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Future shock: mega-events in Rio deJaneiroJorge de La Barrea

a Department of Sociology and Methodology of Social Sciences,Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilPublished online: 02 Jan 2015.

To cite this article: Jorge de La Barre (2015): Future shock: mega-events in Rio de Janeiro, LeisureStudies, DOI: 10.1080/02614367.2014.994551

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2014.994551

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Future shock: mega-events in Rio de Janeiro

Jorge de La Barre*

Department of Sociology and Methodology of Social Sciences, Universidade FederalFluminense, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

(Received 27 May 2014; accepted 24 November 2014)

In preparation for the mega-events of 2014 and 2016, the city of Rio de Janeirohas been going through a permanent shock of agenda, characterised by importanturban reengineering projects, population removal and favela (shanty town)pacification. This essay explores the Rio of (sports and other) mega-events andquestions the place of the social, in a paradigm marked by futurism and bytechno-culture that may be announcing a new political economy: the politicaleconomy of mega-events.

Keywords: mega-events; population removal; Rio de Janeiro; UPPs (PacificationPolice Units); urban reengineering

Introduction: shock of agenda

(…) Klein’s book [The Shock Doctrine, 2008] is a valuable insight into recent history.What relationship does sport – and especially sports mega-events – have with disastercapitalism? (…) we suggest that [the] sporting spectaculars can be viewed as the twinof disaster capitalism’s shock therapy, involving their own shocks and generating theirown forms of awe. Winning a bid to host a mega-event, putting the fantasy financialfigures of the bid document into operation, dealing with the proposed location beforeand dealing with it after the event has taken place, are just some of the moments whenshock and awe are generated by sports mega-events. The city of Rio de Janeiro offersan interesting study on the extent to which an Olympic Games and a World Cup willimpact, positively and negatively, on the ecology of a city with massive poverty, crimeand drug use. (Horne & Whannel, 2012, p. 203)

Throughout the decade 2007–2016, the city of Rio de Janeiro will have hostedalmost one (sports or otherwise) mega-event per year: Pan-American Games (2007),FIFA Fan Fest (2010), Rock in Rio (2011), Rio + 20 (2012, also the year when Riobecame UNESCO’s heritage of humanity in the ‘Cultural Landscape’ category),World Youth Day and FIFA Confederations Cup (both in 2013), FIFA World Cup(2014) and, finally the summum: the 2016 Olympics not to mention the annualcarnivals and réveillons, banal routines compared to this mega-events frenzy.1

Rio de Janeiro is going through a shock of agenda, entirely (pre)defined by theexecutive calendar of its mega-events. This shock creates an escape from the presentnow reduced to the construction of the future. A permanent escape en route towardsthe future of the mega-events, an extraordinary temporality overlaps the slowtemporality of the social. We have a compression, an acceleration of time. As in a

*Email: jorgelabarre@id.uff.br

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

Leisure Studies, 2014http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2014.994551

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time-lapse movie, the city is projecting itself into the future; the present disappearsto make room for the accelerated movement of the transformations for the mega-events. It seems that the future has even arrived that we are already there: ‘For Rio,the future is today’, wrote the architect Sérgio Magalhães in 2010. Still today in2012, we are in this present full of future, and it is likely that we will so remain atleast until the highly anticipated 2016, year of the Olympics.

This experience of a singular present that disappears in favour of a necessarilybetter future is not without ambivalence: the future of the mega-events becomesescapism and the contingencies of the present become escapable. The shock ofprogress (urban reengineering in the name of mega-events) justifies the shock oforder (Pacification Police Units2 and population removal), and perhaps alsoannounces at the horizon of a ‘Post-2016’ made of digital culture and creativeeconomy, a techno-cultural, ‘post-human’ Rio de Janeiro.

Shock of progress: the reengineering of Rio

A few months before his re-election in October 2012, the Mayor of Rio EduardoPaes wrote in his editorial to the June 2012 Porto Maravilha newsletter:

The urban operation Porto Maravilha is a planned form of (re)constructing the city.(…). Rio will be excellence in data and voice transmission. Shortly, the residents ofthe Saúde, Gamboa and Santo Cristo neighbourhoods, just like the companiesestablished in the port region, will have high-speed connection comparable to the mostmodern cities in the world. (Paes, 2012, p. 2)

Thus combined, these two sentences summarise the current city project for Rio deJaneiro: planned urban reconstruction, and centrality of digital means of communica-tion comparable to ‘the most modern cities in the world’. Significantly, Rio Mayor’seditorial titled ‘The New Engineering of the Marvellous City’ (in other terms: thereengineering of the Marvellous City).4 Besides the Marvellous City, the urbanrenewal project for the port zone is called ‘Marvellous Port’ (Porto Maravilha), anddescribed as ‘a dream come true’.5

Of all the ‘re’ prefixes applied to the urban (there are many: renewal, rehabilita-tion, requalification, revitalisation, re-urbanisation, resignification, reinvention,recosmopolitanism, etc.), reengineering is rarely the first that comes to mind.6

However, it is perhaps the most telling of an ambition to address the city as a whole,in order to transform it. The city’s neighbourhoods may be requalified, re-urbanisedor resignified, but with its holistic approach, reengineering would apply to the entirecity. In the meantime, we observe that reengineering, applied as it is to the wholecity, applies in fact essentially to the urban and the technological (i.e. infrastructuresand management of flows – all types of flows including information). In this con-text, the mega-events become one of the main motors of transformation. This hasbeen particularly true over the past two decades.

The visible part of a much broader process, the mega-events become the pretextto rethink, plan and execute a profound transformation in Rio in order to urgentlymake a ‘city of flows’, a ‘global’, ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘intelligent’, ‘creative’, ‘techno-logical’, ‘festive’, ‘host city’ and perhaps most importantly after all, an (even more)‘attractive city’ – essentially in fact to the investors and mass tourism. In this sense,the mega-events represent the mega-rhetoric for all the ‘re’ mentioned above.

