Nearly everyone likes cultural diplomacy in principle, but some remain skeptical about its value. It is seen by many as soft power at its softest, safe and fuzzy, with more aesthetic rewards than diplomatic ones.

For those of us committed to using cultural diplomacy as a significant force in advancing the national interest, that kind of condescending view is aggravating and we always welcome solid evidence that it is wrong.

On Thursday, May 17, 2012 I attended the discussion on “Digital Diplomacy: A New Era of Advancing Policy” at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington and on Twitter at #DigiDiplomacy. Carnegie had already posted video and audio of the event by early afternoon.

In a couple of recent postings I have tried to elaborate the notion of a nation brand, to identify some of the salient issues surrounding the relationship between public diplomacy and branding, and to illuminate the more subtle distinctions.

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.

APDS Blogger: Oscar Castellanos del Collado

Between January 29 and May 6, 2012, posters of Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait were hung from light posts around Los Angeles. The portraits served as invitations to “In Wonderland: the Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States,” the first co-organized exhibition by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Mexico’s Museum of Modern Art.

I have spent some time as of late picking through the now infamous train wreck that was the American pavilion at Shanghai. Cynthia Schneider offers her opinion on what went wrong here. Here’s my take:

When I hear from people about the relative advantages of cultural diplomacy, they often point to the apparent “neutrality” or “apolitical” basis of, say, cultural exchange. Coming from an anthropological background, this often advanced claim has always puzzled me.

APDS Blogger: Aparajitha Vadlamannati

At USC on April 6, the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars held a conference on the Future of Public Diplomacy. Experts, academics, and practitioners gathered to discuss what lies ahead for the field of public diplomacy. There were a couple of major takeaways from the conference.