Programa de actividades

This panel introduces three reports that came out of the cultural diplomacy summits that took place across North America that form the larger project, The Cultural Relations Approach to Diplomacy: Practice, Players, Policy. Bringing together academics and practitioners from both sides of the culture/diplomacy divide to consider the potential of a Cultural Relations approach to diplomatic activity broadly understood, the project aimed to reframe current discussion around the relationship of “the cultural” to diplomacy in the study and practice of global relations.

Cultural Diplomacy as Critical Practice responded to increasing calls for analyses of cultural diplomacy informed by the methodologies and approaches of the cultural disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. These specialities have yet to carve out a place for themselves in a cultural diplomacy field dominated by political science, international relations, and diplomatic studies. In short, this research summit report considered participants on how to consider how a cultural relations approach to diplomacy opens new avenues to the theoretical and empirical study of diplomacy, and in so doing address wicked problems of the times—cultural conflict, climate change, the biopolitical challenges of global pandemics.

Players: We are all practitioners summaries the summit that brought together academics and practitioners from both sides of the culture/diplomacy divide to consider the role of practitioners of a Cultural Relations approach to diplomacy as an interpersonal stance – as a set of behaviors, orientations and attitudes within a broader spectrum of cultural relations. This report takes into account conversations on decolonizing diplomacy, reconstructing identity (diaspora diplomacy) and cultural practice and transnational outreach.

Policies as Discourses deals with discussions about ordering the strategies of performing cultural diplomacy through the lenses of “policies”, seen as discourses that produce (uneven) effects and outcomes in the practices and in the players. Also, it revisits the conversations initiated in the first two summits regarding “practice” and “players” of cultural diplomacy.In keeping with the particular angle of critical cultural diplomacy, this paper focus on understanding how the policies of cultural diplomacies act discursively to both interact with and challenge the primacy of state-based policymaking. This undertaking can be achieved by foregrounding the contributions of non-state actors, different agendas and approaches, as well as a range of policymakers.