Diving deeper into Rio 2016 yields interesting perspectives

On the evening of 11 August, Fiji won its first-ever Olympic medal: a gold medal in men’s rugby sevens. Fiji’s national identity is deeply entangled with rugby, but not everyone is encouraged to play. The sport highlights dramatic differences in the treatment and perception of women and men in Fiji as well that of indigenous Fijians and citizens who are descendants of Indian immigrants.

• Do the Olympics Make Economic Sense?

The Olympic Games are not financially rational, but their value can be explained in other ways. A little more than a month before the opening of the Olympic Games, the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro declared a financial emergency. So do the Rio Olympics make sense? Not according to rational theories of economics, but viewed in light of anthropological insights, some sense begins to emerge.

• Zika at the Rio Games: Pandemic or Panic?

Earlier this year, a group of international scientists wrote an open letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) calling for the Rio Olympic Games to be postponed or moved due to the ongoing Zika virus epidemic. However, concerns about the Zika virus are fueled more by fear than by medical science.

• Rio’s Olympic Festival in the Streets

How does the 21st-century technology of big-screen TV square with the age-old human penchant for celebrations? In the 1980s, anthropologist John J. MacAloon argued that the real power of the Olympic Games lies in the unscripted, celebratory street festivals that erupt in public spaces. Today, television broadcasts of the Olympics can reach 70 percent of the world’s population. What can we learn from the communal experience of gathering around TVs to partake in the festivities?

• Your Olympic Team May Be an Illusion

In today’s globalised society, many athletes playing for national teams are citizens of the world more than of a single country. States have attracted athletes from other countries by offering them money, training facilities and the possibility of qualifying for the Olympics more easily than in their home countries. Sport offers opportunities to escape poverty and build a better life. But it is important not to lose sight of the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring that helps to open these doors.

About Sapiens
An editorially independent publication of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, SAPIENS is about the human world. It looks at how we communicate, why we behave in certain ways, where and when we evolved in the past, and how we live and continue to evolve today. It’s about the relationship between our laws and ethics, the cities we build and the environment we depend on. It’s about why sex, sports and violence consume and intrigue us, what life was like in centuries past, where we might be headed in centuries to come, and much more.

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