We are a Little Land: Informational Film and Small-nation Cinema

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
Small Country ◽  
Nordic Region ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
National Imagination ◽  
The 1960S

Et lille land’ - a little land - is a trope of Danish identity which recurs in many of the short informational films about Denmark made from the 1930s to the 1960s. This chapter outlines why the notion of Denmark as a small country has historically been fundamental to the nation’s self-understanding as an imagined community, and how and why it has been employed in informational films made for domestic and foreign consumption. The chapter discusses the role of film in the national imagination, and the importance of medium-specific qualities in that process of imagining: for the purposes of this book, such qualities include the films’ shortness, which impacts on narrative as well as distribution and exhibition. The chapter then discusses recent scholarship on ‘small-nation’ cinema, especially in the Nordic region, and the place of informational filmmaking within the small-nation context. A final chapter section outlines a further body of scholarship on cultural diplomacy, soft power, and nation-branding in the Nordic region as a framework for understanding how images (including informational films) move across borders and re-negotiate auto- and xenostereotypes.

The role of cultural diplomacy in nation branding

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Hurn
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Training And Development ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to emphasise the importance of effective cultural diplomacy in increasing influence abroad, both commercially and politically. It covers the institutions used to advance cultural diplomacy and focuses on their use in nation branding as a form of “soft power”. Design/methodology/approach – Review of the various key institutions involved, with examples. Findings – Increasing use of cultural diplomacy by companies and nations to enhance their profile to assist in gaining competitive advantage in exports, foreign trade, attracting inward investment and tourism. Emphasises its value and methods as an important part of training and development. Research limitations/implications – Selective review of recent good practice. Practical implications – Highlights key areas of success and also examines areas where success has been tempered by altered circumstances at a later date. Originality/value – The review is backed by critical examination and analysis of the recent use of institutions involved.

Maximising Soft Power: the Role of Digital Diplomacy in Building Trust with Nation-Branding

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jess Gosling
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
Building Trust ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Digital Diplomacy

Perceptions of attractiveness and trustworthiness impact the prosperity and influence of countries. A country's soft power is not guaranteed. Countries have their brands, an image shaped by the behaviour of governments, by what they do and say, whom they associate with, and how they conduct themselves on the global stage. Increasingly, digital diplomacy plays a crucial role in the creation and application of soft power. This paper argues that digital diplomacy is increasingly vital in the articulation of soft power. Digital diplomacy is a new way of conducting public diplomacy, offering new and unparalleled ways of building trust with previously disengaged audiences. Soft power is now the driving force behind reputation and influence on the global stage, where increasingly digital diplomacy plays an essential role.

scholarly journals The soft power of commercialised nationalist symbols: Using media analysis to understand nation branding campaigns

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 527-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Bolin ◽  
Galina Miazhevich
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
National Image ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Media

Since the late 1990s, nation branding has attracted a lot of attention from academics, professional consultants and government actors. The ideas and practices of nation branding are frequently presented by branding advocates as necessary and even inevitable in the light of changing dynamics of political power and influence in a globalised and media-saturated world. In this context, some have argued that nation branding is a way to reduce international conflict and supplant ethno-nationalism with a new form of market-based, national image management. However, a growing body of critical studies has documented that branding campaigns tend to produce ahistorical and exclusionary representations of the nation and advance a form of ‘commercial nationalism’ that is problematic. Importantly, the critical scholarship on nation branding has relied primarily on sociological and anthropological theories of nationhood, identities and markets. By contrast, the role of the media – as institutions, systems and societal storytellers – has been undertheorised in relation to nation branding. The majority of the existing literature tends to treat the media as ‘neutral’ vehicles for the delivery of branding messages to various audiences. This is the guest editors’ introduction to the Special Issue ‘Theorizing Media in Nation Branding’, which seeks to problematise this overly simplistic view of ‘the media’ and aims to articulate the various ways in which specific media are an integral part of nation branding. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and problematises both the enabling and the inhibiting potentialities of different types of media as they perpetuate nation branding ideas, images, ideologies, discourses and practices.

scholarly journals Interaction of Music as a Soft Power in the Dimension of Cultural Diplomacy between Indonesia and Thailand

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Surasak Jamnongsarn
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Junior High School ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Information Value ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

The phenomenon of cultural diplomacy between Indonesia and Thailand had appeared since the visit of the Kings of Thailand to Java more than a hundred years ago. In addition, the Indonesian immigrants who has come to Thailand are also an important factor of musical history of both countries. As a result of these interactions, the exchange of ideas, information, value, system, tradition, belief, and other aspects of culture are in the interest of foster mutual understanding through musical dimension. More precisely, the interaction contributes to the exchange of musical ideas. In the Thai music history, angklung and gamelan is an essential tool for building international relations between the two countries at the community level. The relation between the two countries is similar to the relationship between two people so that emotion is the key methodologies in cultural diplomacy. The purpose of diplomacy is to give those people around you to know you better. There used to be a lot of cultural imperialism in cultural diplomacy, but this should be avoided. Currently, cultural diplomacy can give an idea on how a country engaging with others, a capacity to share and accept other viewpoints. The music has a very positive impact for the development of musical culture in Thailand today.Angklung has been taught in every elementary school in the whole of Thailand, even at the level of junior high school and high school. The ideas of new works by Thailand composers today inspired many of the gamelan orchestra. Despite the fact may be felt by the people of Thailand that the influence of Indonesian music is so powerful, so far no Thai person who writes about the history of this music as cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy conceived and built in three models of representation: soft power, nation branding, and cosmopolitan constructivism.

scholarly journals Itineraries of Modern Ethiopian Instrumental Music

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucien Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

