Editorial Introduction: Cultural Diplomacy in Action: U.S. Foreign Schools and Centers and the International Exchange of Ideas (original) (raw)
Related papers
Heritage diplomacy is a recent concept and a new area of interest in the expanding scope of diplomacy. The concept is explored with various epistemological foci and theoretical frameworks in Western scholarship. It is often used to describe joint international projects or government initiatives abroad for preserving tangible cultural heritage. Several recent studies link heritage diplomacy to attempts to develop reciprocal relations between countries, regions, and/or communities through cultural heritage based on dialogue. This article contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship on heritage diplomacy by clarifying the concept, including its inherent notions of cultural heritage and approaches to power. Our critical close reading of 57 sampled scholarly publications reveals how heritage diplomacy is commonly approached from a conservationist point of view, emphasising the preservation of tangible cultural heritage through knowledge exchange, material aid, and funding. Scholarship lacks studies focusing on the uses of intangible cultural heritage for heritage diplomacy. The study reveals heritage diplomacy scholars' shared interest in power asymmetry and struggle: the concept can be used to recognise and deconstruct power hierarchies between heritage communities. We do this by understanding cultural heritage as a contact zone of people-to-people connectivity, reciprocal cooperation, mutual trust, and dialogue.
Conjoining cultural heritage and diplomacy Cultural heritage is an essential element in transmitting values, establishing narratives of historical and contemporary connectivity, and creating subjective and collective identities and a feeling of belonging. During the past decade, the potential of cultural heritage for state foreign policy and in international heritage governance has attracted increasing interest among heritage scholars. This potential, however, remains under-researched in the broader spectrum of international cultural relations. This special issue focuses on international cultural relations dealing with cultural heritage and culture in terms of heritage diplomacy. The contributors discuss the potentials and limitations of heritage diplomacy and how it could or should be approached in theory, policy, and praxis. The aim of the issue is to critically explore the previous research of heritage diplomacy, develop its theoretical basis and scope, and thereby extend the discussion to new topics and themes. To recognize the potential of cultural heritage for international cultural relations, it is helpful to conceptualize heritage as a presentist and future-orientated process through which realities are constructed from the selected elements of the past (e.g. Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge 2007; Harrison 2013a; Lähdesmäki et al. 2020). In this conception, cultural heritage is not an essentialist 'fact' but emerges when something is narrated, defined, and/or treated as such in a specific sociocultural context (van Huis et al. 2019). The conception underlines how all heritage includes dissonances regarding the stories told through it, the ways the past is represented, and how memories are used in public spheres (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996). This dissonance is not undesirable, but intrinsic to the very nature of heritage (Smith 2006, 82; Graham and Howard 2008, 3; Kisić 2016, 25) and crucial to its potential to look to the future. In this orientation to the future, cultural heritage has an active role: it 'does' things when actors discuss, manage, and use heritage for different purposes (Harrison 2013a, 2013b; Whitehead et al. 2019; Lähdesmäki and Čeginskas 2022). This capacity makes cultural heritage favourable ground for political projects; different meanings are attributed to heritage in diplomatic engagements, from the material and tangible to ideational structures (see also Giulia Sciorati 2023). Critical heritage scholars have often underlined the political dimension of cultural heritage. It functions as an arena for both manifesting and negotiating (dissonant) meanings, values and identities (e.g. van Huis et al. 2019; Kisić 2016; Harrison 2013a; Mäkinen et al. 2023). It may promote established worldviews and power hierarchies but also question them by offering space for deconstructing power asymmetries and creating novel dialogic connections between people. These different approaches to cultural heritage explain its utility for diplomacy. Diverse definitions have been attributed to diplomacy in scholarship and practice. The use of terms such as 'cultural diplomacy', 'public diplomacy,' 'new public diplomacy,' and '(international) cultural relations' reflect the development of the term throughout time. While all terms foreground the relevance of culture in diplomatic endeavours for creating (chiefly positive) engagements between states and people to negotiate mutual interests, to maintain peaceful relations and a geopolitical status quo, the concepts may diverge on understandings of the roles in, governance and aims of diplomacy (see also Dâmaso 2021, 7-8). In this issue, the contributors predominantly take one of two approaches, to frame heritage diplomacy in terms of cultural diplomacy or (international) cultural relations. Cultural diplomacy can be understood as a more traditional approach to diplomacy, which assumes that the state remains the central actor and is preoccupied with advancing its foreign policy goals and using culture for nation-branding. In contrast, (international) cultural
U.S. cultural diplomacy and archaeology: soft power, hard heritage
Choice Reviews Online, 2013
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 generated a maelstrom of images. There were cities lit by the "shock and awe" bombardment, the falling statues, the traumatized civilians and scene after scene of coalition forces vainly searching for weapons of mass destruction.
