Special issue on cultural diplomacy and international cultural relations (4)

This is the fourth in the Journal’s dedicated series of annual special issues that focus on questions of cultural diplomacy and international cultural relations. The distinguishing feature of the articles published in this series is that they explore culture-shaping policies that target populations lying beyond the national and/or cultural ‘frontiers’ or ‘base’ of the agents devising them. Such policies may be explicit, in that their objectives are openly described as cultural, or implicit, in that their cultural objectives are concealed or described in other terms.

The major part of this issue is given over to articles that focus on the development of international cultural relations in East Asia, specifically, in China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The accelerating international promotion of heritage by both China and Japan is the subject of the opening article by Ryoko Nakano and Yujie Zhu. Examining the motives and methods of utilising cultural heritage as a form of soft power, the authors suggest that both countries, despite their distinct differences, share similar approaches. They conclude that heritage is not only promoted for the purposes of nation-building and nation-branding but that it also feeds into wider soft power strategies for attaining cultural and moral supremacy in East Asia and beyond.

Utpal Vyas also focuses on China and Japan, but in his article he is concerned primarily with the relations between the two countries, as evinced in the different modes of cultural exchange that have manifested themselves over the last few decades. Reviewing various theoretical perspectives on cultural exchange, Vyas develops different paradigms to characterise this aspect of Japan-China relations over time, namely, people to people, partnership, reciprocity, soft and sharp power.

On a very different scale, Jess Marinaccio also addresses bilateral cultural relations, in this case between Taiwan and the small island nation of Tuvalu. The focus of her article is the deployment of fatele, a form of traditional Tuvaluan dance, for the purposes of cultural diplomacy in Taiwan. The author analyses the tensions inherent in this exercise, which arise from the transposition of a traditional art form, rooted in a specific cultural context, to a different environment with incompatible understandings of the nature of performance. The article concludes that under such circumstances the possibilities of ‘performative’ cultural diplomacy are severely limited.

Contextualising China’s ambition to ‘revive’ the Silk Road for the 21^st century through the Belt and Road Initiative, Tim Winter examines in his article the Silk Road’s historical formation as an arena of diplomacy and international cooperation. He goes on to argue that this stylised, romanticised depiction of pre-modern globalisation came to be associated with peace and harmony, cosmopolitanism and inter-cultural dialogue after World War II. Within this, however, he suggests that Silk Road diplomacy has served as a vehicle for nationalist and geopolitical ambitions and that such entanglements underpin China’s Belt and Road Initiative today.

The focus of Suweon Kim’s article is the dissemination and reception of Korean audio-visual products (AVPs) in Africa, with particular reference to Ghana and South Africa. Characterising the Korean government’s strategy as ‘aggressive yet benign’, the author examines its practice of distributing AVPs free of charge, sometimes in the form of foreign aid, with the long-term aim of creating a viable market. His research finds that Korean AVPs, in contrast to other imported media products, such as Chinese news programmes and telenovelas from Latin America, are on the whole positively received and therefore also work effectively as bearers of South Korean soft power.

The remaining three articles examine different modes of cultural diplomacy, resulting in some unintended effects, in Europe, the United States and Israel. In his article, Jens Meijen focuses on the European Commission’s attempts to strengthen EU identity amongst its member states through the promotion of ‘common European values’, such as peace, human rights and tolerance. Exploring the literary translation projects funded by the EU programme, Creative Europe, Meijen argues that these projects explicitly promote value-based political myths with the aim of forging a transnational sense of cultural coherence. However, the article suggests that these myths are at odds with the historical experiences of some European states, resulting in a monolithic narrative that both obfuscates and simplifies real historical differences.

The aim of Nevra Biltekin’s article is to examine how migrant women contribute to cultural diplomacy by engaging in activities that relate to their country of origin. Taking as an example the activities of the Swedish Women’s Educational Organization (SWEA) in the United States during the 1980s and 90s, Biltekin explores how the women involved assumed meaningful roles as unofficial ambassadors of Sweden and how their work became entangled with official diplomatic institutions. The study points to the ways in which these women were able to influence the representations of Sweden that were displayed to American people, but at the same time how this had the effect of reinforcing notions about feminine spheres of action within international relations.

The special issue concludes with Christina Kiel’s analysis of the Israeli government’s attempts to utilise the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) for the purposes of cultural diplomacy. She connects this to a broader developing trend, whereby attempts are made to extend the kudos surrounding a particular cultural or sporting achievement to the nation or government associated with it. However, she suggests that this can have negative consequences for the government concerned, particularly if the country is in conflict, as demonstrated in this case by the extensive publicity attracted by Israel’s hosting of the ESC to the occupation of Palestine, the contested status of Jerusalem, and human rights abuses against Palestinians.

This is the last in the Journal’s series of dedicated issues on cultural diplomacy and international cultural relations. It was instigated in order to bring out connections and facilitate dialogue around this subsector of our field and at the same time to embed it more firmly within the Journal’s sphere of interest. This has now largely been achieved. We hope that in future this will result in a steady stream of further submissions that will continue to advance this area of research.

There will now be a new annual special issue, the first to be published towards the end of 2021. The theme is ‘Culture wars’. For further information, please visit https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/cultural-policy-culture_wars/?utm_source=TFO&utm_medium=cms&utm_campaign=JPL18091