Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research on a major nation-branding project undertaken in Macedonia, this paper examines how the state sponsorship of nation branding intersects with emergent forms of governance and social regulation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how the state sponsorship of nation branding intersects with emergent forms of governance and social regulation. Nation branding—the effort to formulate national identity as a commodity that adds value to local goods and services—has increased exponentially in recent years, reflecting a growing dependence of national economies on global markets. Proponents of nation branding celebrate it as a strategy to lure investment and tourism and to stimulate growth. Drawing on ethnographic research on a major nation-branding project that was undertaken in Macedonia, this paper, by contrast, investigates the politics of nation branding and the heightened regulation of public communication and public space that accompany state-sponsored nation-branding campaigns.

Paper short abstract:

In the second half of the 2000s, plans to create an Egyptian nation brand placed tourism at the center. The paper explores why the soft power initiative was cancelled by the tourism authorities in fact, who feared that a nation brand risked polluting the tourism brand.

Paper long abstract:

In the 2000s, the Egyptian tourism industry became a field of contestation in the country's expansive soft power ambitions. The industry was seen as a major asset for the Mubarak regime's international statecraft; and from mid- 2000s, it became a centerpiece of the launching on an Egyptian nation brand. The initiative was however cancelled, by no other than Egypt's tourism authorities, which feared that a nation brand could pollute the country's successful tourism brand.

This paper explores this ultimately aborted initiation of Egypt's nation brand. Based on interviews with tourism actors and archival studies, it outlines how the Egyptian regime and other governmental sectors strove to benefit from Egypt's tourism industry, by employing tourism as soft power. Since early 2000s, the regime had made used the industry's image of global openness and hospitality to purify Egypt's international reputation. In the creation of a common nation brand - encompassing tourism, trade and other sectors - this logic was meant to be further implemented: tourism had the potential to overshadow some less shiny sides of Egyptian statecraft, such as human rights violation, economic inefficiency and widespread corruption. Tourism authorities, however, refused such merging on the basis that a nation brand could pollute and damage Egypt's tourism brand and Egypt's tourism image, which they had worked hard to sanitize and promote. Thinking through this contestation in terms of purity and pollution, the paper brings insights into internal power struggles between image-making on the national level and individual sector brands.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the soft power means by which the EU persuaded countries in the Global South that their rural development was best achieved by the adoption of geographical indications and some of the unintended consequences of this work in creating new rural territories and political imaginaries.

Paper long abstract:

During the early twenty-first century, the EU attempted to improve its competitive advantage in international trade by globally entrenching and extending the use of geographical indications (marks indicating conditions of origin). The paper explores the soft power means by which the EU persuaded countries in the Global South that their rural development was best achieved by the adoption of neoliberal technologies of government. Although the failures of some of these early projects should not be discounted, new transnational relationships were also forged which produced creative expressions of community aspiration when this soft power was articulated with a wider field of environmental and human rights policy norms. Drawing examples from Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, the authors consider the generativity of intellectual property in the social life of neoliberal technologies.

Paper short abstract:

The aesthetics of cute design underlies not only creative but also political projects in Japan. Citing examples from popular culture, politics and robotics labs, this paper discusses how cute forms of soft power produce hard policies with disarming consequences for both policy makers and publics.

Paper long abstract:

Soft power strategies coming from Japan's public diplomacy offices are notoriously cute (kawaii): young female fashion ambassadors dispatched to Brazil, a foreign minister in cosplay, a humanoid robot kicking a soccer ball with President Obama. The images offer a deliberately friendly, even obsequious appeal to a global audience. And yet, underneath the sheen of these soft strategies of national PR lie the harder policies with which they are inextricably entangled: an estimated 'surplus' of migrant Brazilian laborers invited to Japan to build its automobiles were offered one-way tickets back to Brazil in 2009; that same foreign minister in cosplay cited above previously held a position organizing public relations efforts for Japan's Self-Defense Forces in Iraq; and in Jennifer Robertson's now iconic citation of a statistic illustrating the more conservative trends in Japan's palliative robotics industry, while a majority of elderly Japanese claim they would prefer a human caretaker to a robot, they also admit a preference for a robot caretaker over a foreign human. Drawing on these and other examples of soft power policy-making collected during 16 months of fieldwork in Japan, this paper analyzes how the disarming appeal of Japan's cute culture softens the justifications for soft power initiatives among its strategists and hardens the wider effects of those and related policies.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on German public diplomacy organisations - primarily Goethe Institut and Heinrich Böll Stiftung - and the case of Syrian artists and writers since 2011 this paper examines the deployment of German soft power in the field of cultural production in the Middle East.

Paper long abstract:

Foreign governmental and non-governmental organisations are important players in the field of cultural production all over the Arab world. Classic examples of the deployment of soft power, organisations such as the Goethe Institut, British Council, Alliance Française and a large variety of other institutions and foundations from Europe and the US, as well as from the prosperous Gulf states, provide crucial infrastructure, platforms and funding lines for writers, musicians, artists and film-makers from Morocco to Jordan and beyond. In the aftermath of the uprisings of the "Arab spring", the war in Syria and the ensuing refugee crisis these activities have reached an unprecedented scale.

Focusing on German public diplomacy organisations - primarily Goethe Institut and Heinrich Böll Stiftung - and the case of Syrian artists and writers since 2011 this paper examines the deployment of German soft power in the field of cultural production in the Middle East. Shifting the focus away from the artworks produced in these processes of collaboration, I argue that the working processes and procedures, the organisations' set-up, selection of staff and their formation which implicitly transport notions of legitimate art and artistic practice are important instruments for spreading conceptual and ideological frameworks which are dominant in specific segments of contemporary German society. How - and to what extent - these conceptual frameworks are (re-)negotiated in the concrete practical interaction between artists and public diplomacy institutions is the central question of this paper.

The paper is based on qualitative interviews with Syrian artists and PDO staff.

Paper short abstract:

The very concept of Soft Power leaves its followers the only possible strategy, which is a cargo cult. The long-term effect of the 'soft' activities is unknown, while in the short run mimicking 'good soft practices' is self-sufficient. And the false feeling of omnipotence is its direct consequence.

Paper long abstract:

While the concept of Soft Power sounds convincing and self-evident, the degradation of international political dialogue in general and the 'Russiagate' in particular can be viewed as its direct consequence, not a side effect.

Online networking, digital diplomacy, trolling, and 'black ops' on Facebook are all natural continuations and different shades of the same idea of winning peoples' hearts and minds with persuasion, rhetoric, and information manipulation if necessary.

An inherited inclination to performance, special effects, entertainment is another downside of the concept: fostering of public image results in deepening the gap between stage and backstage, building 'Potemkin villages', leads to the postmodernist reality-representation flip. The very idea of public image becomes a framework for political decision-making.

Finally an increased sensibility and vulnerability can be also concidered a result of Soft Power practices. Commoditization and export of social culture, traditions, everyday practices, food, and even language leaves nothing for private use, genuine and unprocessed.

On the other hand, 'what if we overestimate culture?' Despite the long-lasting brand-building efforts (since 2000s up to Sochi Olympiade 2014), the recent actions of the Russian government seem to indicate the prevalance of 'hard' reasons and interests over 'soft'.

The paper to be presented will attempt to scrutinize the concept of Soft Power in the light of seeming contradictions between soft and hard gestures of the Russian government on the global scale during the last decade.

Paper short abstract:

When ESC 2017 was arranged in Kyiv, Ukraine was faced with the dilemma of hosting a mega event of entertainment while simultaneously being engaged in an information war with Russia. The case reveals a number of contradictions between the apparently related concepts of "soft power" and "propaganda".

