South Asia

As Secretary of State John Kerry has pointed out, “Now more than ever, economic policy is foreign policy.” Rivkin’s appointment to lead the Economic and Business Affairs bureau comes after a long, entrepreneurial career in the entertainment industry, making him the first non-career bilateral ambassador to hold the position. 

2014 marked the ninth annual Summer Institute in Public Diplomacy, ran by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School. 

This intensive two-week training program allowed professionals from across the globe to immerse themselves in the growing field of public diplomacy. The Summer Institute equipped students with tools to better understand the role of public diplomacy, analyzed the impact of new communication technologies, and employ innovative approaches for improving the image and impact of their country or organization.

Global communications scholar Daya Kishan Thussu, whose most recent work is Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood, spoke at CPD as part of the Conversations in Public Diplomacy series. Thussu’s book considers India’s global cultural influence, within the context of India’s unique history.

American Film Showcase, a joint project of the U.S. State Department and USC School of Cinematic Arts, held a private discussion with the members from APDS. AFS is a unique cultural diplomacy initiative which screens provocative (and often critical of the U.S.) documentaries abroad, and engages local filmmaking communities in 25-35 locations each year including China, Israel and Palestine, Pakistan, Algeria, Vietnam, Venezuela, Armenia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

Blogs are gradually emerging as mainstream media in India. I previously mentioned in my own blog that the presence of a free press and recent proliferation of media outlets in India has relegated bloggers to the background, unlike in societies where there are limits to freedom of expression. This is true especially in the space of ‘issues’ where the ability of bloggers to influence public discourse in India seems to be limited by being ‘somewhat unnecessary’.

If we do not highlight it often enough, cultural diplomacy promotes the creation of transnational social spaces of engagement and interaction. And, even as they are often identified with particular cultures or countries, cultural diplomatic interventions are also unavoidably cosmopolitan in nature, insofar as they move between, confront, and conjoin multiple social worlds. In this way and even when carried away by the worst excesses of national chauvinisms, cultural diplomacy is inherently a transnationalist project of sorts.

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