Socio-economic Development Trends of Third World Countries:Success Stories and Lessons from Qatar

The circumstances and contexts that set Qatar on a road of prosperity are gaining momentum every new day. From a small British colony country as late as 1970, Qatar has undergone evolution beginning with settling on its current name after numerous suggestions for the Arab state. Thus, the study interest was to answer two research questions; what is the basis of the success stories of Qatar and lessons for other third world countries? And Is Qatar headed to another level of categorization to leverage into the status of first world countries? The study is mainly guided by structural functionalism theory. The study entailed a systematic literature review approach through which various current literature were analyzed. The progress is largely attributed to the effective strategies entailing financial investment, cultural branding, and policy re-engineering. The political stature and efficient constitution controlled by effective leadership are contributions to milestones observed in the country.

The Birth of a Business Icon through Cultural Branding: Ferrari and the Prancing Horse, 1923–1947

This article examines the origin of the “Prancing Horse” symbol and its role in helping the racing team Ferrari survive under the fascist regime in Italy. Enzo Ferrari, the company’s founder, adopted the coat of arms of Francesco Baracca, the most renowned Italian military aviator during World War I, as the logo of his new racing team. By repurposing it from military aviation to motorsport, he benefitted from powerful cultural associations and strong political and cultural endorsement of Baracca’s persona. Drawing from scholarship on cultural branding and consumer culture, this study shows how new companies can establish powerful business icons by borrowing symbols connected to populist worlds and national ideologies, and transferring them to various industries. Strategic repurposing thus emerges as a distinct process within cultural branding to obtain institutional support and establish powerful brand identities in challenging contexts.

HISTORICAL DOCTRINE OF THE STATE CULTURAL POLICY OF KAZAKHSTAN: FROM THE CONSCIOUS PAST TOWARDS A MEANINGFUL FUTURE

В статье дается обзорный анализ основ государственной культурной политики в рамках сохранения и использования историко-культурного наследия на базе методики геокультурного брендирования. Казахстанский геокультурный бренд - «Великая степь как этнотерриториальный образ степной цивилизации». The article deals with an overview analysis of the foundations of the state cultural policy in the framework of preserving and using historical and cultural heritage based on the methodology of geo-cultural branding. Kazakhstan's geo-cultural brand is "The Great Steppe as an ethno-territorial image of the steppe civilization".

Tickling tensions: Gazing into the parallax gap of the multicultural imaginary

This article explores why cultural branding – ideo-affective market communication addressing intense political tensions – paradoxically seems to lead to political inertia rather than political mobilization. I critically analyse advertising addressing political tensions related to race, ethnicity and immigration, but instead of only following the traced-out trajectory of postcolonial theory, I use the lens of Žižek’s radicalized Lacanian psychoanalysis and treat the therapeutic visuality in cultural branding as ideological fantasies of the market’s multicultural imaginary. Through critical visual methodologies, I situate four ‘multicultural’ commercials in their culture- and idea historical contexts, and juxtapose a postcolonial with a Žižekian reading for each of them. I come to argue that the market’s multicultural imaginary (unconsciously) serves important ideological functions in sustaining the political status quo not foremost because it placates anxiety, but because it doesn’t. Tapping into previous discussions in critical marketing on fetishistic disavowal and inversion, I offer yet another explanation. The political inertia following from ideo-affective dimensions of cultural branding does not primarily come from therapeutic sedation, but from the opposite, namely the parallax object’s upholding of gruesome tension and suspense; a fetishistic tickling. This article ends by critiquing the compulsory use of postcolonial theory in research on racial and ethnic relations. From the Žižekian reading, it appears that the postcolonial gaze is now a punishing agency like any dominant ideology, where the social inequality of global capitalism is deemed a more bearable alternative than the traumatic horror of visible racism, which, subsequently, closes the circuit from radical politics.

Cultural Branding in the Early Modern Period

The early modern commercial book market was the cradle of authorial branding. Authors and publishers increasingly explored the construction of authorial brands: a set of recurring and recognizable characteristics associated with authorial images. This chapter looks at branding in the context of the media landscape of the early modern Dutch Republic. Authorial branding developed over time in conjunction with new conceptions of the individual, technological innovations, and the changing role of – amongst others – patrons and publishers. Analyses of the branding of Jan Jansz. Starter (1593-1626) and Sara Maria van der Wilp (1716-1803) illustrate how the non-formalized, dynamic constellation of the literary field inspired various agents to create a range of (multifaceted) author brands on the spectrum ‘economic-symbolic’.

How Brands Craft National Identity

Drawing on cultural branding research, we examine how brands can craft national identity. We do so with reference to how brands enabled New Zealand’s displaced Pākehā (white) majority to carve out a sense of we-ness against the backdrop of globalization and resurgent indigenous identity claims. Using multiple sources of ethnographic data, we develop a process model of how brands create national identity through we-ness. We find that marketplace actors deployed brands to create and renew perceptions of we-ness through four-stages: reification, lumping, splitting, and horizon expansion. From this, we make three primary contributions to the consumer research literature: we develop a four-part process model of how brands become national identity resources, explore the characteristics of the brands that enable the emergence of and evolution of we-ness, and explore how our processes can address a sense of dispossession among displaced-majorities in similarly defined contexts.

North Macedonia: A Nation and Cinema in Transition

Adjusting to the economic hardship after 2008 by tapping into international markets and business cooperation, North Macedonian cinema has maintained a steady focus on its cultural branding and world image. While the genre and thematic variety of documentaries and shorts testifies to the unceasing interest in and demand of cinematic self-expression, the few feature films produced each year display a rather safe balance between entertainment and national self-assertion. This chapter discusses several recent films which mediate the political and cultural currents in this liminal space through the categories of national-recollective, national-symbolic, and national-reflective to understand the multiple and merging national narratives.