International Cultural Relations Research Articles

Screening the fantastic – citizenship and postcolonial theoconomies in African video-film and photography

How can the fantastic be used as a conceptual framework to think critically about citizenship in relation to the resonances between religion and capital? Through a visual analysis of Nollywood video-film as well as the photographic and video work by Nigerian photographer, Andrew Esiebo, I argue that complex relations between politics, religion and socio-economic dynamics create fantastic publics in which citizenship is continually negotiated. Intertwining economy, politics and religion through a ‘theoconomy’ produces publics as spectacle where transformations (from poor to wealthy, sick to healthy) are staged as symbolic exchanges. Applied in this study as a confrontation with the power of imagination, the fantastic is among the crucial ways of comprehending contemporary complexity in which uneven international economic, political and cultural relations contribute to the surreal qualities of the everyday.

Experimental Diplomacy: Art and International Cultural Relations at 49th Parallel

Abstract This article focuses on 49th Parallel: Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art (1981–92), a New York City-based art gallery that was conceived as a diplomatic ‘pilot project’ by Canada’s Department of External Affairs to focus on ‘new’ and ‘experimental’ Canadian contemporary art. Drawing from policy papers, memorandums and grant applications, I examine the gallery’s conceptual framework governing three key exhibitions, particularly the assumptions informing the gallery’s deployment of contemporary art as a tool of soft power within a climate of ascendant neoliberal capitalist ideologies. These records of the gallery’s mandate and programming reveal mounting pressures to increase the presence of Canadian art in the international art scene.

Substate Diplomacy, Culture, and Wales: Investigating a Historical Institutionalist Approach

Despite the rise of substates as international actors, theoretically informed frameworks lag behind the expansion in substate diplomacy. Dedicated attention to the cultural dimensions of their international activity has also been limited. Based on examining the case study of Wales, this article advances a historical institutionalist analysis to explain how substate governments engage and interact in international cultural relations. It highlights the strengths of Lecours’ framework with its emphasis on the multilevel institutional structures and structure-agency dynamic conditioning substate diplomacy. The article adapts and updates the framework and offers an expanded historical institutionalist analysis by pointing to the value of understanding longer-term institutional and policy contexts and the need for greater attention to the role of ideas in explanations of substate diplomacy. On this basis, the article makes the case for the broader applicability of this historical institutionalist approach to analyzing substate diplomacy in other cases in both federal and regionalized states.

Naples in the Works of Alexander Bryullov and his Contemporaries. Speaking of Romanticism

Pensioner practice of the Russian artists, who lived or studied abroad in different periods of their lives, is a subject of heightened attention of art historians. The study of this important periods of the artists’ professional career enables to reproduce their creative contacts, to trace the process of formation of their worldview and creative method, and, consequently, to assess the degree of infl uence of other countries on the national culture. This theme is important today because of the particular attention of modern specialists to the international cultural relations and the results of the integration process in the sphere of art. At the beginning of the 19th century, the foreign practice for the Academy of Arts graduates became regular. The geographic area and travel route for those trips were chosen considering the training program focused on ancient samples. Therefore, the main place for this probation was Italy, and especially Rome, where the rising artists studied the classical architecture and the art works of the Renaissance masters. Unlike Rome, Naples did not form a colony of Russian artists. However, this city entwined the fates of the artists of different genres and directions, attracted by the romance of common people’s life by the sea, idyllic landscapes and archaeological sites. Under the infl uence of the romantic atmosphere of the city, the artists created the works that became masterpieces of the Russian art. The article reviews the Neapolitan period of creativity of the Russian architects and artists of the fi rst half of the 19th century. Particular attention is given to Alexander Bryullov (1798-1877), for whom the stay in this city became crucial. The text contains references to modern periodicals and archival documents of that period.

Power and Culture

This study explores how the Japanese government endeavored to shape American public opinion through the promotion of Japanese aesthetics in the several years following the Manchurian crisis—and, importantly, how this “cultural diplomacy” was received by Americans. At the center of Japan’s state-sponsored cultural initiative was the Society for International Cultural Relations (Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai, or KBS). By drawing attention to Japan’s historically esteemed cultural traditions, Japan’s leaders hoped to improve the nation’s image and leverage international power. Critical American reviews and general-interest articles on KBS programs proffered images of a society imbued with a profound sense of artistic sophistication. To this end, the KBS’s cultural diplomacy tended to reinforce a popular assumption among Americans that Japan’s body politic in the 1930s was meaningfully divided between “moderates” and “militarists.” Japan’s cultural diplomacy, however, was undermined from the start by an irreconcilable tension: to simultaneously legitimize regional expansionism and advance internationalist cooperation. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in the summer of 1937 and subsequent proclamations that presumed Japanese hegemony in Asia, naked aggression rendered any lighthearted cultural exchange increasingly irrelevant. Indeed, KBS activities in the United States dwindled—a point that made clear the limits of cultural diplomacy.

