The Cultural Relations Approach to Diplomacy: Practice, Players, Policy is a North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative project funded by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2019-2025) that featured three research summits: Cultural Diplomacy as Critical Practice (2020), Players: We Are All Practitioners (2021), and Policy as Discourse (2022). By 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 aims to reframe current discussion around the relationship of “the cultural” to diplomacy in the study and practice of global relations.
Advancing our interest in reframing current discussion around the relationship of “the cultural” to diplomacy in the study and practice of global relations, we consider the Cultural Relations approach to diplomatic activity through the three dimensions suggested in the overall project’s title. The three summits are meant to facilitate the development of discussion through a sequence of exchanges that brings emerging lines of inquiry forward for consideration. They also serve as focal points for networking among partners in charting directions for further research, advocacy, and policy development. The intention is to generate scholarship and practice that treats cultural diplomacy as a multidirectional, inclusive, and potentially activist practice that encompasses a diverse range of actors and their networks.
Summit I | Cultural Diplomacy as Critical Practice
September 24 & 25, 2020
NACDI's first research summit, 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. Bringing together academics and practitioners from both sides of the culture : diplomacy divide, we asked: how do we understand diplomacy as a critical practice? What lessons from the past and present can inform the future? In short, this research summit asked participants 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. Ultimately, we hope these discussions empower those seeking to imagine counterhegemonic possibilities and more egalitarian and inclusive futures.
The virtual summit was jointly hosted by Queen's University and the Royal Ontario Museum with the support of the Centre for Public Diplomacy at University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Schedule:
OPENING EVENT: BEYOND PROJECTION: TOWARD A CRITICAL CULTURAL DIPLOMACY
SESSION 1: THE “CULTURE” IN CULTURAL DIPLOMACY
SESSION 2: BEYOND STATE CENTRISM: ADDRESSING THE LIMITS OF DIPLOMACY
SESSION 3: THE CULTURAL RELATIONS APPROACH TO NETWORK DIPLOMACY
Summit II | Players: We Are All Practitioners
November 17 & 19 and December 1 & 9, 2021
NACDI's second research summit, Players: We Are All Practitioners, focused on the activities of diplomatic practitioners broadly conceived. The summit 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 behaviours, orientations and attitudes within a broader spectrum of cultural relations.
This virtual summit was hosted by the University of Southern California, with support from our partner institutions, Queen's University, Royal Ontario Museum, Universidad Iberoamericana, University of Southern California Annenberg's Centre on Public Diplomacy and Centre on Communication, Leadership, and Policy, Global Affairs Canada, International Council of Museums, and Bloor Street Culture Corridor.
Schedule:
DAY 1: Decolonizing Diplomacy
DAY 2: (Re)Constructing Identity: Diaspora Diplomacy
DAY 3: Cultural Practice and Transnational Outreach: The Practitioner in Sport, Art, and Music
DAY 4: Locations of Cultural Diplomacy: from your Neighbourhood to the World (discussions presented by the USC Centre on Public Diplomacy)
Summit III | Policy as Discourse // Cumbre III: Las Políticas como Discursos
May 25, 26, & 27, 2022
NACDI's third and final research summit, Policy as Discourse // Las Políticas como Discursos, proposed a way of 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. This summit was also an opportunity to revisit the conversations initiated in the first two summits regarding “practice” and “players” of cultural diplomacy.
This hybrid summit was hosted by Universidad Iberoamericana with partners Universidad Panamericana, Goethe-Institut Mexiko, CECUT and CEX-Ibero.
Schedule:
SESSION 1: Policies as Discourses in Cultural Diplomacy
SESSION 2: Beyond the Power Discourse
SESSION 3: Other Actors: De-centering the cultural diplomacy policy
Report forthcoming.