As the reengineering of the city is essentially a techno-urban process, we mayquestion the place of the social, wondering if the social represents any form of

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concern at all. Unless there is an incompatibility, an antagonism between the socialand techno-urban reengineering, the social as a concern shines in fact by its absencein the priorities set for urban reengineering. In Rio de Janeiro today, populationremoval is the dark side of mega-events and, ultimately, of reengineering. At best,the techno-urban process at work in the Marvellous City would be giving birth to aJanus-faced city whose two faces could be called: Re-Marvellous Rio on the onehand, with its mega-events for global and festive cities, and Dystopian Rio on theother hand, with population removal and human rights violations.

Business management in the era of new technologies

Reengineering is a business management strategy whose aim is to assist organisa-tions in their rethinking of how they do their work and help them improve customerservice by cutting operating costs, so that they can become world class competitors.Reengineering means the fundamental rethinking, the dramatic redesign of businessprocesses in order to achieve improvements in the critical measures of contemporaryeffectiveness: cost, quality, service, and speed (Hammer & Champy, 1993). A holis-tic approach, it aims at achieving, or approaching, ‘total quality’7 in which the fourdimensions of organisation, technology, strategy, and people must submit to a visionin terms of processes. However, the focus is on efficiency and technology at theexpense of the people. Thus, reengineering does not mean change only, but radicalchange. Born in the context of the increasing globalisation of the economy since the1990s, reengineering is almost contemporary to the widespread implementation ofinformation technology in corporations and institutions. The idea was to take advan-tage of that implementation to rationalise the existing organisational processes.

Because the benefits could be very significant, reengineering was adopted at anaccelerated pace over the 1990s, besides the important risks of failure, and the variouscritics of the whole process (dehumanisation of work, increased administrative con-trol, justification for greater reductions in the workforce, and rebirth of Taylorismunder a new nickname). In fact, many companies embraced reengineering as a pretextto reduce the workforce dramatically. Finally, reengineering really comes down to:competitiveness – which is the justification for all the side effects mentioned above.8

Reengineering is not only contemporary to the new information and communica-tion technologies, and it is the business management of the new technologies era.Thus, urban reengineering only makes senses within the context of new technolo-gies. In fact, both urban reengineering and new technologies are perfect allies for aradical and dramatic top–down transformation where the urban territories must liter-ally conform, adopting the contours of the virtual maps (pre)defined by strategicplanning.

The era of legacies: mega-events, the flattening of the world and theacceleration of time

Here I was in Bangalore – more than five hundred years after Columbus sailed overthe horizon, using the rudimentary navigational technologies of his day, and returnedsafely to prove definitively that the world was round – and one of India’s smartestengineers, trained at his country’s top technical institute and backed by the most mod-ern technologies of his day, was essentially telling me that the world was flat – as flatas that screen on which he can host a meeting of his whole global supply chain. Even

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more interesting, he was citing this development as a good thing, as a new milestonein human progress and a great opportunity for India and the world – the fact that wehad made our world flat! (Friedman, 2005, p. 7)

In the era of mega-events, the future is always a near future, it is marked by theextraordinary, urgency and exceptionalism. Thus, the era of mega-events is also anera of legacies – whether past, anticipated or pre-planned. All mega-events must behyper-visible and comparable. In the world of the mega-events’ global media trans-parency, the ‘flat world’ described by US journalist Thomas Friedman becomeshyper-flat.

Besides their shocking impacts, mega-events produce narratives of legacies.9 Eachmega-event is assessed for its exemplarity as something to be imitated or not byanother mega-event to come in the near future. We may be witnessing a paradoxicalaccumulation of exceptionalisms. Yet, each mega-event tends to disappear in favourof its next coming one. This is how, for example, the royal wedding between PrinceWilliam and Kate Middleton in 2011, considered a success, was also a test in flowsand security management for the Olympics that were to be held in London the follow-ing year of 2012. In the hyper-flat world of legacies, proper to the mega-event is thatit only comes to represent a (positive or negative) milestone for its next coming one.

Following this logic, Rio will be in competition with itself between 2014 and2016 – whichever the result of the 2014 World Cup may be in strictly soccer terms.In the meantime, the Marvellous City is now following London’s tracks and willhave to learn very quickly ‘the lessons that (…) it can take from the 2012 Olympics,one of the most well-organised in history’.10 In the logic of the mega-event, theresult of the ‘game’ itself is not the most relevant (the big corporations always endup winning anyway). Thus, besides being a non-event (for being so perfectlyplanned as we shall see below), the mega-event is basically an excuse for anothermuch more powerful game, played in other instances well beyond the values offraternal competition and sports’ nobility.

During the last week of the 2012 campaign for Rio’s municipal elections, theformer host cities’ legacy were analysed by the daily newspaper O Globo, in an‘Olympic Lessons’ page. It was clear that the Mayor’s mandate for 2012–2016would be a global one, primarily dedicated to the efficient execution of the 2014and 2016 mega-events, making in fact of all the other policies a low priority. In itsOctober 6th edition, O Globo thus described the ‘distinct visions of the traces thatthe Olympics should leave’, stressing that the 2016 mega-event would ‘set the futureof the city and new Mayor’s political life’, and that ‘this unique opportunity [was] achallenge that [could not] be wasted by whoever the Carioca [inhabitant of Rio deJaneiro] may elect.’11

We have an alignment, a global formatting of (past and future) host cities, all ofwhich are supposed to become comparable. The former host cities become models,representations of themselves for future reference.12 Brand-model, sponsored model,showcase-model, ad-model: a model that is fashionable and that everyone wants toimitate.13 Indeed, the form and ability to receive the same global events cannot beso different from one city to another. Still, for the mega-events, the model cities onlyneed to conform to a single model called: ‘success’ (Gaffney, 2011; Silk, 2014).And there is no other model.

When thinking about legacy, one usually thinks of architectural or urban legacy –more rarely the social (non-)legacy. There is a proper temporality to mega-events,

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and the current temporality of Rio de Janeiro is integrally (pre)defined by its shock ofagenda. Social time disappears, leaving integral space to a hyper-temporality. Thepreparation frenzy for 2014 and 2016 dictates a new relationship to time: the ‘banaleveryday’ becomes a parenthesis, the past becomes a mere heritage, and the presentan ongoing euphoric escape towards an increasingly technological future.14 We areout of the present or, better said, we are in a present filled with future. We get a virtu-alisation effect of direct experience, with relation to an ecstatic (pre)vision and a bidfor a necessarily better future of which land speculation is the most visible (and prof-itable) manifestation. Progress has a name today: mega-events. And progress remainsthe only form of historical causality that justifies everything. Thus, the shock ofprogress only comes to justify a shock of order.

