Diplomats as cultural bridge builders

Language and Diplomacy: Preface

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): In the preface below, Jovan Kurbalija and Hannah Slavik introduce the chapters in the book, and extract the general themes covered by the various authors.

Diplomats as cultural bridge builders

Diplomats are people who are on the fringe somewhere, because they are either permanently living in or at least dealing with alien cultures, cultures with different values. The success of a diplomat depends on this brinkmanship because, on the one hand, they must remain credible with their superiors back home and, on the other hand, they must have access to the leaders in the country where they are posted. This paper discusses the role of diplomats as cultural bridge-builders.

Diaspora Diplomacy: Philippine Migration and its Soft Power Influences

Diaspora Diplomacy: Philippine Migration and its Soft Power Influences is about the remarkable and untapped soft power that international migrants possess and how various sectors-from governments, NGOs, business, and international organizations- could tap this valuable resource to enhance global cooperation and development. With compelling stories from Filipina and Filipino migrants in San Francisco, London, Dubai, Dhaka, and Singapore comprising the large Philippine diaspora, this book illustrates how this widespread community performs numerous acts of public diplomacy, bridging the cultural ...

Contemporary Diplomacy: Representation and Communication in a Globalized World

NETmundial Multistakeholder Statement

On the importance and essence of foreign cultural policy of states

Foreign cultural policy is in itself vital for establishing long lasting and deep relations between countries in international intercourse. But what we should equally bear in mind is that it is important to preserve the variety and the diversity of cultures in our efforts to bring about global cultural  communication. Uniform culture is not culture and cannot be communicated.

The United States and the Challenge of Public Diplomacy

Culture and Organizations: Software of the Mind

Cultural content on the websites of diplomatic systems

The impact of cultural diversity on multilateral diplomacy and relations

Basic concepts mean different things in different cultures. In multilateral relations this means that looking at such a concept is always culturally biased. As a result, an interpretation according to one culture also tends to criticise different interpretations according to other cultures. This paper discusses how important it is that diplomats and politicians pay attention to and accept the fact of cultural diversity. If they do, they will understand the underlying causes of many conflicting attitudes and they may become more inclined to seek compromise and consensual approaches rather than ...

Multiculturalism for the masses: Social advertising and public diplomacy post-9/11

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 have brought an old problem into new focus: how to unite a population potentially divided along racial, ethnic and denominational fault lines. In the light of unprovoked and indiscriminate racist attacks on Muslim-looking minorities, multi-media advertising campaigns were mounted in several countries in order to quell racism and sell multiculturalism. This paper examines the use of advertising campaigns as a medium for public diplomacy, and focuses on the promotion of national unity out of cultural diversity.

Culture and Conflict: Challenges for Europe’s Foreign Policy

Language and Diplomacy

Language and Diplomacy is a collection of papers presented at the February 2000 Second International Conference on Knowledge and Diplomacy and the January 2001 Conference on Language and Diplomacy. The book examines traditional aspects of language in diplomacy: diplomatic signaling, rhetorical patterns and ambiguities; as well as new issues raised by information technology. The publication is available online.

The Expansion of International Society

East Asian Regionalism

Politics and Culture in International History, 2nd ed

China and Public Diplomacy: A CPD Reader

China and Public Diplomacy: A CPD Reader provides an overview of China’s approach to public diplomacy, an examination of China’s cultural diplomacy, its nation branding during the 2010 Shanghai Expo and media depictions of China. The blogs, articles, reports and essays featured in the eBook were originally published by CPD between October 2009 and August 2012.

Lessons from two fields

Communication barriers to negotiation: Encountering Chinese in cross-cultural business meetings

When two negotiating parties from different cultural backgrounds attempt to communicate, the potential for disagreement and misunderstanding is great. People from other cultural backgrounds, especially from the West, often find the behaviour of Chinese negotiators strange and unintelligible. This paper examines communication barriers between Chinese, Australian and American negotiators.

The Clash of Civilizations

Intercultural communication in Macedonia: Different people, different stories

This papers examines how the Macedonians and the Albanians live in Macedonia. How do they communicate? Is there friendship everywhere? How do the two nations, live together, how do they communicate. The answer to this question coming from two different people may reveal two opposite viewpoints, the optimistic and the pessimistic. This paper focuses on communication between the Macedonians and the Albanians, considering that these are the two largest ethnic groups in the Macedona and even more, that these two groups were involved in the military conflict in 2001.

