Space, Mobility, and Crisis in Mega-Event Organisation

Rodanthi Tzanelli is Associate Professor of Cultural Sociology and Director of the Mobilities Research Area in the Bauman Institute, University of Leeds, UK. She is a social and cultural theorist of mobility (tourism, social movements, mega-events, and technology) with particular reference to the representational discourses, regimes of consumption, and crises induced by capitalism and climate change. She is author of numerous critical interventions, research articles, and chapters, as well as 14 monographs including Cultural (Im)mobilities and the Virocene: Mutating the Crisis (2021).

"The connections between critical studies of mobility, sociology of emotions, and social criticism are clearly conveyed in this book by Rodanthi Tzanelli. Risk, time/space, and experience are comprehensively analysed, and readers collect important cues that help them to understand 21st-century society."Adrian Scribano, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina"Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources and concepts, Rodanthi Tzanelli's latest work on the Olympics as problematic mega-event tackles the pandemic-afflicted Tokyo 2020 games. As always, Tzanelli's work is thought-provoking, astute, and blends a sharp critical eye for fine details with a phenomenal grasp of the larger issues." Philip Seaton, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan"In this fascinating book, Rodanthi Tzanelli explores the philosophical dilemmas revolving around the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Centred on the effects of disaster and technoscientific reasoning over local place-making cosmologies, this is a must-read book that merits attention in the specialised literature." Maximiliano Korstanje, University of Palermo, Argentina"This truly interdisciplinary book provides a ground-breaking analysis of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Tzanelli provides an incisive analysis of how the crises surrounding this globally mediated mega-event are revealed atmospherically and provides an original analysis of intertwined human and post-human mobilities."Monica Degen, Brunel University London, UK"This stimulating "Tzanellian" foray into critical cultural theory upends mobilities theory, mega-event theory and critical cosmopolitanism, holding a dark mirror to the crises of the Anthropocene. Shimmering across tropes of pilgrimage, ceremonies, dreams, atmospheres, and embodied movement, she leads us through the Tokyo Olympics in her inimitable style."Mimi Sheller, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA"In yet another staggering impressive and conceptually innovative volume, Tzanelli uses the postponed Tokyo Olympics that took place in a context of planetary crisis in 2021, as a prism for examining the controverses and conflicts of global mega-events, challenging us to rethink notions of mobility and space from non-Western and non-anthropocentric perspectives."Michael Haldrup, Roskilde University, Denmark

• 1. Introducing a risky experiment2. Pilgrimage in Tokyo3. The birth of the Japanese CineKiki4. The dreams of the Japanese CineKiki5. The ceremonies of the Japanese CineKiki6. The life and death of the Japanese CineKiki7. The journeys of the Japanese CineKiki: bodies and no-bodies8. Conclusion: the chronicles of a biotechnical crime