Making Relations, Breaking Relations

French-Hungarian relations reached a high point in the aftermath of the 1896 Millennium Celebration in Budapest. But by 1910, prospects for rapprochement had faded. The article explores the genesis of the rupture in relations that manifested itself in the Treaty of Trianon. It investigates events from two new perspectives: first, the career of French consul general Viscount de Fontenay before and during his stay in Budapest (1906–1912); second, the founding of the Revue de Hongrie along with its early years of publication. Fontenay began the Revue in March 1908 as a diplomatic initiative supported by the intellectual elites of France and Hungary and their governments. It was a monthly journal written entirely in French with subscriptions from individuals as well as prestigious universities, colleges, and libraries in Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia. This article explores relations between the two countries as reflected in the political landscape and the contents of the Revue. Finally, as a contribution to the previously neglected history of international cultural relations, this article identifies the key issue: there is no pure cultural diplomacy. It strives to use the frequently overlapping terms of this emerging field in such a way that the context in which they appear helps to clarify their meaning.

Purismus und Spracherneuerung

This paper claims the Central European language reform movements in the late 18th century and in the mid-19th century showed a number of similarities with regard to both their aims and their methods. Their main characteristic feature was the endeavour to purify the mother tongue and to introduce new words for elements of foreign (primarily Greek or Latin) specialized terminologies belonging to general education or serving at least as skills needed for orientation. This was a fundamental dilemma: to use Latin as the language of international cultural and academic relations or to give preference to mother tongues spoken by only certain language communities. Do the mother-tongue terms hinder the contacts with the international scientific world? An interesting solution of this dilemma based on some common ideas can be found in the works of Czech, Hungarian, and Croatian language reformers.

International Relations Meets Urban History

Brooke L. Blower's approach to international history is, in the good sense of the word, pedestrian. Blower conveys the strange sight of American Legionnaires parading down the Champs-Elysées in sombreros and Hawaiian leis. She lingers outside nightclubs that spilled late-night “nookie hunters” and prostitutes onto neon-lit sidewalks. She captures the electric charge of leftist Parisians taking to the streets to protest the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Most importantly, Blower weaves these urban street scenes into a compelling argument about the transnational sources of American and French nationalisms. Blower's work contributes to recent shifts in scholarship on international cultural relations. In a landmark historiographic essay published in 2000, Jessica Gienow-Hecht traced the rise and fall of the notion of “cultural imperialism.” While scholars in the 1960s and 1970s invoked cultural imperialism to decry the spread of American culture, scholarship in later decades increasingly emphasized the ability of foreigners to adapt and appropriate American culture through a less hierarchical process of “cultural transfer.”1 Since Gienow-Hecht's essay appeared, the growth of transnational history has brought even further complexity to studies of cultural transfer. Like other thought-provoking scholars in the recent transnational turn, Blower emphasizes that collective identities themselves emerge through exchange and contact.2 In Blower's case, Americans did not simply spread American culture when they traveled to Paris. Instead, cross-cultural contact in urban public spaces allowed Americans and Parisians to invent national categories in the first place. In her words, “making Frenchness and making Americannes were … by-products of each other, and thinking in terms of exports and imports does not do justice to the processes by which such national definitions and identifications were made” (p. 88). The idea that travel and expatriation furnish a hot house for identity formation has long animated much scholarship on the history of travel and ideas.3 What makes Blower's book especially valuable is that she (mostly) avoids the traditional focus on intellectuals. Her wider approach also includes city politicians, police officials, journalists, veterans’ organizations, and labor groups.