Shock of order: removals and other UPPs

During the 2011 edition of Rock in Rio (one of the largest music festivals in theworld), the success of the operation was measured in tonnes of French fries andhectolitres of beverages sold to the thousands of visitors (however, the kilometres oftraffic jam getting to the venue or leaving it were also part of the statistics ofsuccess). For cities involved with flows and their management, the success-factor isalways a quantitative value – the higher the better. The mega-event is a massentertainment par excellence, and also, success is always expected by the tonnes.

This quantitative paradigm shows a much more sinister face if we look atanother kind of statistics achieved in the name of the preparation for the 2014 and2016 mega-events in Rio de Janeiro. Despite some resistance and multiple com-plaints (see, for example, Comité, 2011; Mascarenhas, Bienenstein, & Sánchez,2011; Vainer, 2011), the houses destroyed, the families and communities removedfrom their homes already count in thousands. Regarding the ‘pacification process’,the quantitative logic is not so different. In October 2012, there were nearly 30favelas occupied by the pacifying police – the objective of Secretary of State forSecurity José Mariano Beltrame was to ‘reach’ 40 favelas with Unidade de PolíciaPacificadora (UPP) in 2014.15

Rankings era 1: the horizontalisation of singularities

In the name of the preparation for the mega-events, the favela is no longer just afavela: it is either a favela with UPP, or a favela not yet with UPP. Without know-ing, Rio’s favelas are entering the apparently transparent and highly competitiverankings era.

Ranking is an operation of accounting in which all experiences of concrete lifeget elevated to the level of an abstract model, a mapping. As a mapping form, theoperation of ranking virtualises the territories of concrete life; as a device of classifi-cation, it reveals a hegemonic obsession to order and classify any situation accord-ing to a hierarchical scheme and according to criteria considered significant withinthe proper logic of ranking. With such classificatory logic, lived experiences in theirsingularities and irreducibilities tend to disappear in favour of their modelling andvirtualisation.

With the UPPs, the favelas are subject to a quasi-real time scrutiny which primarygoal is to measure the impact of police occupation with respect to the residents’ senseof safety. We are witnessing an increased visibility of some new elements that are

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supposed to be representative of the favela with UPP as an emerging model. Asidefrom the context of criminality in which the favelado16 condition was traditionallyperceived, the new UPP era is, indeed, ‘breaking paradigms’17 with all its rankings.

However, applied to Rio’s favelas (whether pacified or not – yet), the techniqueof ranking operates a profound change in the favela’s (self-)representation. Besidespacification itself – legitimately the most visible element in the pacifying policy –,new dimensions are popping up, measured notably in terms of access to rights andcitizenship (de Oliveira, 2012; Jovchelovitch & Priego-Hernández, 2012). Notewor-thy are also the following: the formalisation of the economy, the modernisation ofinfrastructures, the access to new technologies and, perhaps most importantly, thevisibility of the pacified favelas with relation to its surroundings. The politics of pac-ification being also one of communication, it is not surprising to verify that a newkind of narrative has been praising the attractiveness of Rio’s pacified favelas – ‘forthe English to see’18 and eventually settle down in the favela …

One cannot deny the fact that the UPPs contribute to crime reduction in a verysignificant manner,19 and a new sense of safety for the Cariocas be they residents ofthe hills (i.e. favelas) or the asphalt.20 The normalisation of the economy and theaccess to basic services (electricity, gas, water, …) is also a new reality.21 However,the new media visibility in the UPPs is also generating their own rankings.22 This isnot the place to make a list of the novelties brought by the UPPs. We will onlyquote those that, as noted in O Globo, seem to be significant of a change in therepresentation of the favela.

Speaking of attractiveness, the occupied favelas are bringing in new businessopportunities,23 they are gaining political freedom24 and global visibility25; theyencourage the mixing of the Cariocas in the ‘multiple city’.26 The occupied favelasare becoming touristic points.27 The traceability of the favelas with UPP is alsoconsidered a victory.28 The occupied favelas particularly stand out when it comes tonew technologies.29 For example, we learn, not without surprise, that the residentsof occupied favelas are also the most connected in Brazil as a whole.30 A powerfulsymbol of modernity, technology also appears as a factor for peace and equality.31

The ecstasy of techno-culture seems to mark a definitive point in the standardisa-tion of the occupied favelas and, by extension, of the city of Rio in the age ofmega-events. Access to new technologies by the occupied favelas comes in otherwords to fully represent the normalisation of the city as a whole. It is believed thatthe flows of investments in technology, just as the other ‘tsunamis of actions’,32

should give continuity to the flows of pacification. And finally maybe, all theproblems will be solved in a well-pacified Carioca party.33

To end with this ‘tsunami of rankings’ which, basically, points to the horizontali-sation of singularities, let us come back to that South Zone postcard: Copacabanabeach. Besides the UPPs in the hills (the South Zone favelas), crime would be resist-ing in Rio de Janeiro. Then if Copacabana beach is on the black list of the ‘mostdangerous beaches in the world’, it is not because of the (real) tsunamis or becauseof other natural phenomena, nor is it because of sharks or human pollution, butbluntly because of … ‘crime’.34

Rankings era 2: the verticalisation of the point of view

In rankings era, the horizontalisation of singularities is supported by theverticalisation of the point of view. Thanks to technology, we manage to extract

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ourselves from reality and see it from a different point of view; we believe that thischange of point of view can magically solve the ‘problem’ observed.

