Qatar’s Monumental Stadiums
Alexandra Glogoff
Soft power, stadiums, and the 2022 Qatar World Cup
Stadiums can act as monuments, wielding political power. During the 2022 World Cup, Qatar attempted to bury their poor human rights record through the architecture of their stadiums. Were they successful? Their spectacular stadiums were widely reported on, with many in awe of the technological and artistic accomplishments. However, reports of human rights controversies in the stadiums’ building processes continued through World Cup coverage. Only time will tell the legacy of the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
Qatar Museums
Sports and soft power
At its core, soft power is non-coercive. Instead of waging war, a country demonstrates its power or attempts to its image and international relationships through things like culture, political values, even sports.
Freakonomics: What is Sportswashing (and Does it Work)?
Using Important Forms and Materials to Create Art with Meaning
Tightrope: Familiar Yet Complex 2 is an art piece by Elias Sime featured in the Wellin Museum exhibit on Dialogues Across Disciplines.
Sime considers the impact of technology in Ethiopia: a connector and a producer of harmful byproducts. Here, electronics form a landscape reminiscent of Ethiopia’s own. Sime uses materials and imagery inherent to Ethiopia’s economy to create something simultaneously beautiful and meaningful.
Stadiums as monuments
The goal behind creating stadium architecture demonstrating power. As Benjamin Flowers describes in his book Sport and Architecture, stadiums are “marshaled to show a global audience the breadth and depth of a nation’s architectural and engineering proficiency.” The stadiums tell a collective (manufactured) national story and demonstrate soft power through architectural feats.
Qatar’s World Cup Stadiums
Stadium 974
Made of shipping containers, it is the first stadium built to be disassembled. It advertises Qatar’s engineering prowess, uses a specific material to tell the story of Qatar as an industrial nation dedicated to trade, and appeals to liberal ideals of sustainability.
Al Bayt Stadium
This stadium draws inspiration from ‘bayt al sha’ar,’ or the tents historically used by nomadic peoples in the Gulf region. It glorifies Qatar’s past while using the grand nature of the stadium architecture to show off Qatar’s present wealth.
Lusail Stadium
This design was inspired by the interplay of light and shadow that characterizes the ‘fanar’ lantern. It highlights the “golden age” of art in the Arab and Islamic world. It uses modern architectural techniques to showcase Qatar’s rich cultural history.
News Coverage
So is the answer simple? The stadiums were spectacular and the games were in progress. 3.4 million people were experiencing the stadiums in person, and 5.5 billion watched at home.
The short answer is no. Even positive coverage (linked below) still mentions the controversies surrounding Qatar’s hosting.
So what were the “conditions endured by migrant workers” mentioned in the CNN article?
Human rights transgressions in the building process
8 Stadiums
2 MILLION MIGRANT WORKERS
6,500+ DEATHS
Investing 200 billion dollars into hosting, Qatar possessed enough to pay workers fairly. Ultimately, the Qatar government chose to exploit an inherently inhumane labor system, resulting in amazing architectural feats with a permanent stain of exploitation. The stadiums are inherently political, so their building process is too. The many human rights violations committed by Qatar are central to the resulting structures and their legacies.
“you cannot sit in these majestic stadiums and not think about their human cost. You cannot see crowds of fans and not wonder who among them would be subject to persecution simply for being who they are. You cannot see the close-ups of the Qatari fan section, with nary a woman in sight, and not feel desperate for the women and girls who live here.”
— Nancy Armour, USA Today
The final question: was Qatar successful? Or will these human rights abuses overshadow the stadiums and matches played within?
Bibliography
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Armour, Nancy. “World Cup has just started but legacy of tournament has already been secured.” USA Today, November 20, 2022. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2022/11/20/qatar-2022-world-cup-migrant-workers-deaths-hate/10745024002/
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