Walking the Thin Line: India's Anti-Racist Diplomatic Practice in South Africa,Canada, and Australia, 1946–55

Historians of India's foreign policy have often failed to see beyond the ‘Great man’ Jawaharlal Nehru. This Nehru-centric vision is not only misleading, but also unfair to Nehru. Here, we seek to take the gaze off Nehru and New Delhi so as to view Indian foreign policy from different locations. We examine the ways in which India's diplomats in Australia, Canada, and South Africa resisted racial discrimination. India's anti-racist diplomacy has most often been viewed as pointless moralistic ranting: the domain of the ‘hypersensitive, emotional’ Indian. We argue, however, based on largely unexamined archival material and an emphasis on the practice of Indian diplomacy, that India's diplomats in these bastions of settler-colonial racism were tactful, strategic, and effective in challenging racist, colonial practices and bringing an anti-racist discourse to international politics. Nehruvian foreign-policy discourse, and its goal of an anti-racist world order, then, was tempered by its diplomatic practices. In particular, this occurred outside of New Delhi in places where India's hopes for productive international relationships clashed with its Nehruvian worldview.     

Establishing a ‘Cultural Base’? The Creation of the Fulbright Program in Portugal

This paper deals with the cultural and educational relations between the United States and Portugal during the Cold War. It is built upon the premise that cultural policies and cultural relations between states are a fundamental part of international relations. History of International Relations, therefore, should overcome an analysis based only upon political and diplomatic dimensions to address what can also be referred to as ‘cultural diplomacy’. The Cold War period, because of its historical features, is particularly relevant to the study of processes of cultural diplomacy and some authors even consider it as the ‘golden age’ of cultural diplomacy.¹1. William Glade, ‘Issues in the Genesis and Organization of Cultural Diplomacy: A Brief Critical History’ in The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society (Winter 2010), vol. 39, issue 4, 242. For cultural diplomacy during the Cold War see Jessica Gienow-Hecht, ‘Culture and the Cold War in Europe’ in Leffler, Melvyn & Westad, Odd Arne, The Cambridge History of the Cold War Vol. i, (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 398–419; Akira Iriye, ‘Culture and International History’ in Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (ed), Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Richard T. Arndt, The First Resort Of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy In The Twentieth Century (Virgínia: Potomac Books, 2005).View all notes     

Cultural diplomacy: beyond the national interest?

The field of cultural diplomacy, which looms large in present-day cultural policy and discourse, has been insufficiently analysed by the cultural disciplines. This special issue engages with the task of filling the gap. The present essay sets out the terms in which the authors have taken up this engagement, focusing principally on Australia and Asia. Distinguishing between cultural diplomacy that is essentially interest-driven governmental practice and cultural relations, which is ideals-driven and practiced largely by non-state actors, the authors pursue a twofold aim. First, to demystify the field, especially when it is yoked to the notion of ‘soft power’; second, to better understand how actually-existing discourses of cultural diplomacy and/or cultural relations operate in different national contexts. The essay seeks in particular to scrutinize the current confusion surrounding cultural diplomacy and, in the context of the changing role of the nation-state, to explore its possibilities as an instrument for going beyond the national interest.     

‘Culture in EU external relations’: an idea whose time has come?

This chapter analyses the emergent cultural diplomacy discourse and practice of the European Union (EU) institutions, which has differed from that of nation-states. In semantics to begin with, since a far broader notion of ‘culture in EU external relations’ is EU usage. Yet Bhabha’s theoretical distinction between the ‘pedagogical’ and the ‘performative’ functions of nation-state narrative strategies holds at the supra-national scale as well: the author will explore the ways in which these functions have been appropriated by non-state actors. In EU cultural diplomacy as a ‘cultural policy of display’ in Raymond Williams’ sense, the agenda setting process has thus been marked by a polyvocal process of appropriation by different stakeholders. They have recently taken the discourse ‘beyond cultural diplomacy’ and expedient ‘soft power’ considerations, in a spirit of global cultural citizenship that privileges intercultural dialogue, mutuality and reciprocity. How this vision will be applied, however, is yet to be seen.     

Australia and the promise and the perils of humanitarian diplomacy

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian diplomacy has always been a crucial element of humanitarianism, however it is now becoming a more prominent element of states’ foreign policies. It holds many attractions and much promise. It provides states with a way of expressing important qualities of international empathy and solidarity and can also enhance a state’s international reputation and provide valuable means for building relationship of trust and cooperation. This can in turn can be conducive to a state’s broader foreign policy objectives. However, there are also perils to the incorporation of humanitarian diplomacy into a state’s foreign policy. It can generate ambiguity and even conflict within a state’s diplomatic endeavours due to tensions between humanitarian and broader national interests. In exploring these issues it is useful to distinguish between humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. This article explores these issues in relations to Australia’s diplomacy. It argues that Australia has actively engaged in humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. Whilst the two are often complementary, there are areas in which they have been in tension and even at odds. This has implications for Australia’s international reputation but also for its capacity to undertake genuine and effective humanitarian action.     

