Diplomatic Cultures and International Politics Translations, Spaces and Alternatives Routledge New Diplomacy Studies Series

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

If diplomacy is understood as the practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of distinct communities or causes, then questions of culture and the spaces of cultural exchange are at its core. But what of the culture of diplomacy itself? When and how did this culture emerge, and what alternative cultures of diplomacy run parallel to it, both historically and today? How do particular spaces and places inform and shape the articulation of diplomatic culture(s)? This volume addresses these questions by bringing together a collection of theoretically rich and empirically detailed contributions from leading scholars in history, international relations, geography, and literary theory. Chapters attend to cross-cutting issues of the translation of diplomatic cultures, the role of space in diplomatic exchange and the diversity of diplomatic cultures beyond the formal state system. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches the contributors discuss empirical cases ranging from indigenous diplomacies of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, to the European External Action Service, the 1955 Bandung Conference, the spatial imaginaries of mid twentieth-century Balkan writer diplomats, celebrity and missionary diplomacy, and paradiplomatic narratives of The Hague. The volume demonstrates that, when approached from multiple disciplinary perspectives and understood as expansive and plural, diplomatic cultures offer an important lens onto issues as diverse as global governance, sovereignty regimes and geographical imaginations.

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

Introduction: Reconceptualising Diplomatic Cultures, Jason Dittmer & Fiona McConnellPart I: Translating Diplomatic Culture 1. Everyday Diplomacy: Mission, Spectacle and the Remaking of Diplomatic Culture, Costas M. Constantinou 2. Transnational Diplomacy in Europe: What is Transcended and How?, Merje Kuus 3. Performing 'Freedom': The Bandung Conference as Symbolic Post-Colonial Diplomacy, Naoko Shimazu Part II: Spaces of Diplomatic Culture 4. Sited Diplomacy, Iver Neumann 5. The Traditional Diplomatic Network and its Adaptation to European Integration and New Media, Herman van der Wusten & Virginie Mamadouh 6. Two Balkan Writer-Diplomats: Reimagining International Space in the Eastern Mediterranean, John Watkins Part III: Alternative Cultures of Diplomacy 7. Para-diplomacy of Cities and Regions: Transnational Relations between Sub-State Political Entities, Virginie Mamadouh & Herman van der Wusten 8. Not Seeing Like a State: Inuit Diplomacies Meet State Sovereignty, Jessica Shadian 9. (Para)Diplomatic Cultures: Old and New, Noé Cornago

Jason Dittmer is Reader in Human Geography at University College London. He is author/editor of Popular 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 Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow in Geography at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. She is author of Rehearsing the State: The Political Practices of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (forthcoming) and co-editor of Geographies of Peace (2014, with Nick Megoran, Philippa Williams).