Cultural activities of Serbia in Europe and world: 2000-2010

The introductory text comments on the relevance of cultural values and cultural relations in the context of the changed global environment and actors in the international arena. Particularly noteworthy is the importance of content quality and effective narratives in cultural relations. The text continues to emphasize the socio-political aspects that have shaped the cultural development of Serbia at the beginning of the 21st century. The review of basic research results of 'Serbian Cultural activities in Europe and worldwide from 2000 to 2010' form a major part of the text and present a contribution to the wider analysis of international cultural relations of Serbia. The research questions are related to the content of the cultural activities of Serbia, then the ideas, values and narratives, and finally to the principles and priorities of cultural policy in the context of international cultural relations.

Meghitt idegenek – Kassák Lajos párizsi kiállításai (1960 és 1963)

Abstract Győző Vasarhelyi (Victor Vasarely) and Denise Rene staged two exhibitions of Lajos Kassak in the Galerie Denise Rene in Paris, in 1960 and 1963. The organizers included former members of the European School now living in Paris and Kassak's avant-garde artistic connections, including Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay, Etienne Hajdu, Vera Molnar and her husband Ferenc, Imre Pan, Michel Seuphor, Tristan Tzara. The art historical significance of these exhibitions was that they kept abreast of the contemporary West European and American artistic tendencies: along a linear art historical logic, they created continuity between the abstraction of the first two decades of the 20th century and – with a great leap in time – the geometric abstraction, op art and kinetic trends of the 1950s and 1960s. The basis to do so was, on the one hand, Kassak's oeuvre spanning from 1920 to 1960s, and on the other, the joint presentation of Kassak and Vasarely, as representatives of two periods. Their joint exhibitions and public...

Rethinking cultural diplomacy: The cultural diplomacy of New Zealand, the Canadian Federation and Quebec

Cultural diplomacy, the deployment of a state’s culture in support of its foreign policy goals or diplomacy, has not attracted the level of scholarly attention it warrants, given its long history, the substantial investment by some practitioners, and its relevance to a number of related subjects in International Relations. As a result of this neglect there is little agreement on what the concept means; and several aspects of the practice warrant explication. Following a brief discussion of the core elements of the practice, including how it relates to other seemingly synonymous practices such as public diplomacy, international cultural relations and propaganda, I set out to discuss aspects of the recent cultural diplomacy of the Canadian Federation, Quebec and New Zealand in order to examine three underexplored aspects of the practice: cultural diplomacy’s role in presenting a national image and its connection to nation branding, the practice’s role in supporting the protection of cultural sovereignty, and its contribution to national domestic objectives.

The impact of international cooperation on educational language policy: a case in Spain

International cooperation and foreign policies are the main tools for the implementation of language policies abroad. Languages as conveyors of national cultures and as distinctive signs of modern nations are actively promoted and protected outside national borders. Extra-national language policies are integrated, usually, in cultural cooperation or international cultural relations. In this article, I will discuss how cultural cooperation between two nations significantly influences the educational language policy adopted by one of the parties. For this purpose I will analyse the linguistic cooperation between two countries: Britain and Spain. In particular, I will focus on the agreement signed between the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture and the British Council in 1996 which introduced a new bilingual education system, influencing and transforming Spanish language education policy and strengthening the position of the English language.La coopération internationale et les politiques extérieures sont les principaux mécanismes pour la mise en œuvre des politiques linguistiques à l'étranger. Les langues, convoyeuses des cultures nationales et signes distinctifs des nations modernes, sont activement promues et protégées hors les frontières nationales. Les politiques linguistiques extranationales sont, généralement, intégrées dans le cadre de la coopération culturelle ou des relations culturelles internationales. Dans cet article, nous allons étudier comment la coopération culturelle entre deux nations influence d'une manière significative la politique linguistique éducative adoptée par l'une des parties. À cet effet, nous allons analyser la coopération linguistique entre deux pays: la Grande-Bretagne et l'Espagne. En particulier, nous allons traiter de l'accord signé entre le ministère de l'Education et la Culture espagnole et le British Council en 1996 et par lequel un nouveau système d'éducation bilingue a été introduit, influençant et transformant la politique espagnole concernant la langue d'instruction et renforçant la position la langue anglaise.

Estudio introductorio. Relaciones históricas hispano-estadounidenses: visiones del siglo XX en clave cultural

This study presents a dossier which analyzes diverse manifestations of the role of culture in contemporary relations between Spain and the United States, as a contribution to current historiographical approaches to international cultural relations. Spanish publications on this subject are relatively scarce, so the introductory essay aims to review the historiographical context in which the research has been produced, before commenting on each article and author of the dossier. It offers an overview of what has been published in Spain since 1999 on Spanish-U.S. cultural relations. It finds that the main approach of the majority of the published studies has been the documentation and analysis of perceptions of the ‘other’, and it identifies the specific subjects that have appeared under two broad headings: Spain as seen by the USAmericans, and the United States in Spanish perceptions.