Paper long abstract:

It is not new that one of the world's largest event of "light" TV-entertainment, Eurovision Song Contest, has political dimensions. But rarely has political connotations been as manifest as when Ukraine hosted the event in Kyiv during the first two weeks of May 2017. For the first time Eurovision was arranged in a state at war, both in the sense of a military conflict in the eastern parts of the country and in an information war between Ukraine and Russia. The topic of this presentation is to discuss how the host organizers and various other actors dealt with the dilemma of arranging an event that had to offer uncontroversial entertainment (conforming to European Broadcasting Union regulations) for an international audience, while at the same time being connected with an ongoing conflict and political disputes. Usually, Eurovision is an opportunity for the host country to present an attractive image of itself to a global audience. This time, it was hardly obvious how the event best could be utilized in the global "attention economy". In this presentation, building on intermittent fieldwork during 2016 -17, I will discuss concrete incidents happening during the planning and execution of the event as well as considerations around the design of slogans and symbols. The case of Eurovision in Kyiv 2017 reveals a number of contradictions between the apparently related concepts of "soft power" and "propaganda".

Paper short abstract:

International radio was influential as acoustic soft power during Cold War. The paper will focus on the sensory and 'enchanting' dimension of shortwave radio broadcasts, reconstructs the 'imagined (cosmopolitan) listening community' and looks critically at radio as form of cultural diplomacy.

Paper long abstract:

Thanks to shortwave transmission technology, international radio became the first medium which was able to transmit messages and sounds in realtime to listeners woldwide. That's why it was used by both sides of the Iron Curtain to politically influence the listeners on the other side. And both sides used jamming to defend the country from unwanted 'propaganda'. My investigation focused at the Shortwave Service from Switzerland, a country that has repeatedly claimed to be politically 'neutral'. How did the country represent itself abroad? Which national narratives, music and sounds were used to produce a positive image? By adapting sensory-ethnographical approaches (Pink 2009) to my field of inquiry-the ether-I aimed at reconstructing (former) listening experiences. I focused on the sensory dimension of shortwave radio and its interplay with its political role as cultural diplomat (Gienow-Hecht and Donfried 2010). In my presentation I will sketch prevailing national narratives that were used in the cultural programmes (1950 to 1975) and ask how does 'soft power' relates to the sensorialness, attentiveness and an affective involvement of radio listeners. My paper thus aims to reflect on the role of soft power and cultural diplomacy in the context of listening experiences and of an 'imagined (cosmopolitan) listening community' (following Anderson 1983).

B. R. O. Anderson: Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London 1983.

J. C. E. Gienow-Hecht and M. C. Donfried, Eds.: Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy. New York 2010.

S. Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography. Los Angeles 2009.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines shifting evaluations of the 2017 World Expo in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital. While the event yielded smaller numbers and came at a higher price to locals than planned, it nonetheless created unique opportunities for discussions of international politics.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, Kazakhstan has gained recognition for efforts defined as "soft power," both in international affairs and in domestic policies. In 2017, it hosted the World Student Games, Syrian Peace Talks, and began a two-year stint on the United Nations Security Council. The World Expo of 2017, with its theme "Future Energy," promised to bring people from all over the world to the nation's young capital. However, the event became embroiled in financial controversies, and it became clear that the number of visitors would be far lower - and more local - than originally projected. Local perceptions of the event's significance changed. Citizens began to doubt that the government money put into the Expo would result in investments that would improve their lives.

A focus on the massive nature of spectacle can distract us from the smaller-scale interactions that can result from such events. This paper examines unexpected conversations that arise through events of soft power. Meetings between Russian filmmakers, American students, and Kazakhstani artists highlighted and questioned stances and assumptions about their own nations, while the Expo invited interlocutors to take a stance in relation to it (DuBois 2007). As anthropologists, we have the opportunity to examine not only whether such events succeeded in fulfilling the promises their planners set forth, but we can moreover consider unexpected points of conversation and their potential for redefining political stances.