Journalists at the Beijing 2008 Olympics

In an attempt to start assembling journalists that will be in Beijing, I’ve put together a Facebook group to share impressions, understanding and knowledge about orientation. If you’re going and you’re covering the Games as a journalist, please join the group:

 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10776325266&ref=mf

Sports, Medicine and Immortality (London, 28 March 2008)

[Conference Closes 17:00]NB. Programme is subject to change (this information already superseding that contained in the registration form).

Olympic Legacies (Oxford 29-30 March, 2008)

Olympic Legacies

29-30 March 2008

St Antony’s College, Oxford

Sponsored by

St Antony’s College, Oxford

La Trobe University, Melbourne

Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group

As London prepares to host the 2012 Olympic Games, the conference brings together leading international social scientists and practitioners to reflect on the critical theme of ‘Olympic Legacies’. The conference’s purpose is to enrich our understanding of not only the Olympic movement but also the relationship between sport and modern societies.

There is no registration fee for delegates but registration is mandatory.

For registration and further information please contact:

Jennifer Griffiths, Asian Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, 62 Woodstock Rd, Oxford OX2 6JF

tel: (01865) 274559 fax: (01865) 274559 email: jennifer.griffiths@sant.ox.ac.uk

Conference organisers: Boria Majumdar (cristorian@yahoo.com) and Jonathan Manley (jonathan.manley@tandf.co.uk)

Linford Christie in London 2012 Torch Relay

A couple of weeks ago, an editor at the Evening Standard asked me to write a letter in relation to the Standard’s campaign to have Linford Christie removed from the Olympic torch relay nominations. I think he expected a letter in support of their campaign. He didn’t get it. Here’s what they didn’t publish. I didn’t hear back from him after sending it:

Dear Josh, I submit the following. It probably isn’t what you expected or, perhaps, wanted….

Dear Editor,

The campaign to remove Linford Christie from the Olympic torch relay for Beijing in London later this year highlights one of the longstanding inconsistencies within the Olympic Movement. As an aspiring judicial system – with its own Court to boot – it fails miserably as a mechanism of rehabilitation, since no amount of recompense an athlete makes after a doping infraction is enough to allow them entry back into the social world of athletics. While it might appear to be bad PR to bring Linford into the ceremony, this fact invites further questions over why such a decision was taken. In part, the answer lies in recent years when Linford became a mentor for the British Olympic team. At the same time, he was also a witness for a pioneering British inquiry into  developing more robust policies to address doping in sport, especially taking into account  claims from athletes, like him, who say that they have ingested banned substances by poorly labeled nutritional supplements. When we see Linford with the torch in April, we should not look upon him as a villain who has been celebrated despite his infractions – not as a bad guy who finished first -  but as a symbol of rehabilitation, someone from whom greater achievements are possible by learning the hard way. Much better for London to do this than to utilize a clean athlete who has yet to be found guilty of doping. At least with Linford, we all know where we stand. There can be no subsequent betrayal, which could occur if any, supposedly, clean athlete is asked to perform such duties. London should be different and it is right that the IOC does not intervene on these matters. While it might appear to be consistent with the moral outrage that surrounds doping in sport to request Linford’s absence, it is thoroughly inconsistent with the aspirations of achieving justice, which are the deeper values at stake when we appeal to fair play as a guiding norm within competitive performance cultures like sport. So, I say let him carry the torch. His permanent exclusion from the BOA as an athlete is mandatory under its policy, not a definitive statement on his present character. Perhaps his presence will encourage a deeper level of debate about what doping means, why it matters and how we should deal with it. However, any such inquiry is lost if we limit our conversations to the simplistic signifier of Linford Christie as doped athlete.

Dr Andy Miah,
Author of ‘Genetically Modified Athletes’
Reader, University of the West of Scotland.

The Liverpool Summit (1-2 October, 2008)

Two-Day International Management Summit

BT Convention Centre Liverpool

Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd October 2008

http://www.theliverpoolsummit.com/?gclid=CI2jw4eHkpICFQOc1AodqRfx_Q

On the 1st and 2nd October 2008 Benchmark for Business will present “Transforming the Future”, an international management “Summit” to be staged at the BT Convention Centre as the central business event of the city’s Capital of Culture Year, 2008.

By presenting the UK and international markets with a world-class line up of speakers who are recognised as the leading thinkers in their respective fields, this exceptional management-focused conference will deliver a lasting legacy for Liverpool.

Across two days, in excess of 1,000 leaders and senior executives will hear inspiring presentations from thinkers of international renown, drawn from Benchmark’s “stable” of strategic thinkers, international leaders and top flight CEOs – perhaps the highest calibre of speakers to appear on the same platform at any UK management conference in 2008. The Summit agenda will include a full 2-day programme of keynote addresses from figures at the forefront of new thinking on the issues that matter for leaders.

Speakers

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Michael Porter
Sir Terry Leahy
Chris Patten
Clayton Christensen
Renée Mauborgne
Will Hutton
Kofi Annan

Philosophy and Human Enhancement (Brussels, 8-10 May, 2008)

I’ll be speaking here on the 10th May:

Programme provisoire
Preliminary program
Enhancement – aspects éthiques et philosophiques de la médecine d’amélioration

Jeudi 8 mai

19h30            Accueil des participants
19h45            Conférence inaugurale
Cocktail dînatoire

Vendredi 9 mai

Session I : Enhancement et Science-Fiction
9h00-9h50        Jérôme Goffette                Modifier les humains : anthropotechnie
(Maître de Conférence, Université Lyon I)    versus médecine
9h50-10h40    Sylvie Allouche                Aspects éthiques et philosophiques de
(Lectrice, Collège Eötvös de Budapest)      la médecine d’amélioration dans la science-fiction
10h40-11h        Pause Café

