Mega-events and social change

The spectacle of major cultural and sporting events can preoccupy modern societies. This book is concerned with contemporary mega-events like the Olympics and Expos. Using a sociological perspective Roche argues that mega-events reflect the major social changes which now influence our societies particularly in the West and that these amount to a new 'second phase' of the modernization process. Changes are particularly visible in the media urban and global locational aspects of mega-events. Thus he suggests that contemporary mega-events both in their achievements and their vulnerabilities reflect in the media sphere the rise of the internet; in the urban sphere de-industrialisation and the growing ecological crisis; and in the global sphere the relative decline of the West and the rise of China and other 'emerging' countries.