In Discipline and Punish Foucault famously declares that “our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance.” Our theoretical aim in this paper is to problematize Foucault’s strict demarcation between spectacle and surveillance through an analysis of urban mega‐events. In the process, we detail emerging features of contemporary mega‐events that shape and are shaped by shifts in the field of security and surveillance more broadly. Three dynamics in particular warrant consideration: the move toward a precautionary logic among security planners, a “semiotic shift” wherein security iconography is integrally bound up with the production of contemporary urban spectacles, and various forms of security and surveillance legacies that circulate beyond the spatial and temporal frame of the event itself. While mega‐events support Foucault’s assertion of the dispersal of discipline across the social field, they also suggest that this dispersal occurs in concert with, not in spite of, the power of the spectacle in contemporary society.

Security for the Olympic Games has become undeniably visible in recent years. A certain degree of this visibility became unavoidable after the 1972 Munich Olympics when military personnel and hardware became standard elements of Olympic security. Yet, this visibility is qualitatively different today in that it is often deliberately fashioned for public consumption. This article argues that this expressive dimension of security at the Games provides a window into wider issues of how authorities 'show' that they can deliver on the promise of maximum security under conditions of radical uncertainty. The latter sections of this article examine three ways in which this promise is extended: the discursive work of managers of unease, the staging of highly stylized demonstration projects, and the fabrication of fantasy documents. We focus on how officials emphasize that they have contemplated and planned for all possible security threats, especially catastrophic threats and worst-case scenarios. Actually planning for these events is epistemologically and practically impossible, but saying and showing that authorities are 'planning for the worst' are discursive ways of transforming uncertainty into apparently manageable risks that are independent of the functional activities they describe. As such, our analysis provides insights into the much broader issue of how authorities sustain the appearance of maximum security in order to maintain rhetorical control over what are deemed to be highly uncertain and insecure situations. Such performances may paradoxically amplify uncertainty, thus recreating the conditions that foster the ongoing securitization of everyday life.

The paper analyses Project Civil City (PCC), a major initiative launched by the City of Vancouver in 2006 that aimed for significant reductions in street disorder in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics. This initiative is considered in light of the links between urban regeneration/revitalisation efforts and security and surveillance practices. PCC stands as a telling moment in the on-going and highly politicised efforts to regulate urban disorder in this 'world city'. The paper concentrates on three distinct initiatives aimed at ordering different components of urban disorder in Vancouver.

Cet article prend les préparations pour les Jeux olympiques d'hiver de 2010 comme point départ d'un examen de l'idée et de la pratique de la résilience dans les domaines de la sécurité publique et de la gouvernance urbaine. Cet enthousiasme contemporain pour la résilience est généralement reliéà des changements plus substantiels dans les logiques sécuritaires en réponseà une prolifération d'événements disruptifs difficilesà anticiper et aux conséquences potentiellement catastrophiques. Cependant, comment est-il possible de planifier en vue d'un avenir inconnu et inconnaissable? Cet article décrit trois ensembles de pratiques visantà construire une résilience urbaine. Paraissant routinières et ordinaires et associées principalement au domaine de la gestion des urgences, ces pratiques illustrent néanmoins un domaine de l'action gouvernementale qui a prospéré depuis le 11 septembre 2001, mais qui a reçu peu d'attention académique et scientifique.This article uses preparations surrounding the 2010 Winter Olympic Games as an opportunity to examine the idea and practice of resiliency in the field of security, public safety, and urban governance. The enthusiasm for resiliency today is said to connect with broader shifts in the logics of security in response to the proliferation of disruptive events that are difficult to anticipate and potentially catastrophic in impact. How, though, is it possible to plan for an unknown and unknowable future? This article outlines three sets of practices for building urban resiliency that, while seemingly routine and mundane, and associated primarily with the domain of emergency management, exemplify a field of governmental activity that has flourished after 9/11 but received little scholarly attention to date. This research was supported by an SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and University of Alberta Dissertation Fellowship. I would like to thank Kevin Haggerty, Jon Coaffee, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Though described as the first milestone towards securing Canada’s critical infrastructure (CI), the 2009 National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure is the most recent effort in decades of federal engagement with the problem of how to secure the material elements that underpin state, economy, and society. In this article, we show how a little-known civil defence program initiated after WWII to protect important industrial facilities from military enemies has transformed in the contemporary period into the monitoring of a range of political and social movements as perceived dangers to what is understood today as CI. We view these changes as indicative of transformations in the exercise of police power through which the contemporary colonial-liberal order is enacted.