Flows of Affect in the Olympic Stadium

Abstract

I explore the contribution that emotions made to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but from a perspective that downplays individualised or embodied analysis of emotion, and oppositions between the 'emotional' and the 'rational'. Instead, emotions are understood as one component within a broader 'flow of affect' within an Olympic assemblage of physical, biological, cultural, social and economic relations. I supply an 'affective' sociology of the Games, focusing upon the capacities produced in competitors, audiences, media, spaces and physical entities such as the stadia and Olympic Park, and how these together produced the Games and their legacy. © Sociological Research Online.