In June 2012 during Rio + 20 (the United Nations Conference on SustainableDevelopment), the Carioca public walking by Cinelândia (a neighbourhood in thecity centre) could enjoy an exhibition by French photographer Yann-ArthusBertrand, named ‘The Earth From Above’. Coming à point nommé in these days ofreaffirmed environmental awareness, the exhibition featured dozens of photographicpanels standing in Praça Floriano in front of Theatro Municipal, exhibiting somerather aestheticised aerial views of our planet where one could contemplate both thelush beauty of natural landscapes and some ecological disasters and pollutionscaused by the human industries. What was expected from this exhibition (at least inthe photographer’s eye himself, who has been working in this sense for over twentyyears), was that a global public concern for the issue of planetary sustainabilitywould arise and assert itself, encouraging change and a more ‘conscious’ attitudewith relation to our human responsibility towards a planet under threat.35

Thus, ‘The Earth From Above’ seemed to suggest that the solution to ourplanet’s problems began with a much needed change in our point of view and ourcapacity to extract ourselves, uproot ourselves at least momentarily, in order to gain,thanks to the appropriate technology, a global vision – the only vision capable ifany, to initiate change in our own attitude. In its own way, the cable car flying overthe Complexo do Alemão (one of Rio’s largest complex of favelas) participates inthis new vision. By not addressing the – complex indeed – favela problem, it at leastallows for a renewal of point of view, softening the asperities while, perhaps,aestheticising them a little. Again, from ‘The Earth From Above’ to the favela fromabove, it is just a matter of point of view …

Beyond the rankings: hyper-flexible reflexivity

The Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) project seems to mark a stepfurther: its goal is to foster an interactive reflexivity with the public in order toencourage future innovations and stimulate the visitor’s imagination, so that theywould hopefully produce new futures in the future. Future ‘icon of the port arearevitalisation’ according to Mayor Eduardo Paes,36 the Museum, whose opening isscheduled for 2014, will be a ‘Museum of possibilities’ (CDURP, 2012), a devicefilled with flexible architecture and interactive technology capable of encouragingthe creation of ‘things’ that will not yet exist. In other words, it is meant to representthe opposite of the traditional museum that could only (re)collect all that as everexisted in the past. This should at least remind us what (the belief in the power of)creative imagination (to create new worlds) owes to technology today.

In the flexible and interactive environments of our next future’s smart cities, wewill be able to talk to the walls without looking like we are crazy … prophesiedrecently – not without irony – Museu do Amanhã’s curator Luiz Alberto Oliveiraduring a seminar on ‘Cities, Possible Futures’.37 Jeudy (2005) noted the spectacularpower of reflexivity of our contemporary societies, where patrimony becomes theonly guarantee for the time consistency and thickness. Also, the dimension of theSymbolic is now (reduced to) the exclusive service of heritage conservation. As itseems, the future project of the Museu do Amanhã will be performing an inversionor, better, an overrun of such process. Besides the symbolic economy (Miles, 2007),that accelerates the permanent patrimonialisation of the past as it recycles it in the

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present, the creative and hyper-reflexive economy of the future Museu do Amanhãwill pro-actively patrimonialise the future as it is being invented, anticipating andinternalising it in (quasi-)real time.

The Museu do Amanhã project was presented to the public during Rio + 20 inan exhibition held in Fort Copacabana that I had the occasion to visit on its very lastday. A sort of cabinet of curiosities for future reference, the exhibition ‘://HUMAN-IDADE2012’ will have me suggested what could be a patrimony for the future,regardless of the (possible) future of patrimony itself. It is as if in 2012, humanity(at least the one represented by the curators of the exhibition) had attempted todeposit all of the human knowledge accumulated over the centuries in a space-timecapsule for the future generations, in case – who knows? – humanity itself woulddisappear … during Rio + 20. A suggestive name indeed – ‘://HUMANIDADE2012’– good enough for the thinking and imagining: what if humanity itself alreadybecame the patrimony of … humanity in 2012 (i.e. the patrimony of itself )?! Couldit be that we would enter in a ‘post-humanity’ in 2013? In any case, the humanitymodel for a possible post-2012 future did not last longer than the 15 days bonanzaof Rio + 20. Finally, the spectacular space-time capsule had been ephemeral.

In this last day of the exhibition, the human mass was compact and all we coulddo was keep walking with no possible way of stopping the flow that was our own.At every 15m, a security guard gently intimated (to no one in particular) a repeated‘Follow the flow please!’ It was all movement, flow and we, the human flow, werethe movement. Weren’t we, after all, the ‘://HUMANIDADE2012’, a permanent andfascinated flow? Yes, the idea was exactly this: to just keep walking. The flowing,non-stop parading mass could hardly see anything, walking up and down the metal-lic hallways that lead to dark rooms only lit by the screens’ reflection, where, therealso, paraded the infinite flows of digital information of our world in virtual move-ment: Earth, Brazil, biodiversity, the human, nature, … Endless statistics no one hadeven time to read. And the flow of us walking through the various themed rooms,whose main theme was always: technology – the new and integral centrality with itspolitics of participative immersion and massive-festive enchantment; a technologythat invited each and every one of us individually to reinvent ourselves and multiplyour new styles and complex cultural hybrids at the infinite thus revealing ourtechno-happiness and facility to be fascinated techno-culturally.

Against the apparent harmony of this endless show of world statistics paradingin real time, a symbolic response to, perhaps, the continuous flow of digital informa-tion: the random flashes of photographic cameras and the public, still human afterall, attempting the impossible, to immortalise the moment(s). As the visit was com-ing to an end, we soon had to leave the premises, still following the flow. And per-haps the human flow kept expelling itself towards the ‘post-humanity’ of 2013. Andthere was no way to go back, in case we had lost some information. The informationflows themselves were gone. They had already been updated, and re-updated.

Shock treatment: the planning of the extraordinary

The (mega-)event does not happen per se. Proper to the (mega-)event is that it is per-fectly devoid of any eventuality. Ideally, the (mega-)event is perfectly predictable, andit must proceed in exactly the same way as it has (or will have) been planned. In thissense, the (mega-)event is essentially a non-event or, better said, a non-happening.Proper to (mega-)events is the fact that they do not happen, they do not create ‘noise’

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(in the sense used by the physics of turbulence); they cannot even have eventualities(in the sense of unexpected events). Contrary to the happening which takes place orcomes to reality unexpectedly (as does chance or eventuality), the event is organisedby experts (a party, a show, a celebration, etc.), and its goals are usually institutional,community-oriented, or promotional. With the event, and even more so the mega-event, what is expected after all is that nothing will take place.

