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Justifying the civic interest in sport: Boltanski and Thévenot, the six worlds of justification, and hosting the Olympic games

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posted on 2016-07-01, 12:45 authored by Richard GiulianottiRichard Giulianotti, Tommy Langseth
This paper examines and applies the widely influential work of Boltanski and Thévenot in order to investigate and understand political issues or disputes within sport. We provide a critical elaboration of Boltanski and Thévenot’s theory of the six ‘orders of worth’ or ‘worlds’ of justification that are drawn upon by social actors within these disputes. We examine how social actors may draw upon multiple justifications (or worlds) in order to advance their positions or interests; how power differences arise between these worlds; and, how weak worlds of justification may extend their influence within specific issues. To elaborate our analysis, we discuss the public issue of Olympic bidding and hosting, and how key social actors or stakeholders (such as local and national governments, event sponsors, and sport bodies) draw on different worlds of justification, particularly in advocating the staging of these events. This issue indicates that the six worlds are organised hierarchically into three ‘levels of worth’: the market, fame, and domestic worlds are the most prominent, while civic world arguments have least influence. These power differentials are reflected further in the criticisms and compromises that arise between the civic world and other worlds. We conclude by examining how civic world justifications may be accorded greater prominence within sport and other public issues such as those relating to Olympic bidding and hosting.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

European Journal for Sport and Society

Citation

GUILIANOTTI, R. and LANGSETH, T., 2016. Justifying the civic interest in sport: Boltanski and Thévenot, the six worlds of justification, and hosting the Olympic games. European Journal for Sport and Society, 13 (2), pp. 133-153.

Publisher

© Taylor & Francis

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-06-07

Publication date

2016

Notes

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in European Journal for Sport and Society on 07 Jun 2016, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2016.1183930

ISSN

1613-8171

eISSN

2380-5919

Language

  • en

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