The symbolic construction of space: Brazilian image in the context of sports mega-events

• Grant number: 14/07029-7
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: July 01, 2014
• End date: June 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Michel Nicolau Netto
• Grantee: Michel Nicolau Netto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Space has become an object of consumption, and physical changes in the space are ever more conducted according to speculative private interests, instead of to the public use of the space. The same sort of process can be noticed in symbolic terms, focus of this research project: also the images of the space are produced according to interests of consumption. Tourism market makes it clear, as it assumes explicitly the space as an object of consumption, attributing a "brand" to it and adopting marketing tools to promote it. In this context, agents strive to link these brands to values that are globally accepted and ensure that these are values that acquire legitimacy to represent the places. However, in the globalization there are many interests on and many possibilities to the symbolic production. It causes both the conflict and the emergence of "symbolic administrators." In the case of tourism, these administrators are the tourism boards, such as Embratur. Adopting a marketing technique called branding, which since the 1990s has been adapted to the promotion of place, the tourism boards attempt to control the production of representations, according to market and political interests. The upcoming sports mega-events - the World Cup and Olympics - are assumed as an opportunity to promote the images those "symbolic administrators" want to legitimize in relation to Brazil. However, they also give space for dissenting productions. The aim of this research is to interpret the meanings Embratur gives to the mega-events, in terms of the Brazilian touristic image production, as much as to understand the interests behind this production. Still, it aims to understand the dissenting image productions and the tools Embratur implements to control them. (AU)