Heritage diplomacy; an afterword
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2023
Back in 1995, I travelled to Kiev to stay with a Ukrainian friend that I had met in England. Complicated visa requirements, along with copious amounts of vodka, made it very clear that I had left Europe and entered a country navigating major social and political change in the wake of a collapsed Soviet Union. I was surprised then to hear war correspondents in 2022 describe Ukraine as lying at 'the heart of Europe'. But in noticing that it was only 'Western' media outlets that used this terminology, I was reminded of how, and why, geocultural imaginaries such as Europe are contingent, fluid and constantly being remade, in this case by a military invasion and the analytics of its wider geopolitical consequence. Back in the mid-1990s, the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia meant that Europe's frontiers were being defined around those countries located to the southwest of Ukraine, in the Balkans and Mediterranean. But then, as now, the idea of Europe was not merely geographical, but wrapped up in questions of civilisation, religion, values, and peoples. It was with such issues in mind that I read with great interest the articles presented in this special issue. Across a number of the papers we see how Europe as a concept is in constant flux and production, whether it be through webs of documentation that make up policy and bureaucracy, or through the valorisation of particular cities, the language of shared heritage oriented around certain values, or through efforts to build cultural and political ties with countries in other parts of the world. The two additional papers here nicely complement this analysis in their respective examination of China's Silk Road engagements with Central Asia, and the role of UNESCO's conventions in shaping ideas about heritage as a 'public good' at the global level. In reading the papers, I was reminded that they straddle two overlapping, yet distinct ways of approaching heritage diplomacy. The first is to frame it as a domain of practice, something that governments do as part of their 'soft power' strategy. Here, we can draw a parallel with those institutes for cultural diplomacy that have sprung up around the world in recent decades. Academic or think-tank, these institutes tend to view cultural diplomacy as an arm of government policy, and thus discuss it in terms of strategy, trends, innovation, or, perhaps, the loftier goals of peace and reconciliation. It is possible to think of heritage diplomacy in such ways, either as a separate, or sub field of the cultural. The second approach is to see heritage diplomacy as a conceptual framework, one that holds distinct critical purchase. Today, both terms, heritage and diplomacy, are used multifariously. This means that attempts to reduce this conceptual frame to a single sentence definition risks inadequately capturing the various ways it can be developed over time to interpret a multitude of events and contexts. Recent scholarship on diplomacy, for example, emphasises the need to move beyond state-centric analyses and instead incorporate other actors, namely non-governmental bodies, professional groups and for-profit organisations. I have always seen heritage diplomacy in this second way, given that, like the authors here, I see heritage as a socio-political process that codifies and orders, preserves and exhibits, reconstructs and erases, and serves as a medium through which ideologies are both advanced and resisted. For cultural heritage, it is also important that critical theory starts by challenging the everyday language of past, present and future as separate ontologies, and instead grapples with the ways in which each is continually remade by the other(s). It is in this space that we find the political, the ideological, the negotiation of power. With such thoughts in mind, the idea of heritage diplomacy then draws our attention to processes of representation, communication, and the building of collaborative
Heritage Diplomacy as a Tool for Protecting Cultural Heritage.
Journal of the Faculty of Tourism and Hotels-University of Sadat City, 2023
Heritage diplomacy is a relatively new field that links heritage studies with international relations studies. It plays a pivotal role in strengthening and enhancing political, economic, and cultural relations among countries around the world. In light of the increasing and growing proportion of conflicts and armed conflicts around the world, it has become important to find space to talk about the common heritage of mankind, away from the memory of previous colonialism and current geopolitical interests. Since, heritage is considered as the cumulative memory of humanity, which reflects the identities and values of societies, many experts believe that heritage diplomacy has the ability to build international relations depending on the dialogue between different cultures; in order to achieve mutual understanding through collective action and mutual benefits among all parties to achieve international peace and security. Hence, diplomacy becomes an integral part of the formation of heritage, especially in areas that have suffered from violence or political upheaval, whether in the past or present. Therefore, this paper discusses the main question: “How is Heritage diplomacy used as a tool for protecting cultural heritage?”. Firstly, by determining the concept of heritage Diplomacy.Secondly, by studying the challenges that face the heritage Diplomacy. Thirdly, by presenting a number of previous international experiences that used heritage diplomacy to protect cultural heritage around world. Finally, by studying the future of protecting heritage sites in the light of diplomacy as one of soft power tools. Keywords: Heritage Diplomacy - Cultural Heritage - Soft Power Tangible Heritage - Archaeological Sites