Overview

This edited volume provides one of the most formidable critical inquiries into public diplomacy’s relationship with hegemony, morality and power. Wherein, the examination of public diplomacy’s ‘frontiers’ will aid scholars and students alike in their acquiring of greater critical understanding around the values and intentions that are at the crux of this area of statecraft. For the contributing authors to this edited volume, public diplomacy is not just a political communications term, it is also a moral term within which actors attempt to convey a sense of their own virtuosity and ‘goodness’ to international audiences. The book thereby provides fascinating insight into public diplomacy from the under-researched angle of moral philosophy and ethics, arguing that public diplomacy is one of the primary vehicles through which international actors engage in moral rhetoric to meet their power goals. The Frontiers of Public Diplomacy is a landmark book for scholars, students and practitioners of the subject. At a practical level, it provides a series of interesting case studies of public diplomacy in peripheral settings. However, at a conceptual level, it challenges the reader to consider more fully the assumptions that they may make about public diplomacy and its role within the international system.

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9780367771621

Table of Contents

Reviews

A provocative collection of essays that will challenge and redefine critical scholarship on public diplomacy. James Pamment, Senior Lecturer, Lund University In an era in which public diplomacy is essential to any international actor's success and even survival on the world stage, Colin Alexander has drawn together a terrific collection of essays on its theory and practice. Alexander's own excellent work is front and center. With an engaging mix of established and emerging scholars and a resolutely global perspective this book pushes back against the field's habitual focus on the US and UK. It reveals a set of practices which remain, to a frustrating extent, untapped. Actors considered include India, Russia and North Korea; issues include educational exchange, new technology and the out-sourcing to private contractors. Great questions and challenging answers abound. This is a book for scholars, and practitioners to read and consider with care. Nicholas J. Cull, Professor of Communication, USC Every reading in this rich and very diverse collection of studies brings an original and critical perspective to what the scholars suggest has become a very normative, positive picture of state-centric public diplomacy. The contributors challenge comfortable notions of what public diplomacy can do to promote appealing narratives or images, and raise uncomfortable but necessary questions about power, hegemony, and counter-hegemony, ethics and morality buried within public diplomacy scholarship and practice. R.S. Zaharna, American University

Author Information

Colin R. Alexander is Senior Lecturer in Political Communications at Nottingham Trent University, UK. His expertise surrounds propaganda and public diplomacy and the role of strategic communications in the interplay of world politics. He has particular interests in the politics of East Asia, colonialism, moral philosophy and in philanthropy studies. He is the author of China and Taiwan in Central America: Engaging Foreign Publics in Diplomacy (2014) and Administering Colonialism and War (2019).

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