Abstract
The Olympic Games is a platform where athletes from all over the world come together to compete together in the name of sports and friendship. However, beneath the hype and international broadcast of the various global events of the games itself, there is an Olympic movement, made up of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Sports Federations (IFs) and the National Olympic Committees (NOCs), underlying the games. However, despite having the IOC and the IFs organising the games and bringing athletes over from all over the world, it is still the NOCs which are preparing and sending their athletes to the games, and then judged based on their position on the medal tally. This is similar to the neoliberal world order of global markets where although there are international organisations and multinational companies, state actors are still in charged on developing the human capital required for the international markets and economies are still compared with one another through GDP, HDI, or other indicators of living standards. This paper therefore analyses how the IOC is promoting such a world order through an analysis of the Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP) and argue that the OVEP can be used to prepare the youths of the world for success in the current neoliberal world order. This will enable the understanding of the concept of Cosmopolitan Nationalism to be extended in the field of Education and Sports and also add relevance to programmes such as OVEP to national development narratives.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Global Sports Local Cultures
KEYWORDS
Olympics, Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, Cosmopolitan Nationalism, Education, Olympic Values, Neoliberalism