We are in a (mega-)event paradigm which only reveals the willingness to plan,organise and institutionalise everything according to the extraordinary, the spectacu-lar and the exceptional – just to make sure that nothing will take place. The (mega-)event obeys to the ethics of responsibility and adopts the discourse of necessity. Incontrast, whatever takes place comes from chance, and the much more radical ethicsof conviction. The mega-event is an ideal show, whose transparency and attractive-ness must be unquestionable, provided that once again, nothing will take place.

Whatever may happen remains in fact unpredictable; it may always arise before,during and after the event and in the most extreme forms: accident, violence, hooli-ganism, crime, terrorist attack, catastrophe, hazard, human or natural disasters andother misfortunes. As it represents everything that stands out of the ‘plan of theplanned’, the happening produces a contrast, a retour du réel (return of the real).

If Rio’s future is entirely (pre)defined by mega-events, which after all aremega-(non-)events as we have seen, how shall we define this particular future? Andwhat would a future that is integrally (pre)defined by its mega (non-)events be like:a non-future?!

Mega-events’ extreme other: the social in question

From the moment that the city is seen as a commodity, selling it becomes the basicobjective of local governments. There are multiple clients, but the preferred one is thebig international capital. In this sense, urban marketing becomes the model of citymanagement. (…). The important thing is not what the city is, but what it offers toattract capital. So we start selling images. In Rio’s strategic planning for example, it iswritten that one of the problems of the city is that the homeless people are too visible.That is, the bad thing is not that there are lots of people without housing, but the factthat these people are all too visible. If we can hide them, our problem is resolved.Misery becomes a mere problem of landscape. In this sense, the city is thought of as aluxury commodity; not just anyone can afford it. (Vainer, 2010 – our translation)

The city project being entirely hyper-realised by mega-events, its extreme others –the homeless, the favelado – need to be shut down and become invisible. In the eraof mega-events, the social becomes marginal, secondary, disposable and escapable.The social looks pretty much like the dark side of the mega-events. Most relevant inthe mega-events era are the flows, the masses, within which the social tends todisappear all the like.

How to define the changes that Rio is going through without deep feeling aambivalence? Shall we define these changes in terms of festive and futuristicmega-events, or rather in terms of population removal and criminalisation? We arewitnessing two parallel processes, two antagonistic temporalities: the hegemony ofthe accelerated planning and urban reengineering for the mega-events, and thetemporality of a social human condition that is (still) inscribed in the historic course.Both may represent the two faces of this Rio de Janus, indeed a real ‘mutantmarvel’38: a ‘Rio Re-Marvellous (for whom?)’ on the one hand, and a ‘DystopianRio (for all!)’ on the other; which for the Carioca implies living with the permanent

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awareness that very soon an ephemeral agenda of mega-events will deflagrate in thecity. What exactly is the thrill of being ‘under the eyes of the world’?39

The change of attitude towards an escapist present now reduced to the promiseof a better future is notable in the city spaces and in the language and conversa-tions,40 and in the emerging formulations regarding a new imaginary in/of the city.The shock of agenda generates a shock of divergent representations. We may have areversal of perspective: the social-residue (of a life that once was direct, immediateand contingent, made of struggles, antagonisms, conflicts, dynamics, etc.) becomesthe mega-events’ extreme other.

Thus for example, the ‘resistance of the cracudos’ (crackheads), invisible fromthe verticalised point of view of the rankings, contradict the civilising order of themega-events. Some titles from the O Globo newspaper after the police occupationof the Jacarezinho and Manguinhos neighbourhoods in October 2012 suggest thatthe passive resistance of these ‘invisible’ is highly undesirable:

‘Four hours after rescue action, users return to cracolândia [literally: “crackland”] atParque União”.41 “Ten hours after occupation of Manguinhos, users return tocracolândia by the railway line”.42 “Cracolândia resists in Jacarezinho and Manguin-hos”.43 “Cracolândia in Manguinhos resists to the presence of security forces”.44

“Crack users are back using the drug in occupied communities’.45

The new paradigm/economic cycle of the mega-events would succeed in expellingthe social, leaving only a few ‘social shop windows’: the ‘UPP Social’, the ‘socialnetworks’ windows, the ‘social entrepreneurship’, ‘social business’, ‘social technolo-gies of the creative imagination’, etc. In a hyper-connected world so techno-culturallyover-determined, it is not superfluous to question the relevance of the social as afactor of explanation and/or transformation of historical processes. (Over-)Exposed tomega-events, the social would no longer be a priority and should become flexible,following that movement of inevitable progress and adapting at any cost to the newdynamics – or simply die at the end of the crack line. In fact the inevitable agenda ofmega-events challenges the social.

The priorities in social policies (health, education, housing, …) tend to disappear,leaving an integral space for the festive-participative politics in the city of mega-events. The politics of pacification are being sold to the world as a form of civilisation(access to rights, justice, citizenship, …). Hence, we get a new form of pro-activecivilisation, boosted for and by its mega-events. Searching for the place of the socialin the mega-events era, we may be wondering if it is not being in fact merely(re)defined:

� either negatively: increased cost of living (housing, transportation), populationremoval, the criminalisation of poverty and of social movements;

� or in a hybrid-ambivalent form:� either in business terms: the emergence of new businesses thanks to theUPPs, (dis-in-formalisation of the economy and services, increased competi-tiveness of spaces and territories, gentrification; and

� or in techno-cultural terms: social networks, connectivity, interactivity,virtual communities.