11h00-11h40         Gérard Klein                La Science-Fiction, une littérature                (Edition Robert Laffont)            prothétique

Session II Enhancement and other topics
11h40-12h30    Gilbert    Hottois                        ?
(Professeur, Université libre de Bruxelles)

12h30-14h00        Lunch

14h00-14h50        Marie-Geneviève Pinsart                    ?
(Chargé de cours, Université libre de Bruxelles)
14h50-15h40        Bernard Baertschi            Devenir un être humain accompli. Idéal
(Maître d’enseignement et de recherche,       ou cauchemar ?
Université de Genève)

15h40-16h00        Pause Café

16h00-16h40        Kermisch Céline                 Enhancement et perception des risques
(Aspirant FNRS, Université libre de Bruxelles)
16h40-17h30        Pascal Nouvel                Un aiguillon philosophique à la conquête
(Professeur, Université Montpellier III)     des records : les amphétamines
17h30-18h20        Jean-Yves Goffi                Soigner, augmenter : une frontière floue ?
(Professeur, Université Pierre Mendès)

Samedi 10 mai

Session III : Enhancement and sport. Chair : Pierre Daled.

10h-10h50        Alexandre Mauron            Homo faber sui: quelques questions
(Professeur à l’Université de Genève)           d’éthique démiurgique
10h50-11h40        Patrick Laure                Ethique des conduites dopantes
(Université Paris XI-Orsay)
11h40-12h30        Quéval Isabelle                Le corps rationnel du sport de haut
(Maître de Conférence,             niveau: ambivalences du  dépassement de     Université René Descartes-Paris V)    soi

12h30-14h00        Lunch

14h00-14h50         Claudio Tamburrini             What´s wrong with genetic inequality?
(Chercheur, Université de Göteborg)
14h50-15h40        Andy Miah                 Human enhancement in performative
(Reader, University of the West of Scotland)                    cultures

Human Dignity and Bioethics

I just received my copy of the new publication from the US President’s Council on Bioethics. This volume looks like a great addition to the literature. Human dignity featured heavily in my Genetically Modified Athletes and is a concept I am continually drawn back to when thinking about the range of issues arising from discussions about human enhancement.

Blogging in Beijing

A couple of days ago, I interviewed for ABC Radio on the recent discussions about blogging at the Beijing Olympics. Here’s the transcript:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/sportsfactor/stories/2008/2179195.htm 

Owning the Olympics

New book with my following paper:

Miah, A., B. Garcia, et al. (2008). ‘We are the Media’: Non-Accredited Media & Citizen Journalists at the Olympic Gams. Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China. M. E. Price and D. Dayan. Michigan, University of Michigan Press: 320-345.

Owning the Olympics
Narratives of the New China

Monroe E. Price and Daniel Dayan, Editors

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About the Book

“A major contribution to the study of global events in times of global media. Owning the Olympics tests the possibilities and limits of the concept of ‘media events’ by analyzing the mega-event of the information age: the Beijing Olympics. . . . A good read from cover to cover.”
—Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Asian/Middle Eastern Cultures & Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University

From the moment they were announced, the Beijing Games were a major media event and the focus of intense scrutiny and speculation. In contrast to earlier such events, however, the Beijing Games are also unfolding in a newly volatile global media environment that is no longer monopolized by broadcast media. The dramatic expansion of media outlets and the growth of mobile communications technology have changed the nature of media events, making it significantly more difficult to regulate them or control their meaning. This volatility is reflected in the multiple, well-publicized controversies characterizing the run-up to Beijing 2008. According to many Western commentators, the People’s Republic of China seized the Olympics as an opportunity to reinvent itself as the “New China”—a global leader in economics, technology, and environmental issues, with an improving human-rights record. But China’s maneuverings have also been hotly contested by diverse global voices, including prominent human-rights advocates, all seeking to displace the official story of the Games.

Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from Chinese studies, human rights, media studies, law, and other fields, Owning the Olympics reveals how multiple entities—including the Chinese Communist Party itself—seek to influence and control the narratives through which the Beijing Games will be understood.

http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=308803

Teaching the Body

Teaching the Body

The editors of Transformations, a peer-reviewed journal, seek
articles(5,000 – 10,000 words) and media reviews (books, film, video,
performance,art, music, etc. – 3,000 to 5,000 words) that explore the
body in a
variety of pedagogical contexts and disciplinary perspectives-literature,
science,women’s and gender studies, anthropology, folklore, history,
psychology, sociology, art, photography, geography, religion, cultural
studies, working-class studies, ethnic studies, disability studies, age
studies, narrative medicine. and others.

Topics might include: the body in global and transnational contexts;
the culture of self-help; environmental issues; im/migration and
transnational labor; body rituals and body modification (from tattooing
and piercing to cosmetic surgery); reproductive rights; transgender,
intersex, and queer bodies; bodies and sports; bodies and religion;
military bodies; disciplining the bodies; imprisoned bodies; body
economics; bodily knowledge; the body in virtual spaces; students as
bodies; language of genetics in discussion of bodies; bodies as
biological entities; bionic bodies; online communities (icons and
avatars).

Send a hard copy in MLA format (6th ed.): Jacqueline Ellis and Edvige
Giunta, Editors, Transformations, New Jersey City University, Hepburn
Hall Room 309, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305 OR email
submissions and inquiries to: transformations@njcu.edu. Email
submissions should be sent as attachments in MS Word or Rich Text
format.  For submission
guidelines go to www.njcu.edu/assoc/transformations.

Deadline: 31 March 2008

Published semi-annually by New Jersey City University