Abstract
For the better part of the 20th century, the particular countries of Eastern and Central Europe were viewed collectively through the western gaze as ‘the Eastern Bloc’, a term that did little to distinguish their complex histories, identities, and cultures. Instead, marked as communist nations (a term again most often unqualified in western eyes), these countries were perceived as undefined and backward. The revolutions of 1989 opened up their borders and populations to broader global engagement, but did little to alter the dominant discourses framing these and subsequent developments in the region as nothing less than the triumph of global capitalism.
Fast forward 23 years and a more informed awareness of the nations, peoples and democratic struggles therein remains elusive for the general public, points the authors in this collection suggest are no accident. Arguing that post-communist cultural transition should be viewed as the general incorporation of this region into our contemporary overarching neoliberal global framework (i.e. interconnected market economies, transnational foreign investment, corporate governance, etc.), they seek to illustrate the conditions and complexities behind this situation so as to offer ‘an alternative viewpoint to the one presented in writings by marketing and branding practitioners and academics’ (p. xi); one that is neither as one-dimensional, nor as commercially friendly, and that ultimately illuminates the question of ‘[w]ho gets to speak for the nation and for what purpose’ (p. 19).
Specifically, they focus their critique on the relatively recent and pernicious practice (in the authors’ perspective) of nation-branding, a process whereby ‘a set of discourses and practices located at the intersection of economy, culture, and politics’ are utilized in ‘aspirations to exercise symbolic power in defining the meaning of nationhood’ (p. 5) as a function of extending localized commercial or political gain (e.g. increased tourism, foreign investment, political power, etc.). However, for the authors, branding, rather than offering successful solutions in addressing the contemporary challenges of effectively articulating organic notions of cultural identity within the dominant logics of globalization, is ‘a neoliberal tool that creates value through the commodification of affective attachment … interpellat[ing] us as consuming subjects first, rather than as citizens … [and] acquir[ing] a constitutive role in the production of social meaning’ (p. 10).
Underscoring how nation-branding simplifies, depoliticizes, and seeks to erase the complex diversity of a country’s population within agendas that privilege economic initiative and position the nation as a discursive commodity, the authors argue ultimately that ‘branding … covers over the real challenges to development and nurturing democracy in lieu of slogans and images that mask the real challenges to such developments in historically-specific contexts’ (p. 15)
Writing from a personal perspective and utilizing qualitative methods, the authors employ their keen awareness of local sensibilities, history, cultural nuance, and their familiarity with reading the complex regional fabrics of meaning, to offer up critically grounded explorations of the ideological underpinnings behind nation-branding. To this end, the book is divided into three sections with the first (chs 1–3) critically framing the larger issues at stake and the second (chs 4–6) and third (chs 7–10) providing specific case studies.
In the first chapter, Nadia Kaneva lays out the stakes for critiquing nation-branding by considering the consequences of conceptualizing nation as brand, situating the question as it intersects micro-social (e.g. the reassembly of nationalist tendencies in the region, the historically contingent postcolonial east/west hermeneutic) and macro-social (e.g. the agendas and tensions associated with articulating a country’s identity and developing its fortunes within globalization) post-communist concerns. At the heart of her critique is the active complicity of western media, political and scholarly discourses in positively framing neoliberal developments in the region which hinder organic impulses to conceptualize cultural identity, equitably evolve a nation’s socio-economic prospects and develop democratic initiatives more broadly.
Gerald Sussman, in the chapter that follows, extends the argument by exploring the post-communist transition through a political economy framework which positions branding as an extension of overt geopolitical investments (political, economic, cultural and psychic). Specifically indicting particular purveyors of this trend (i.e. internationally prominent branding advocates – e.g. Simon Anholt, Wally Olins, Mark Gobe and Peter von Ham come under direct and steady fire as targets throughout the text) – and echoing at times the critiques levelled against modernization/development theory in communications studies, Sussman largely situates America and its agents as the bad guys whose systemic propaganda effectively nurtures global conceptions for developing promotional culture and neoliberal relations of cultural production. His critique of US intervention, while sound and welcome, is also rather unremitting. It is indeed important to consider the post-communist transition in terms of ‘intra-elite transfers of power’ and the ‘neoliberal penetration of the region’ (pp. 39–40) and how this has specifically reconfigured local conceptions of the nation as commodity, culture as commercial product, and citizen as consumer. However, such heavy-handed approaches at times risk the danger of undermining their own efficacy, when, for example, the reader is left pondering if indeed the assisted removal of Slobodan Milosevic by US efforts was truly such a bad thing, as the author indirectly implies.
Robert A. Saunders’ examination of the unpredictable impact of global pop culture (e.g. Borat) on emergent nation-branding campaigns concludes the first section and the subsequent chapters offer case studies of particular campaigns in various countries including Estonia, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Hungary and Serbia.
As Sussman states, there is ‘no evidence’ that branding is a force for ‘good’ regarding ‘cultural as well as economic development’, and one can understand such conclusions after reading this book (p. 30). However, the important critiques in this book could actually be strengthened by a passing engagement with the positive outcomes of such branding initiatives, taking up perhaps why the logics of these campaigns resonate so powerfully in the region and engaging, for example, what Ladislav Holy (1996) refers to as the ‘culture of lack’ and the ways in which the set of systemic relations under communism infantilized the local populations such that shifts to a market economy/ideology actually provided improved quality of life, professional opportunities, and reinvigorated ethnic self-esteem for some. For while there is certainly much to criticize about commercial developments in the region one can’t completely begrudge a population for investing themselves in market ideology when considering more closely the prospects under which they once lived.
Overall, this book offers a sound platform for reconsidering the ‘natural’ evolution of nation-branding and serves as an important and necessary critical addition to post-communist studies literature. Its themes and subjects could readily complement critical discussions in communications, sociology, political science, international relations, business, and area studies courses, either by chapter (undergraduate) or in its entirety (at the graduate level). Finally it is to be hoped that the book may also serve to stimulate a broader discussion among the populations of the countries addressed therein, such that the true liberatory potential of this important scholarship – namely ‘to understand and transform the social conditions in which we find ourselves’ (p. 19) – can be realized.