Can the social identify with these ‘residual’ (re)definitions that the mega-events’logic seems to be drawing? Against all odds, the struggles against population

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removal and the criminalisation of poverty are in fact rejecting an ideology that,much more toxic than crack, intends to sell mega-events as the only solution for thepromotion of ‘Brand Rio’ – the RJ brand, already registered.46

Brazil is (still) the country of the future? The hyper-realised future of mega-events

If Brazil is the country of the future, the future has arrived. (Barack Obama).47

During his visit speech in Rio de Janeiro in 2011, US President Barack Obamapronounced (probably unknowingly) a similar formula to the one that SérgioMagalhães had used the previous year (‘For Rio, the future is now’, quoted at thebeginning of this text), extending the apparent paradox from Rio to Brazil as awhole.48 If, by chance, the year of 2011 marked also the seventieth anniversary ofthe publication of the classic Brazil, Land of the Future, by Stefan Zweig (1941),the main reason for the future having arrived to Brazil with such synchrony wasmore clearly hyper-signified by the advent of the 2014 and 2016 mega-events.49

This time, Brazil could only do right.For Brazil, now a country of the future in the present, it was as if the mega-

events came to document the country’s tremendous and much needed ‘soft powercapability’ (Grix & Lee, 2013), also announcing the advent of a new economic cyclein the context of the advanced global modernity. Suddenly, the mega-events werebecoming the miraculously perfect metaphor to the current political economy, whosemajor axes – service economy, symbolic economy, creative industries, digital cultureand the recreational economy of entertainment – became perfectly synchronised andhyper-realised. Perhaps the mega-events even managed to perform some sort ofstructural adjustment – now necessarily (re)framed within the prerequisites of the‘sustainable development’ buzz. For only a shock treatment based on a consumeristand festive frenzy coupled with the adequate technologies of surveillance (Horne,2011) could possibly solve everything. As an effect of the verticalisation of the pointof view, such change in attitude was being officially reaffirmed and approvedinternationally.

As Vainer (2010, 2011) demonstrated, mega-events generate a state of exception,a ‘city of exception’ where exception is the new rule. The politics of mega-eventsare an integral part of the city’s politics; the city policy becomes the mega-eventspolicy. As a priority for the city and a new centrality, the city project boils down tothe mega-events:

If the process of transformation of the city into a commodity, company and country isthe process of de-politicization of the city (…), a mega-event (…) achieves this to theextreme and generates what we may call the city of exception, by analogy to the stateof exception. It is the city where the rules of urban living no longer apply, becauseanother reason takes over. In such city, there is a direct control of capital over thedirection of the city. In the end, the city of exception penetrates the whole urban fabric,permitting to conceal poverty and allowing the criminalization of this poverty. (Vainer,2010 – our translation)

If the city of exception is the ideology, then the mega-event is the paradigm. In addi-tion to the city of exception, we have also a ‘future of exception’ marked by theextraordinary. The perfect identification between Rio, Brazil, and the future, is inte-grally (pre)defined and over-determined by the mega-events of 2014 and 2016; infact these become omnipresent in a present filled with a near future. Indeed it looks

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like we have left the present, and we’re rushing towards that future. And indeed theproblem is that there is no exit from such model of a hyper(pre)defined future.

This ecstatic escape from the normal, the present, the thickness of social timeinto a (probably excessive) promise of an exceptional and extraordinary future givesbody to the city of exception, with its dreams of a non-stop and transparent party-time for all during the mega-events. Interesting is to think about the repetition ofthese two mega-events: not just 2014 or 2016, but 2014 and 2016. As it seems, thisis shock treatment and future shock; as if one mega-event was not enough for Rio toawake from a more than 40 years sleep of abandon, and began to believe (again?) ina ‘dream come true’, as the slogan for the project Porto Maravilha said.50

Conclusion: terminal escape towards the post-human? ‘Post-2016’ Rio

If you have any doubt as to whether you are post-human or merely human, take a lookat the following parts of your body: the city, the house, the car, the iPhone, the laptop,the iPod, the pillbox, the non-flesh surround. (Codrescu, 2009, pp. 2–3).

Sold to the population as a ‘unique opportunity’ (one may ask: for whom?), themega-events also appear as a challenge (for all), inviting anyone to push the bound-aries of their merely human condition. The political economy of mega-events is alsoa politics of festive participation, an invitation to an overcoming that must involveand delight everyone. One more exit, one more escape from the present and the con-tingent reality of the human condition: the prosaic and hyper-realised figures of theOlympic athlete-Superman, the hybrid man-network, and the civil constructionworker-athlete. With his smartphone in hand, this new kind of solipsistic post-human is indeed hyper-connected to the whole world, yet at the same time perfectlydisconnected from all forms of socio-historical process. The city that reinvents itselffor the mega-events is also the stage to a general invitation for all to reinventeveryone self and without distinction as one.51

In the ineluctable march towards the ‘revolution’ of the mega-events, the civilconstruction workers involved in Pharaoh’s works of the Olympic Village, theOlympic City and the Maracanã become athletes, heroes of the city. Co-opted asthey are, they exhibit at pleasure the famous commercial smile of the service econ-omy – ‘total quality’ style.52 The mega-events appear as a gigantic advertisingcalling for the Superman in each and everyone of us. In the narratives about the city,the mega-events, athletes or workers, the performativity of such discourse of over-coming is in fact over-determined by the permanent transparency and over-exposurethat the technologies of communication tend to inflict.53

In a different register, a new line of convergence seems to confirm the profoundtransformation of the Carioca’s mindset in the mega-events era. Betting (rightly so!)in the power of the creative imagination to transform historical situations andprocesses, the emerging narrative about the ‘new Rio’ attempts to put an end to theold clichés about the divided city inventing new ways of living and relating to eachother (Silva, Barbosa, & Faustini, 2012). Incidentally, an old theme of the ChicagoSchool is re-actualised (the city as a ‘state of mind’), and perhaps also a renewedattempt to think the classical opposition between segregation and mobility.54 If thecity is no longer divided, it is because of the new Carioca’s mobility. Such mobilityis a reality, and it is also and at the same time a utopia that must concretise. So as itis, the new Carioca cannot be defined by a specific sociological profile, nor can he

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be by a mere geographical location in the city: the new Carioca is a tendency, anidea, an ideal-type, a creative utopia, a performance. Inventing new bridges to hismobility, the new Carioca may also be (re)inventing the post-divided city – now areconciled, integrated, entire city.55

Another possible way to transcend the old clichés: through techno-culture. Thefuture is being integrally (pre)defined, scanned literally, by digital culture and othercreative economies in our smart and sustainable cities. Thinking already in the‘Post-2016’ a ‘Legacy Development Committee’ was created, to ‘plan the future ofthe Olympic area’.56 Unsurprisingly, the Committee is already foreseeing ‘the trans-formation of the press centre buildings, in a pole of companies in the creative anddigital industries’.57

Already confirmed, the performative (and somewhat presumptuous) anticipationof the next future, including the (pre)vision of a legacy that will most likely bedefined integrally by digital culture and other creative and recreational economies –all so naturally interactive and participative, all so inclusive and democratic. The exitfrom the reality of the present is also an escape from the (non-)place of a social thatis now being scanned integrally by digital surveillance. The reign of the post-humanto come, the next advent of the (not so) awaited ‘Post-2016’ would be confirmingthe end of the social. Migration, exodus, escapism: towards the euphoric future, thetechno-cultural ecstasy! Things will never be the same? But of course not!‘Post-2016’ Rio will be post-human or nothing!