Negotiating across cultures

Defining development in the context of current realities

‘My personal knowledge reflects other cultures and types of people in Fiji and the Pacific. I live not only with one race but with many who have different cultural and traditional values.’ - Anju Mangal from Fiji

European challenges to cross cultural borders

Social Power in International Politics

Asymmetry of cultural styles and the unintended consequences of crisis public diplomacy

This essay examines how intercultural communication differences among nations can inadvertently magnify tensions during a crisis when nations rely on their own cultural style of public diplomacy to communicate with foreign publics. Beginning with posing the question of how American efforts to intensify its public diplomacy efforts resulted in declining support, public diplomacy is examined as a communication phenomenon, as opposed to a purely political phenomenon.

Language, culture and the globalisation of discourse

To explore the idea that word use is culture-bound, this paper examines the English words culture and globalisation, to discover how they are used, and how they have come to have certain meanings or represent certain ideas.

The First Resort of Kings: American cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century

Mexico and its Diaspora in the United States: Policies of Emigration since 1848

This book is unique in many ways and is different from other studies on migration and diaspora. Délano looks at migration from the perspective of a sending state, focusing on its role in the evolution of emigration policies, as they are shaped under diverse pressure. Spread over a period of over 100 years, the content is neatly divided into five distinct phases. A departure from other studies, the emigration process is seen through the prism of a social scientist and not that of an anthropologist, as is the standard pattern. Its focus is on Mexican emigration policies, yet the same are not se...

Language and negotiation: A Middle East lexicon

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Professor Raymond Cohen writes that "when negotiation takes place across languages and cultures the scope for misunderstanding increases. So much of negotiation involves arguments about words and concepts that it cannot be assumed that language is secondary." With numerous examples of the culturally-grounded references, associations and nuances of certain words and phrases in English and the Middle Eastern languages (Arabic, Turkish, Farsi and Hebrew), Cohen introduces his project of developing a negotiating lexicon of the Middle East as a guide for condu...

International Diplomacy Volume II: Diplomacy in a Multicultural World

Global Diasporas: An Introduction

Theatre of Power: The Art of Signaling

Hypertext in diplomacy

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): The final paper in this volume, by Jovan Kurbalija, is based on the experience of ten years of research and development work in the field of information technology and diplomacy. Kurbalija explains the relevance and potential of hypertext software tools for the field of diplomacy.

Byzantium and Venice: A study in diplomatic and cultural relations

This book traces the diplomatic, cultural and commercial links between Constantinople and Venice from the foundation of the Venetian republic to the fall of the Byzantine Empire. It aims to show how, especially after the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Venetians came to dominate first the Genoese and thereafter the whole Byzantine economy. At the same time the author points to those important cultural and, above all, political reasons why the relationship between the two states was always inherently unstable.

Think global, act local: Honorary consuls in a transforming diplomatic world

This paper concentrates on the understudied subject of honorary consuls and their conduct of trade, tourism, and investment promotion. It seeks to highlight how states are using honorary consuls to extend their network for increased consular coverage; overview why localities, regions, and municipal hubs are increasingly more important than national capitals in terms of business […]

Globalism and the New Regionalism

Multistakeholder diplomacy: Forms, functions, and frustrations

In the first part of the book, Brian Hocking, suggests the importance of seeing diplomacy in a context broader than that of the state system with which it is often associated. Hocking also explains how problems of interpretation and understanding, applicable to MSD as it is to other models, result from evolving patterns of diplomacy. Hocking also suggests that it is possible to recognise the intersection of two diplomatic cultures overlaying and informing one another, whose coexistence generates, simultaneously, creative and negative tensions.

Language and Diplomacy

Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Dr Abu Jaber brings a cross-cultural element to the discussion of language and diplomacy, surveying the historical development of diplomatic language particularly in the Arab world. However, he points out that the very idea of a language of diplomacy "is that it should not be culture-bound but an attempt at transcending such boundaries to create a quasi neutral vehicle of exchange." Abu Jaber notes that the language of diplomacy has to this date not been successful in resolving violence between nations and peoples. Yet he believes that solutions to violen...

Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy

Public diplomacy: Taxonomies and histories