Branding the nation : the global business of national identity / by Melissa Aronczyk.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Aronczyk, Melissa.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Branding (Marketing).

International relations.

Mass media and international relations.

National characteristics--Political aspects.

National characteristics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 226 pages ) illustrations (black and white)

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

What happens to the nation when it is reconceived as a brand? How does nation branding change the terms of politics and culture in a globalized world? This book offers a unique critical perspective on the power of brands to affect how we think about space, value, and identity. National governments around the world are turning to branding consultants, public relations advisers and strategic communications experts to help them "brand" their jurisdiction. Using the tools, techniques and expertise of commercial branding is believed to help nations articulate more coherent and cohesive identities, attract foreign capital, and maintain citizen loyalty. In short, the goal of nation branding is to make the nation matter in a world where borders and boundariesappear increasingly obsolete. But what actually happens to the nation when it is reconceived as a brand? How does nation branding change the terms of politics and culture in a globalized world? Through case studies in twelve countries and in-depth interviews with nation branding experts and their national clients, Melissa Aronczyk argues that the social, political and cultural discourses constitutive of the nation have been harnessed in new and problematic ways, with far-reaching consequences for both our concept of thenation and our ideals of national citizenship. Branding the Nation challenges the received wisdom about the power of brands to change the world, and offers a critical perspective on these new ways of conceiving value and identity in the globalized twenty-first century.This book is about how nation branding became a worldwide phenomenon and a professional transnational practice. It is also about how nation branding has become a solution to perceived contemporary problems affecting the space of the nation state: problems of economic development, democratic communication, and especially national visibility and legitimacy amidst the multiple global flows of late modernity. In this book, Melissa Aronczyk charts the political, cultural and economic rationales bywhich the nation has been made to matter in a twenty-first-century context of global integration.

Contents:

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: there must certainly be some such place

Nation and brand : keywords for the twenty-first century

The new and improved nation : how culture became competitive

Living the brand : the identity strategies of nation branding consultants

Creative tension, normal nation : branding national identity in Poland

From bland to brand : transforming Canadian culture

Trading spaces : the world tour

Conclusion: variable utopias

List of references

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-024069-5

0-19-932918-4