Notes1. Translated (and slightly adapted) by the author, this article was originally written in Por-

tuguese and published in: O Social em Questão, Rio de Janeiro: Pontifícia UniversidadeCatólica do Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio, Ano XVI, No. 29, vol. 1, 2013, pp.43–68.Original title: ‘Choque de futuro: o Rio dos megaeventos’.

2. Pacification Police Units, or Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPPs). Since 2008, inpreparation for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, the state government ofRio has adopted, as a first-step solution to deal with the urban cycle of violence, theinstallation of permanent security police units in most of Rio’s favelas.

4. The city of Rio is also known as the Cidade Maravilhosa (also the name of a song,Rio’s civic anthem).

5. ‘Porto Maravilha: um sonho que virou realidade’. Porto Maravilha. Rio de Janeiro:Companhia de Desenvolvimento Urbano da Região do Porto do Rio de Janeiro(CDURP). Available online at: http://www.portomaravilha.com.br/web/sup/OperUrbanaApresent.aspx. Accessed January 28 2014.

6. Judging by the references on urban studies in Brazil, the book Reengenharia na cidade(Reengineering in the City) by Coelho (1995) went almost unnoticed. I use the termreengineering here, well aware that it is originally a concept in business management inthe US.

7. Total quality management is another name for reengineering.8. Risk management is also another name for reengineering.9. Horne and Whannel have noted: ‘(…) the aftermath or repercussions of sports mega-

events are often discussed now in terms of their “legacies”, rather than their “impacts”.’(Horne & Whannel, 2012, p. 202).

10. ‘Sob os trilhos de Londres’, O Globo, 26 October 2012 (our translation).11. ‘Visões distintas da marca que as Olimpíadas devem deixar no Rio’, O Globo, 6 October

2012.12. Think of the absolute standard model – past, present, and future –, represented by the

city of Barcelona, which hosted the Olympics in 1992. However, this standard modelmay be updated after London’s recent success in organising the 2012 Olympics.

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13. Let us remind here the profound ambivalence of the model: it is reproducible (ordesirable), replicated (or copied), disposable (or forgotten); let us also remind the conse-quent ephemerality of the model’s lifecycle.

14. At the time of the accelerated march in preparation for the mega-events that are likelyto change so dramatically the face of the city, it is significant that in parallel Rio wonUNESCO’s world heritage title in July 2012, in the new ‘Cultural Landscape’ category.

15. To get a sense of scale of the pacification process let us note that, according to the 2010Census of the Brazilian Statistic Agency (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística,IBGE), every fifth inhabitant of Rio de Janeiro lives in a favela. Out of the 6.3 millionCariocas, 1.4 million dwell in one of the 763 favelas (‘Armed Peace: The Pacificationof Favelas in Rio de Janeiro with UPPs’. Available online at http://contario.net/armed-peace/. Accessed 3 October 2014).

16. Favelado: favela resident (pejorative).17. ‘Beltrame diz que UPP da Rocinha vai quebrar paradigmas’, O Globo, 19 September

2012.18. On the recent nomination of the city of Rio de Janeiro as patrimony of humanity,

Raquel Rolnik purposely asks: ‘how to consolidate these favelas when they are nowfacing the hurricane of real estate valuation that is plaguing Rio de Janeiro, and that thisvery nomination of patrimony of humanity helps boosting so much?’ (Rolnik, 2012 –our translation).

19. According to O Globo, by September 2012, 250 lives were spared thanks to the UPPs:‘Nova realidade nas favelas: 250 vidas poupadas’, O Globo, 22 September 2012.

20. ‘Segundo pesquisa de percepção do Rio Como Vamos, sensação de segurança aumentaentre cariocas’, O Globo, 29 June 2011.

21. ‘Light segue UPPs na regularização do fornecimento de energia’, O Globo, 21 June2010.

22. ‘As melhores e as piores UPPs: o ranking da pacificação’, O Globo, 31 March 2012.23. ‘Pesquisa aponta crescimento de 23% em negócios de cinco favelas com UPPs’,

O Globo, 17 Oct de 2012.24. ‘Liberdade política é reforçada com implantação das UPPs’, O Globo, 10 November

2012.25. ‘Projeto da UPP mudou a cara do Rio para o mundo’, afirma Paulo Storani’, O Globo,

Oct. 14th, 2012; ‘Ocupação de favelas no Rio é destaque nos principais jornais domundo’, O Globo, 14 October 2012.

26. ‘UPPs fazem cariocas se misturarem pela cidade’, O Globo, 10 November 2012.27. ‘Favelas com UPP são pontos turísticos da vez’, O Globo, 3 December 2011.28. ‘Favelas com UPP entram no mapa oficial do Rio’, O Globo, 14 October 2012.29. ‘Internet sem fio chega à Rocinha em março’, O Globo, 2 Feb 2010; ‘UPP da Rocinha

é a mais tecnológica do estado’, Globo TV, 21 September 2012.30. ‘Moradores de áreas com UPP têm mais celulares que a média da população do país’,

O Globo, 20 July 2012.31. ‘Portela vai mostrar como a tecnologia pode ser um instrumento para a paz e a iguald-

ade’, O Globo, 14 February 2010.32. ‘Beltrame quer pressa em investimentos sociais pós-UPPs: “Nada sobrevive só com

segurança”’, O Globo, 28 May 2011; ‘A UPP tem que ter um tsunami de ações’(interview with Secretary of State for Security José Mariano Beltrame), Metro Rio, 10October 2012.