<p>This dissertation explores the way in which Ethiopian musicians of the 1960s and 70s adapted forms such as jazz, soul and Latin music to create a new hybrid instrumental music style variously referred to as Ethio-Jazz or Ethio-Groove. It will then go on to investigate the impact that this music has had, in turn, on musicians in various locations around the world since its reissuing on CD in the late 1990s. The central focus is to investigate and articulate the role of individuals’ musical agency in this narrative, and to ask how, within the context of Ethiopian instrumental music and its offshoots, individual musicians and composers have engaged with, responded to and integrated music from elsewhere into their own musical languages. In particular, it looks at how musicians and composers have approached their own notion of creative individuality when their musical genealogy can be traced via affinities rather than geographic and ethnic inheritances. In adopting various influences these musicians, from both the original generation of Ethiopian musicians in the 60s and 70s who adapted soul, jazz and other American forms, and those from around the world who have in turn been influenced by this style of hybrid Ethiopian music, have had to unlock various technical musical problems, as well as navigate at times treacherous ethical waters and answer to allegations of cultural betrayal and/or appropriation. This dissertation identifies these problematic musical and ethical areas and, in the context of this criticism, it examines various viewpoints on how cultural interaction and exchange take place. The final chapter of this dissertation contextualizes my own creative portfolio, which accompanies this written work. It offers a personal response to the questions that have arisen from my affinity for Ethiopian music and from choosing an approach to composition closely informed by this affinity.</p>

scholarly journals The Palestine Society: Cultural Diplomacy and Scholarship in Late Tsarist Russia and the Soviet State

2020 ◽  
pp. 273-302
Author(s):  
Lora Gerd
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Arab Population ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the role of Russian institutions in Palestine before, during and after WWI. The task of the first Russian mission was the control over the distribution of Russian donations, supporting Orthodoxy against Catholic and Protestant proselytisation and organising pilgrimages. Being founded with both political and philanthropic aims, the Russian organisations in Palestine supported the local Orthodox Arab population. Along with the traditional colonial modes of “soft power” in Palestine and Greater Syria (acquiring land and organising schools), on the eve and during WWI more flexible trends appear, providing a dialogue and cooperation with both the Greek Patriarchate and the Arab party. After the revolution of 1917 the Russian presence in Palestine was reduced to a few institutions of the Russian Church Abroad, and lost its political significance.

Poetics of the Enclave

2018 ◽  
pp. 91-108
Author(s):  
Timo Müller
Keyword(s):  
Black Arts Movement ◽  
Black Aesthetic ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Margaret Walker ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
June Jordan ◽  
White Form ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines the previously neglected role of the sonnet in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Leading theorists of the movement denounced the sonnet as a paradigmatic “white” form that constrained black self-expression and had to be excluded from the black nation. The demand for an oral, authentic, collective poetry led poets to dismantle the traditional sonnet structure and adapt the form to cultural nationalist demands. The chapter reviews the role of traditional poetic forms in the black aesthetic and discusses strategies of camouflaging or demarcating the sonnet in the work of June Jordan, Joe Mitchell, Conrad Kent Rivers, Quincy Troupe, and Margaret Walker. These strategies confirm the view in recent scholarship that the Black Arts movement exerted both a confining and a creative influence on poets of the time.

Parties, Pavilions and Protests: The Heteronomous World Politics of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-61
Author(s):  
Julia Bethwaite ◽  
Anni Kangas
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Different Types ◽  
A Site ◽  
Venice Biennale

This paper focuses on the role of contemporary art in international relations and world politics. In IR, art is often examined within the framework of cultural diplomacy, country branding, and soft power, or approached as a site of resistance. We argue that the concept of heteronomy offers an alternative conceptual framework for analysing contemporary art in world politics. It highlights the interaction of various fields such as art, commerce, the state and media. We concretise this approach with an analysis of the Venice Biennale. We show that the Biennale is heteronomous in the sense of being an arena where actors from various fields struggle for power by accumulating different types of capital. We focus our analysis on the Russian national pavilion in 2011–2015 and show how the efforts of the country's elite to legitimise its position intertwined with the projects of the state, sponsors, artists, curators and art market actors.

scholarly journals Itineraries of Modern Ethiopian Instrumental Music

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucien Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

<p>This dissertation explores the way in which Ethiopian musicians of the 1960s and 70s adapted forms such as jazz, soul and Latin music to create a new hybrid instrumental music style variously referred to as Ethio-Jazz or Ethio-Groove. It will then go on to investigate the impact that this music has had, in turn, on musicians in various locations around the world since its reissuing on CD in the late 1990s. The central focus is to investigate and articulate the role of individuals’ musical agency in this narrative, and to ask how, within the context of Ethiopian instrumental music and its offshoots, individual musicians and composers have engaged with, responded to and integrated music from elsewhere into their own musical languages. In particular, it looks at how musicians and composers have approached their own notion of creative individuality when their musical genealogy can be traced via affinities rather than geographic and ethnic inheritances. In adopting various influences these musicians, from both the original generation of Ethiopian musicians in the 60s and 70s who adapted soul, jazz and other American forms, and those from around the world who have in turn been influenced by this style of hybrid Ethiopian music, have had to unlock various technical musical problems, as well as navigate at times treacherous ethical waters and answer to allegations of cultural betrayal and/or appropriation. This dissertation identifies these problematic musical and ethical areas and, in the context of this criticism, it examines various viewpoints on how cultural interaction and exchange take place. The final chapter of this dissertation contextualizes my own creative portfolio, which accompanies this written work. It offers a personal response to the questions that have arisen from my affinity for Ethiopian music and from choosing an approach to composition closely informed by this affinity.</p>

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