Handcraft as Cultural Diplomacy: The 1968 Mexico Cultural Olympics and U.S. Participation in the International Exhibition of Popular Arts

Mexican post-revolutionary cultural institutions excelled at implementing Mexican art and popular arts as key elements in cultural diplomacy. However, while there is abundant research regarding these arts and their inclusion in international exhibitions during the first part of the twentieth century, there is little research on their role in international cultural diplomacy during the second half of that century. In the first part of this article I present a historiographical appraisal of the 1968 Mexican Cultural Olympiad and the resolutions of the “First Latin American Seminar on Popular Arts and Crafts” sponsored by UNESCO in Mexico City in 1965. In the second, I examine the case of U.S. participation in the “Exposición Internacional de Artesanías Populares” (International Exhibition of Popular Arts), which was part of the 1968 Cultural Olympiad’s programme – largely neglected by the historiography of the XIX Olympics – to explain how popular arts were made to perform as agents of cultural diplomacy in Mexico and the U.S. during the Cold War. In addition, I argue that U.S. participation in this exhibition also reveals negotiations and redefinitions of the concepts of handcraft and arte popular, and the economic and social situation of their makers in the United States.     

Soft power and dark heritage: multiple potentialities

Abstract

While positively connoted tangible cultural heritage is widely recognized as an asset to states in their exercise of soft power, the value of sites of ‘dark heritage’ in the context of soft power strategies has not yet been fully explored. This article offers a theoretical framework for the analysis of the multiple soft power potentialities inherent in the management and presentation of sites of past violence and atrocity, demonstrating how the value of these sites can be developed in terms of place branding, cultural diplomacy and state-level diplomacy. The relationship between dark heritage, soft power and the search for ‘ontological security’ is also explored, highlighting how difficult pasts can be mobilized in order to frame positive contemporary roles for states in the international system. Drawing on this theoretical framework, the article offers an analysis of the case of the So?a valley in Slovenia and the presentation of the site of the First World War battle of Kobarid in a dedicated museum. Through this case study, the article underlines the particular role of dark heritage for the national self-projection of a new and small state in the context of European integration.     

Makarios cultural diplomacy legacy in the republic of Cyprus

ABSTRACT

The article explores the cultural diplomacy initiatives undertaken by the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) during Makarios presidency (1960–1977) in order to strengthen the state acknowledgement and visibility in the international scenery and promote a nation brand focused mainly on the Hellenocentric aspect of the Greek-Cypriots’ cultural identity. Cyprus, a recently independent state (1960), shaped its cultural diplomacy practices according to the political developments; on the escalation of bi-communal conflicts internally and the international insecurity provoked by the Cold War rhetoric. This paper aims to map certain state cultural initiatives in an attempt to make connections between the internal identity-building process and the external projection of cultural identity and gain a better understanding about how a small-sized state can pursue and project a nation brand abroad by practicing the diplomacy of culture.     

Performing Inequality in Mediterranean Diplomacy

Abstract

Early modern Mediterranean diplomacy was marked by multiple and contrasting claims to superiority which derived from competing normative orders. These practices are the focus of the first part of this paper, which shows how claims to superiority were performed in the practice of diplomacy and how stable and pacific relations could be maintained within a context of competing normative orders. Instead of privileging the religious divide between Islam and Christianity, the paper suggests that a better understanding of how multiple universalisms interacted with each other in practice may better explain the apparently paradoxical durability of pacific relations between Muslim and Christian rulers in the wider Mediterranean area of the early modern period. The second part reframes the transformations in Franco-Tunisian diplomatic practice from the late eighteenth century onward within the context of a global history of growing imbalances. The espousal of definitions of sovereignty derived from the European ius gentium to the exclusion of all others led to a redefinition of who had the rights and honors to engage in foreign relations. The early modern pluralism evolved into an increasingly unequal bipolarity, finally resulting in the economic, military and symbolic predominance of allegedly ‘civilized’ European powers over the ‘uncivilized’ rest.     

