Paper long abstract:

Since the 1990s the discussions inside international organisations about the possibilities of ‚conflict prevention' have become significantly more important. As part of these negotiations the potentials of international cultural interventions in areas of conflict were reviewed.

The metaphors and categories produced in these international discussions had a bearing on state policies as well as on NGOs engaged in the field of cultural cooperation. Concerning the foreign cultural policy of Germany 'conflict prevention' was added to the rather classical aims such as 'promotion of German language'.

My paper focuses on the consequences of this discursive expansion on the making of foreign cultural policy. It discusses how this new object is translated through a translocal network into action in areas of conflict. Using empirical material from fieldwork in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Palestine I would like to show how transnational cultural interventions gain their specifity in the combination of global, national, and local narratives.