Eggeling provides an excellent, lucid and probing analysis of the connections between nation branding, state identity and regime security in soft authoritarian regimes. Yet, it is a book with much broader resonance, and will appeal to anyone interested in the constitutive politics of nation branding and the remaking of national identities in the contemporary world.
Christopher Browning, University of Warwick, UKAn empirically rich and methodologically rigorous account of the practices of state-branding, Eggelings work constitutes a strong and refreshing contribution to the literature of nation-branding. Eggeling develops a very fine reconceptualization thereof as a political practice linked to the politics of state identity and how relevant contemporary practices unfold and travel across different regional contexts. The book persuasively invites us to take branding seriously, because by doing so we gain valuable insights in processes of regime legitimation.
Matteo Fumagalli, Senior Lecturer, University of St Andrews, UKNation-branding in Practice
This book investigates the political implications of country promotion through practices of nation-branding by drawing on contemporary examples from the sports, urban development and higher education sector in Kazakhstan and Qatar.
Nation-branding has emerged as a central practice of international politics, where it is commonly understood as a vain, superficial selling technique with little political salience. Drawing on shared insights from practice theory and constructivist notions of nationalism, identity and power, this book challenges this reading and instead argues that nation-branding is neither neutral nor primarily economically motivated, but inherently politicised and tied to the legitimation of current political regimes. The starting point for the analysis is a range of everyday practices and sites long ignored by international relations scholars. In particular, the book traces how the political leadership in Kazakhstan and Qatar have used participation in the international sports circuit, spectacular urban development, and the construction of world-class universities to first produce and then stabilise new ideas about their state.
Providing a new analytical perspective on nation-branding, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies, International Relations, and Cultural and Political Geography.
Kristin Anabel Eggeling is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen.
Interventions
Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA
Edited by Jenny Edkins, Aberystwyth University and Nick Vaughan-Williams, University of Warwick
The Series provides a forum for innovative and interdisciplinary work that engages with alternative critical, post-structural, feminist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and cultural approaches to international relations and global politics. In our first 5 years we have published 60 volumes.
We aim to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars working within broad critical post-structural traditions have chosen to make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important topics. Titles in the series engage with critical thinkers in philosophy, sociology, politics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical and textual studies in international politics.
We are very happy to discuss your ideas at any stage of the project: just contact us for advice or proposal guidelines. Proposals should be submitted directly to the Series Editors:
As Michel Foucault has famously stated, knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting In this spirit The Edkins Vaughan-Williams Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge mainstream understandings in international relations. It is the best place to contribute post disciplinary works that think rather than merely recognize and affirm the world recycled in IRs traditional geopolitical imaginary.
Nation-branding in Practice
The Politics of Promoting Sports, Cities and Universities in Kazakhstan and Qatar
Kristin Anabel Eggeling
Cultures of Violence
Visual Arts and Political Violence
Edited by Ruth Kinna and Gillian Whiteley
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com
First published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2020 Kristin Anabel Eggeling
The right of Kristin Anabel Eggeling to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Eggeling, Kristin Anabel, author.
Title: Nation-branding in practice : the politics of promoting sports,
cities and universities in Kazakhstan and Qatar / Kristin Anabel Eggeling.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Interventions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020003160 (print) | LCCN 2020003161 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367420734 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367821579 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: KazakhstanPolitics and government1991 | QatarPolitics and government21st century. | Legitimacy of governmentsKazakhstan. | Legitimacy of governmentsQatar. | Cultural diplomacyKazakhstan. | Cultural diplomacyQatar. | Place marketingPolitical aspectsKazakhstan. | Place marketingPolitical aspectsQatar. | Branding (Marketing)Political aspectsKazakhstan. | Branding (Marketing)Political aspectsQatar.
Classification: LCC DK908.8675 .E44 2020 (print) | LCC DK908.8675 (ebook) | DDC 352.7/48095363dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003160
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003161
ISBN: 978-0-367-42073-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-82157-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
Fr meine Familie
Kristin Anabel Eggeling is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests are in practice theory, identity politics, nation-branding, diplomacy, interpretive methods and methodologies, and fieldwork in International Relations. Kristin holds a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences from University College Maastricht and a MLitt and a PhD from the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, and has previously worked in the private and policy sector in Doha and Brussels. For her research on nation-branding, Kristin has been a visiting researcher at Nazarbayev University and Qatar University.
