Securing the Spectacle: Public Safety and the Qatar World Cup

E40-496, in-person limited to the MIT Community

SSP Wednesday Seminar with speaker Sarah Parkinson, Aronson Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. The talk will be broadcast live on the MIT Security Studies Program Youtube channel.Summary/abstract: How do countries conceptualize and govern public safety? Building on three months of immersive field research in Doha, Qatar in the lead-up to and during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, this paper uses Qatar as a site to explore how states define, perceive, and seek to manage public safety concerns. Drawing on first-hand observation at matches, fan events, and on public transit as well as primary source documents and posts on social media, this paper centers the idea of disorder as the core threat narrative deployed by the Qatari World Cup hosts. It compares two cases of potential disorder and examines how the public safety apparatus addressed them. First, it examines how the “Woman Life Freedom” flag, initially understood as a permitted slogan under FIFA’s human rights guidelines, was reconstructed as a public safety threat by tournament security. Second, it traces the evolution of public pro-Palestine sentiment over the course of the tournament, noting how symbols that that were initially prohibited or ambiguous under security guidelines became encouraged, sanctioned, and celebrated by Qatari and various fan groups. Third, it broadly examines crowd management practices on public transit and in public spaces.