Heritage diplomacy

This paper explores the concept of heritage diplomacy. To date much of the analysis regarding the politics of heritage has focused on contestation, dissonance and conflict. Heritage diplomacy seeks to address this imbalance by critically examining themes such as cooperation, cultural aid and hard power, and the ascendency of intergovernmental and non-governmental actors as mediators of the dance between nationalism and internationalism. The paper situates heritage diplomacy within broader histories of international governance and diplomacy itself. These are offered to interpret the interplay between the shifting forces and structures, which, together, have shaped the production, governance and international mobilisation of heritage in the modern era. A distinction between heritage as diplomacy and in diplomacy is outlined in order to reframe some of the ways in which heritage has acted as a constituent of cultural nationalisms, international relations and globalisation. In mapping out directions for further enquiry, I argue the complexities of the international ordering of heritage governance have yet to be teased out. A framework of heritage diplomacy is thus offered in the hope that it can do some important analytical work in the field of critical heritage theory, opening up some important but under theorised aspects of heritage analysis.     

Bending the body for China: the uses of acrobatics in Sino-US diplomacy during the Cold War

This paper examines how acrobatics was imbued with multiple meanings through the practices of nation-state building and international diplomacy. More specifically, the author discusses why the Chinese government chose acrobatics to facilitate the Sino-US rapprochement and the implications of this cultural diplomacy for the governments as well as the acrobats. Drawing on oral history interviews and archival data, this study demonstrates how the relationship between acrobatics and the ideas of ‘Chinese revolution’ was established, strengthened, disrupted, and finally re-modified to facilitate China’s relations with the West. This historical investigation advances the literature on performing arts and politics by exposing the political logics in the North-South exchange. As important, the analysis of acrobats’ engagement with Cold War politics evades state-centric narratives and contributes to an understanding of international diplomacy from a bottom-up perspective.     

Leibniz on Diplomacy and Discernible Art

Abstract

This article discusses Leibniz’s unique blend of aesthetics and diplomacy. While his art extended diplomacy beyond the bounds of political realism, his diplomacy gave occasion to his art. His identity of indiscernibles (objects with the same properties are identical) inspired philosopher Arthur Danto to define contemporary art in terms of a qualitative perceptual division between the world and the Artworld (objects with the same properties may or may not be art). Although Leibniz would have disputed Danto’s bifurcated artistic perspective, Danto vindicates Leibniz’s major contribution to contemporary aesthetic philosophy by defending his belief in the moral foundation of art. Leibniz was not only one of the pre-eminent men of German letters of his time, he also excelled in diplomacy on behalf of the Hanoverian court. His international relations (IR) theory of peace through grand global alliances is only just beginning to be understood, though his aesthetics and correct diplomacy continue to validate individual creativity, liberal freedoms, and universal enlightenment up to this very day.     

Information and Confusion: Russian Resident Diplomacy and Peter A. Tolstoi’s Arrival in the Ottoman Empire (1702–1703)

Abstract

This article explores the arrival of the first Russian resident ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in a period when Russian diplomacy underwent major transformations. It focuses on Peter A. Tolstoi’s network and the management of information gathered during the first year of his appointment in Adrianople (1702–03). The article revisits the notion of resident ambassador, not as a hallmark of ‘modern European diplomacy’ with an overemphasis on the diplomat as a state-representative and office-holder, on the states system, or on institutional reform, but to suggest that a resident embassy in the early modern period was more than a formal, self-contained, and sovereign institution located in a particular place. The transformation from ad-hoc to resident diplomacy in Russian–Ottoman relations did not originate from the adoption of European diplomatic norms alone: it created new or relied on the existing trans-imperial networks of the ambassador rather than on bilateral inter-state relations. The example of Russian–Ottoman relations demonstrates that while the new diplomacy introduced by Peter I was driven by Europeanization and reform, the transformations emerged from the adaptation to circumstances in different locations and depended on the development of contacts embedded in the geo-cultural and religious entanglements of the region.     

Cultural networks between Portugal and Brazil: a postcolonial review

This paper aims to study notable examples of transatlantic transmissions of norms, beliefs and values that have revised the sense of a Luso-Brazilian community in a global world. The so-called Atlantic Civilization understood before as essentially Anglo-Saxon, takes a new shape when seen by the South Atlantic. If the historical relationship between Portugal and Brazil was one of colonial containment, since the nineteenth century those bilateral relations have passed through a process of reconciliation and networking – first through a mutual acceptance, then through the establishment of common international goals. On the one hand, this networking between Portugal and Brazil has occurred through public symbolic demonstration and the commemoration of a common culture; on the other hand, this networking has evolved through cultural connections – music, literature, and cinema, – all of which serve to validate a postcolonial review. Cultural connections that have survived the proverbial test of time have proven to be valuable in assessing the evolving relationship between Portugal and Brazil. Therefore, the Brazilian conscientiousness of its importance in the regional and world sphere involved the preparation of a Brazilian cultural diplomacy that recognized the political desire of diplomacy between Portugal and Brazil – a diplomacy that is largely demonstrative of the importance of soft power in a world of global networks.     