33. ‘Alzirão: policiamento e choque de ordem ajudam a festa’, O Globo, 20 Jun 2010.34. ‘Lista das “praias mais perigosas do mundo” inclui Copacabana: “crime”’, O Globo, 20

September 2012.35. Who arrived in Rio by Tom Jobim International Airport (Galeão) during Rio + 20 also

found, upon exiting the airport, a corridor of banners with messages calling for a reflec-tion on the theme of sustainability: ‘Future Rio has a future’, ‘Recycle your attitudes’,‘Didn’t you want to change the world?’, and ‘Is your consciousness sustainable orguilty?’.

36. ‘Museu do Amanhã será o ícone da revitalização da Zona Portuária, diz Paes’,O Globo, 2 May 2012.

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37. ‘Cidades, futuros possíveis’, international seminar, Casa da Ciência/UFRJ, 16–17 Aug2012.

38. ‘Maravilha Mutante’, O Globo, Special feature on the occasion of the 447 years of Riode Janeiro, 1 March 2012.

39. ‘Sob os olhares do mundo’, Revista Globo, Special Rio + 20, 10 June 2012.40. The already famous ‘Imagine during the Cup’ has become, as it seems, the only horizon

for the (non-less famous) jeitinho carioca (carioca knack). Or, at least, it appeared inthe 5 August 2012 cover of Revista Globo, with the following title: ‘Imagine during theCup! The catchphrase of the moment inspires exclusive texts from ten personalities onRio in 2014’.

41. O Globo, 17 October 2012.42. O Globo, 14 October 2012.43. O Globo, 12 October 2012.44. O Globo, 13 October 2012.45. O Globo, 15 October 2012.46. On the website ‘RJ: Rio de Janeiro Marca Registrada do Brasil’, we learn that ‘Rio has

many qualities that you only find here. Each person, tourist or resident, has their favour-ite, which fills with pride and makes our State the best place in the world. That’s whatmakes Rio a unique place. That’s what makes Rio Trademark of Brazil’ (our transla-tion). Available online at: http://marcarj.com.br/. Accessed 28 January 2014.

47. ‘“Se o Brasil é o país do futuro, o futuro chegou”, diz Obama’, Revista Época, 20March 2011.

48. On the choice of Rio as the host for the 2016 Olympics, Obama also declared at thetime: ‘Now you may be aware that the city was not my first choice for the SummerOlympics. But if the games could not be held in Chicago, then there’s no place I’drather see them than right here in Rio.’ (Revista Época, 20 March, 2011). Let us reminden passant that during the bid to host the 2016 Olympics, the popular committee NoGames Chicago argued that the city of Chicago had other priorities for public moneyspending (hospitals, housing, schools, trains, …), and was in fact supporting … Rio’sbid. The poster ‘Chicagoans for Rio 2016’ said: ‘It would be exciting to host theOlympics here in Chicago. But you know what would be even better? Rio de Janeiro.Just let Rio host the 2016 Olympics. We don’t mind. Honest.’

49. The following year during the Rio + 20 in June of 2012, a banner message on the exitcorridor of Tom Jobim International Airport (Galeão) confirmed, no less paradoxically,the apparent omnipresence of that future in the present: ‘O Futuro do Rio tem Futuro’(Future Rio has a Future).

50. Cf footnote 5.51. Not by accident, the coalition of no less than 20 political parties which led to the

re-election of Mayor Eduardo Paes in October 2012 was named ‘Somos Um Rio’ (‘Weare One Rio’, yet also suggesting ‘We are a [one] River’). Talking about the city offlows …

52. Francisco de Oliveira writes: ‘(…) the trick is a way of adopting capitalism as anincomplete solution at the periphery of the system. Incomplete, because capitalism hasbrought here the revolution of productive forces, but not the formal solutions ofcivility.’ (Oliveira, 2012, p. 32 – our translation).

53. About the spectacle of cities that are permanently reinventing themselves under theinfluence of their own representations, Jeudy (2005) speaks of ‘metaphoricity’ and‘meta-language’.

54. In 1925, Robert E. Park, one of the founders of the Chicago School of urban sociology,wrote: ‘Not only transportation and communication, but the segregation of the urbanpopulation tends to facilitate the mobility of the individual man. The processes of segre-gation establish moral distances which make the city a mosaic of little worlds whichtouch but do not interpenetrate. This makes it possible for individuals to pass quicklyand easily from one moral milieu to another, and encourages the fascinating but danger-ous experiment of living at the same time in several different contiguous, but otherwisewidely separated, worlds. All this tends to give to city life a superficial and adventitiouscharacter; it tends to complicate social relationships and to produce new divergent indi-vidual types. It introduces, at the same time, an element of chance and adventure which

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adds to the stimulus of city life and gives it, for young and fresh nerves, a peculiarattractiveness. The lure of great cities is perhaps a consequence of stimulations whichact directly upon the reflexes. As a type of human behaviour it may be explained, likethe attraction of the flame for the moth, as a sort of tropism.’ (Park, 1925, pp. 40–41).

55. In an article suggestively titled ‘Gringo 2.0’, journalist Maria da Luz Miranda suggeststhat the Carioca himself has entered the list of Rio’s wonders (however, without speci-fying whether she is talking about the new Carioca or the old): ‘Feeling of safety, betterservices and optimism for the coming years attract a new profile of tourists, which nar-row ties with the city and include the Carioca himself in the list of Rio’s wonders.’(our translation). Época Rio de Janeiro, special edition ‘2016 cidade olímpica’ (2012,April), p. 104–108.

56. ‘Lições olímpicas: em Londres, custo menor e racionalidade’, O Globo, 5 October2012.

57. Ibid.

Notes on contributorJorge de La Barre did his PhD in Sociology from École des Hautes Études en SciencesSociales (EHESS), Paris (2004). He is an associate professor at Universidade FederalFluminense (UFF), Department of Sociology and Methodology of Social Sciences (GSO).He is a researcher at the Núcleo de Estudos Cidadania, Trabalho e Arte (NECTAR/UFF), aresearcher at the Laboratory of Metropolitan Ethnography (LeMetro/IFCS-UFRJ), and anassociate researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Center for the Study of Music andDance (INET-MD/UNL). He is Acting on the following themes: urban culture, urbanrenewal, cultural globalisation, techno-culture, music and city.

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