This volume explores sporting mega-events, their social, political, and cultural characters, the value systems that they inscribe and draw on, the claims they make on us and the claims the organisers make for them, the spatial and ethical relationships they create, and the responses of civil societies to them.

This book discusses the issues and strategies which have characterized the environmental campaigns mounted against recent controversial infrastructure projects in France. Focusing on the changing nature of policymaking in the Fifth Republic as a key factor in the organization of each protest, Graeme Hayes asks why some protests succeed where others fail, and how we should understand the relationship between states and social movements in general.