Cultural diplomacy in Qatar: between ‘virtual enlargement’, national identity construction and elite legitimation

Abstract

This paper analyses how the government of Qatar has over the last years used practices of cultural diplomacy to enhance its standing abroad, and consolidate its legitimacy at home. Looking in particular at key initiatives of international collaboration of the Qatar Foundation and Qatar Museums, I argue that the Qatari government strategically uses cultural diplomacy to first produce and then disseminate an elite identity narrative of Qatar being a cohesive, future-oriented and rightfully engaged player in international affairs both inside and outside the state. To develop this argument, the analysis builds on observation during fieldwork in Doha between 2015 and 2016, and is enriched by a textual analysis of primary and secondary sources. As a timely contribution, the paper moreover shows that even in the light of considerable economic downturn, where budgets are cut and state-projects downsized, official narratives about Qatar’s global cultural ambitions have so far remained largely unchanged.     

Caught between nationalism and internationalism: replicating histories of Antarctica in Hobart

In December 2013, a replica of ‘Mawson’s Hut’ (a historic structure in Antarctica) joined a growing list of polar tourist attractions in the Australian city of Hobart, Tasmania. Initially promoted as the city’s ‘latest tourist hotspot,’ the ‘replica museum’ quickly took its place in Hobart’s newly redeveloped waterfront, reinforcing the city’s identity as an ‘Antarctic Gateway’. The hut forms part of a heritage cluster, an urban assemblage that weaves together the local and national, the past and present, the familiar and remote. In this article, we examine the replica hut in relation to the complex temporal and spatial relations that give it meaning, and to which it gives meaning. Our focus is the hut as a point of convergence between memory, material culture and the histories – and possible futures – of nationalism and internationalism. We argue that the replica hut, as a key site of Hobart’s Antarctic heritage tourism industry, reproduces and prioritises domestic readings of exploration and colonisation over a reading of Antarctic engagement as a transnational endeavour. However, like other ‘gateway city’ heritage sites, it has the potential for aligning with a larger trend in international heritage conservation and heritage diplomacy, that of prioritising narratives of the past that weave together transnational connections and associations.     

The road from serfdom: economic storytelling and narratives of India in the rise of neoliberalism

Abstract

Studies of neoliberalism’s rise in the second half of the twentieth century have focused on influential US and European thinkers and global economic institutions. They rarely mention India. This article argues that, in the 1950s and early 1960s, Nehru’s India served as both a central laboratory and a discursive field for international economists debating the proper role of the state in economic development. US economists like John Kenneth Galbraith held up India planning as a proxy for the ‘American way’ of capitalism in Asia; neoliberal economists like Milton Friedman and B.R. Shenoy excoriated Nehru’s ‘road to socialism.’ As India’s economy stumbled in the late 1960s, neoliberal economists used Indian foundations to build an empirical and rhetorical case against scientific planning. Their cautionary tales about India’s ‘Permit-License-Raj’ helped to construct and sustain the project of delegitimizing state action and celebrating markets.     

The reshaping of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in the beginning of the XXI century: the declining of the Spanish historical hegemony?

ABSTRACT

Francoist cultural policy in Latin America – itself based on Hispanist philosophy – and the Spanish activity in the Organization of Ibero-American States (1949) promoted the emergence of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy. The return of democracy to Spain in 1978 turned these projects into more horizontal instruments of cultural cooperation. After a process of institutionalization that led to the creation of SEGIB and the establishment of the Ibero-American Cultural Letter in 2006, this multilateral diplomatic system was called into question due to its economic asymmetries and its ideological basis. However, the relative influence of this process in reformulating the system and in creating a shared identitarian discourse within Ibero-America has never been properly weighted, nor has the importance of each actor within this process. This article analyses the multilateral Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in order to understand its recent transformations in terms of the importance of both national power and symbolic hegemony.     

Peripheral creativity: temporary cultural uses as alternatives to inefficient policies?

ABSTRACT

The article focuses on temporary and improvised cultural spaces in marginalized neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They are presented here as alternatives to current urban and cultural policies, often based on international ‘best practices’ models with exclusionary and segregating consequences. It begins with a brief overview into North American and Western European cultural planning policies. It then analyses the instability of cultural policies in Brazil, highlighting that, after a period of State recognition of bottom-up actions, administrators have turned to a contradictory planning scheme that mixes outdated and recent international trends, leading lower-income inhabitants to self-build their own cultural spaces. Unlike many products of today’s global strand of ‘tactic urbanism’, Rio’s temporary spaces are politically charged territories of resistance. An example is ‘Cine Taquara’ – an improvised cinema and debate forum that illustrates how, in an unequal city, such initiatives can do more towards social inclusion than ready-made models.