Current International Cultural Relations by the Japanese Government

Current International Cultural Relations by the Japanese Government

International education as soft power? The contributions and challenges of Canadian foreign policy to the internationalization of higher education

This paper explores the role of the Canadian federal government in two foreign policy areas: overseas development assistance and international cultural relations by providing a brief history of the federal government’s engagement in both policy areas and highlighting the contributions and challenges of Canadian foreign policy to the internationalization of Canadian higher education. More broadly, the paper explores the unique characteristics of the Canadian federal government’s role in higher education policy making, and in particular, its relations with academics and the university community. Ironically in a world increasingly characterized by greater international education flows, in Canada, there has been a narrowing of vision, a focus on more short rather than long term objectives and a limited engagement of dialogue between academics and the government to promote both development assistance and international education as Canada’s soft power.

Relocating East and West: UNESCO's Major Project on the Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Cultural Values

From 1957 to 1966, UNESCO engaged in a decade-long project aimed at improving cultural relations, a project that generated transnational discourse over representations of East and West. The international climate of this period was characterized not only by decolonization and Cold War tensions but also by activism that amplified diverse and increasingly strong Asian and Arab voices in intergovernmental fora. Composing nearly half of UNESCO's membership by the mid 1950s, these states' demands for greater agency in the international sphere garnered considerable attention following the Bandung Conference (1955), which rekindled longstanding fears of imminent if not perpetual East-West conflict and also precipitated the call for UNESCO to facilitate interchange around Eastern and Western cultural values. By examining UNESCO textbook exchanges, this article illustrates the regionally distinct representations of Asia and Europe that emerged in the postcolonial context. It reflects regional sensitivities as well as cooperative and sometimes startlingly optimistic positions, which are viewed from a perspective that prioritizes cultural relations as a distinctive framework of transnational analysis informed yet not determined by Cold War paradigms. Through this exploration of intergovernmental efforts to engage states in dialogue on cultural identities in the midst of redefinition and rising ambiguity about the meaning of East and West, this work contributes to a growing body of research on international cultural relations in the 1950s and 1960s.

Wealth from creativity: Insights and strategies for the future of international cultural relations

Regardless of frontier, the creative community has begun to benefit financially from the democratisation of creative production and distribution opened up via the Internet, a place where planetary plurality and diversity is implicit. Artists are major ambassadors for their cultures operating in a collaborative environment that recognises the distinctive differences between cultures without threat to indigenous expression. The cultural ecology may have changed but the response of government has been obstructive. Until the second Iraq war cultural diplomacy seemed to have replaced gunboat diplomacy and there was a growing movement to foster cultural relations in an environment being characterised as mutual. In parallel, at national level, governments were seeking to recognise the strong economic value of the cultural industries sector in the new globalised technology. This has now all been thrown into reverse gear by the practice of public diplomacy, a policy of unreformed imperialist hubris that seeks to influence policy in other nations by using domestic producers of intellectual, scientific, creative or economic content to promote selected values and so dominate the international relations agenda. What if one were to integrate into the activities of international cultural relations the dynamic ways of working and thinking of the creative industries? A more beneficial model emerges if creators are given centre-stage and the values of the creative community applied to the management of international cultural relations. A series of insights borne of many years work in the creative industries could lead to a new set of strategies that would call the bluff of those currently seeking to promote the advantages of liberal democracy. For these strategies demonstrably uphold the rights of individuals to creative expression and to enrich their local economies. This does require the managers of international cultural relations to live more dangerously than at present and it is to them that this paper is addressed.

International Cultural Relations as a Factor in Postwar Canadian Cultural Policy: The Relevance of UNESCO for the Massey Commission

The Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (The Massey Commission, 1949-1951) is widely seen to be Canada’s most important position paper on national cultural policy. This article explores the relation of this significant document to UNESCO and its characteristic discourse of “cultural relations.” Not only did UNESCO appear in the terms of reference for the Massey Commission Report, but it also was a repeated touchstone for submissions to the Commission. This overlooked international aspect of the Massey Commission underscores the connection between politics and culture in Cold War Canada providing a clear case of how international political language becomes entangled with—and helps to legitimize—artistic and cultural endeavours. The combination of the discussion of education and culture with that of development and trade allowed Canada to reconsider its position on public funding for the arts.

