Diplomatic Cultures and International Politics ― Translations, Spaces and Alternatives

This volume offers an inter-disciplinary and critical analysis of the role of culture in diplomatic practice.

In light of both the perceived importance of common cultural frameworks in international negotiation and the reality of how diverse cultural mores impact on the diplomatic process, the role of culture in diplomatic practice and discourse has become a focus of attention for academics and practitioners. Central to this has been the expansion of the broad, inter-disciplinary fields of cultural and public diplomacy, which have focused on the role of the media communication, with foreign publics, nation-branding and the diplomatic role of culture in the ‘war on terror’.

The present book is innovative in exploring the modes and spaces through which diplomatic culture is translated, and in foregrounding the increasing diversity of political actors involved. It is structured around three intersecting issues: (i) the strategies and modes of translation between and across diplomatic cultures; (ii) the role of space and spatiality in diplomatic exchange; and (iii) the articulation of diplomatic cultures and practices beyond traditional spaces of state-focused diplomacy.

This book will be of much interest to students of public diplomacy, foreign policy, international organisations, media and communications studies, and IR in general.

Jason Dittmer is Reader in Human Geography at University College London. He is author/editor ofPopular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity (2010), Mapping the End Times: American Evangelical Geopolitics and Apocalyptic Visions (2010),Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero (2013) and Geopolitics: An Introductory Reader (Routledge 2014).

Fiona McConnell is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow in Geography at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.