengineering in the city]. Rio de Janeiro:
Taurus Editora.
Comit Popular da Copa e Olmpiadas do Rio de Janeiro. (2011). Megaeventos e violaes
dos Direitos Humanos no Rio de Janeiro [Mega-events and human rights violations in
Rio de Janeiro]. Rio de Janeiro: Author.
de Oliveira, F. L. (2012, October). Jeitinho e jeito. Uma tentativa de interpretao do carter
brasileiro [Knack and Style. An attempt to interpret the Brazilian character]. Revista
Piau, 73, 3234.
Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is at. A brief history of the twenty-rst century. New
York, NY: Picador.
Gaffney, C. (2011, November). The mega-event city as neo-liberal laboratory: The case of
rio de janeiro. (Working Paper presented at the Second Mega-event Think Tank).
Canada: University of British Columbia. Retrieved October 2, 2014, from https://www.
academia.edu/3085574/The_mega-event_city_as_neo-liberal_laboratory
Grix, J., & Lee, D. (2013). Soft power, sports mega-events and emerging states: The lure of
the politics of attraction. Global Society, 27, 521536.
Hammer, M., & Champy, J. (1993). Reengineering the corporation: A manifesto for business
revolution. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Horne, J. (2011). Building BRICs by building stadiums: Preliminary reections on recent and
future sports mega-events in four emerging economies. London: British library. Sport &
Society, The Summer Olympics and Paralympics Through the Lens of Social Science.
Retrieved January 28, 2014, from http://www.bl.uk/sportandsociety/exploresocsci/sport
soc/mega/buildingbricks.pdf

Downloaded by [Jorge de La Barre] at 15:38 22 January 2015

Leisure Studies

17

Horne, J., & Whannel, G. (2012). Understanding the olympics. Oxon: Routledge.
Jeudy, H.-P. (2005). Espelho das cidades [Mirror of cities]. Rio de Janeiro: Casa da Palavra.
Jovchelovitch, S., & Priego-Hernndez, J. (2012). Underground sociabilities. Identity, culture
and resistance in Rio de Janeiros Favelas (Final report). London: LSE.
Klein, N. (2008). The shock doctrine. The rise of disaster capitalism. New York, NY:
Picador.
Magalhes, S. (2010, June 26). Para o Rio, o futuro hoje [For Rio, The future is now].
O Globo (p. 18).
Mascarenhas, G., Bienenstein, G., & Snchez, F. (org.). (2011). O jogo continua: megaeventos esportivos e cidades [The game continues: Sports mega-events and cities]. Rio de
Janeiro: EdUERJ.
Miles, M. (2007). Cities and cultures. New York, NY: Routledge.
Oliveira, F. L. de (2012). UPPs, direitos e justia. Um estudo de caso das favelas do Vidigal
e do Cantagalo [Pacication police units, rights and justice. A case study of the Vidigal
and Cantagalo communities]. Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora.
Paes, E. (2012, June). A nova engenharia da Cidade Maravilha [The new engineering of the
Marvellous City]. Porto Maravilha (p. 2), Rio de Janeiro: Companhia de Desenvolvimento Urbano da Regio do Porto do Rio de Janeiro (CDURP).
Park, R. E. (1925). The city: Suggestions for the Investigation of human behavior in the
urban environment. In R. E. Park, E. W. Burgess, & R. D. Mckenzie (Eds.), The city
(pp. 16). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Rolnik, R. (2012, July 2). Favelas cariocas entre a montanha e o mar so patrimnio da
humanidade. Blog de Raquel Rolnik. Retrieved January 28, 2014, from http://raquelrolnik.
wordpress.com/2012/07/02/favelas-cariocas-entrea-montanha-e-o-mar-sao-patrimonio-dahumanidade/
Silk, M. Neoliberalism and sports mega-events. (2014). In J. Grix (Ed.), Leveraging legacies
from sports mega-events: Concepts and cases (pp. 5059). Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Silva, J. S. de, Barbosa, J. L., & Faustini, M. V. (2012). O novo carioca [The new carioca].
Rio de Janeiro: Mrula Editorial.
Vainer, C. (2010, March 30). Megaeventos podem transformar Rio em cidade de exceo.
Superintendncia Geral de Comunicao Social da UFRJ. Retrieved January 28, 2014,
from http://www.olharvirtual.ufrj.br/2010/index.php?id_edicao=290&codigo=3
Vainer, C. (2011). Cidade de exceo: reexes a partir do Rio de Janeiro [City of exception: Reections from Rio de Janeiro]. XIV Encontro Nacional da ANPURRio de
Janeiro: ANPUR.