An Appraisal of Nigeria's Cultural Diplomacy

An appraisal of cultural diplomacy through analysis and evaluation of cultural agreements and theatre programmes is an important aspect of the cycle of decision-making and planning process in cultural diplomacy. This appraisal of Nigeria's cultural diplomacy is double edged. It focuses on administration and management on one hand, and on the other hand, it evaluates the artistic input. It lays bare the organizational defects and problems of cultural policy implementation within the domestic and external environment. The appraisal is significant to the artistic director and critic in the latter instance. It throws a challenge to the theatre practitioner about the choice and content of artistic productions in international cultural relations. This paper adopts the performance evaluation method in the assessment of cultural agreements and theatre productions used in Nigeria's cultural diplomacy. Specifically, the paper will focus on the appraisal of basic cultural agreements made by Nigeria with other countries, programmes of cultural exchange as well as samples of theatre productions. Humanities Review Journal Vol.4 2004:31-40

Canada and the New Public Diplomacy

Assistant Professor, Department of Communications, University of Ottawa; and Special Adviser (Communications), Policy Planning Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The views in this article reflect those of the author and do not necessarily represent the positions of the government of Canada. I would like to thank members of the Policy Planning Division and the International Cultural Relations Bureau at DFAIT for their insights. I am also grateful for the detailed comments from the anonymous reviewers.INTRODUCTIONWe are witnessing a fundamental shift in how nations manage their international relations. National interests are advanced abroad through events and actions that go well beyond the classic diplomacy of communiques, demarches, and aide memoires. Foreign ministries must now devise programmes and muster complex coalitions involving the wider public aimed directly at specific problems rather than simply urge governments or international organizations to act. It is a cliche to say that the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent public relations campaign by the United States and its allies to win understanding in the Arab and Islamic worlds have changed 'everything.' Nonetheless, this tragedy has enabled public diplomacy, 'once the stepchild of diplomats,' in the words of David Hoffman, to assume its rightful place at the centre of diplomatic relations.(1)In this new world, knowledge, culture, and communications are the key, not only to technological progress and economic prosperity, but also to social cohesion and sustainable development. There is concern that the powerful engine of the global economy will roll over cultural diversity, fragile social and political systems, and state sovereignty itself. In this world of instant and ubiquitous communication, hyper text (a document on the World Wide Web that has links to other text, sound, images), and easy travel, the ideas, images, and values that motivate citizens take on an importance and power never known before. As Akihiko Tanaka says, 'word politics' is becoming more important in world politics.(2)In other words, image counts for a lot in contemporary world politics. Whether a country needs to build international coalitions against terrorism, co-operate to protect the environment, attract foreign investment, or bring in foreign students, influencing foreign public opinion is critical to national success because, in the absence of substantial military or economic weight, most countries are the image or 'words' they project abroad. Their room to manoeuvre is affected by their image, or soft power, so that all points of contact - whether promoting policies or exporting - will feed off this general image in both positive and negative ways.(3) The diplomatic advantage goes to countries that are able to present distinct voices or 'information edges,'(4) attract broad non-governmental support, and project three-dimensional national images. Forging relationships with citizens in other countries is now as important as talking to their governments. More than a decade ago, Allan Gotlieb, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States, summed up his experience: 'The new diplomacy, as I call it, is, to a large extent, public diplomacy and requires different skills, techniques, and attitudes than those found in traditional diplomacy.'(5)This article examines the extent to which Canada as a middle power has embraced this new diplomacy and describes how Canada is positioned to develop the 'information edge' in its diplomacy. My thesis is that a middle power such as Canada, with a limited ability to influence the global public discussion, must give its image serious attention because Canada's global influence today depends increasingly on factors that transcend raw economic or military power and that appeal to public perceptions abroad.Despite the severe budget cuts of the 1990s, Canada still brings formidable assets to the table: a bricks and mortar network of 160 embassies and trade offices abroad linked by the most advanced information technology infrastructure of any foreign ministry in the world; extensive experience with civil society groups on sensitive international trade and security issues; the enshrining of culture and values as a 'third pillar' of Canada's foreign policy following a parliamentary foreign policy review in 1995; and global leadership in providing all government services on-line. …