Call for Papers
Branding is the deliberate projection of a consciously-constructed image or identity, the marketing of the self to the other, the selling of specificity. The emergence of nation branding as a concept in the mid-1990s (Simon Anholt, 1996) corresponds with an attempt to reassert control over the perception and production of the nation, carving out a niche in which a supposed specificity will protect the nation from being subsumed by the amorphous forces of globalization, as well as allowing it to compete in the international neoliberal marketplace. Competitive nation branding can thus be seen as both a part of and response to the processes of globalisation variously theorised by Arjun Appadurai, Néstor García Canclini and Walter Mignolo, amongst others.
Today, nation branding surrounds us in the form of tourism brochures, national logos and festivals promoting particular nations’ images and, perhaps more importantly, goods. But in Latin America, the specificities of creation and promotion can hardly be dated so recently nor confined so narrowly to the tourism sector. Whether it be the ‘boom’ of Latin American fiction in the 1960s, the image of the ‘latino lover’ still propagated by various film industries or the reputation for drug-trafficking and violence attributed to numerous Latin American nations in turn, the political, economic and cultural history of Latin America calls for a broader understanding of branding. These examples prompt us to ask: Who is branding whom, how is this branding achieved, and why?
Branding is also a painful act of marking, a declaration of possession and an enduring assignation of value. Bringing to mind both the tactics of globalised capitalism and the literal stamping of slaves by their owners, the concept of branding unwittingly carries within itself the trace of violence and pain by which it is arguably inevitably accompanied. This conference thus also aims to consider: What scar tissue is formed? What might be the unintended effects of and unexpected responses to branding?
The branding of a nation involves an ongoing struggle over economic, political, cultural and affective capital between multiple parties, from both inside and outside the nation. Examples of such struggles in literature include the Mexican Crack Generation, which points us towards movements of reaction and resistance to branding and complicates the one-way model of the culture industry traditionally depicted by theorists such as Adorno and Horkheimer. Meanwhile, the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon draws our attention to the workings of branding in the creation and consumption of 'World Music', showing how branding can result from international economic and cultural exchanges which may be collaborations, but also imaginings and impositions.
Scholarly work on the topic of branding has typically focussed on issues relating to marketing and PR. This conference seeks instead to adopt an interdisciplinary approach in order to interrogate the aims, functioning, effects of and resistance to branding in Latin America. We welcome contributions from practitioners, postgraduate researchers and scholars working in or across various disciplines and academic fields, including but not restricted to: Politics, International Relations/Development, Economics, Sociology, Tourism, Geography, Literature and Languages, Music, Visual Arts, Film, Photography, and Cultural Studies.
Deadline for abstracts (250 words): 1st December 2014.
Note: Abstracts and presentations can be written and delivered in English, Spanish or Portuguese.
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Convenors
Dunja Fehimovic
Dunja is an AHRC-funded PhD student at the University of Cambridge, where her research focuses on Cuban films released since 2000, their articulations and reinterpretations of national identity, production processes and afterlives. During her MPhil in Latin American Studies, also at the University of Cambridge, she studied Latin American film more widely, as well as music (rap and reggaetón) in Cuba. Her thesis was an exploration of documentary films shown at the Muestras de Nuevos Realizadores in Cuba in relation to national identity. She has recently published in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and contributed a case study to the forthcoming second edition of Keith Dinnie's Nation Branding – Concepts, Issues, Practice (Routledge, 2015). Dunja has dabbled in documentary filmmaking, worked on the Latin American news website Pulsamérica (www.pulsamerica.co.uk) as both writer (for the Caribbean) and sub-editor, as well as contributing to the Palabras errantes (www.palabraserrantes.com) project as translator.
Rebecca Ogden
Rebecca recently completed an AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Manchester, focussing on the types of symbolic currencies that operate in the marketing and consumption of contemporary touristic Cuba, examining the material, moral and affective negotiations and relationships performed by tourists and service providers. She has taught at the University of Manchester, at Lancaster University, and in Argentina, and has also worked as a research assistant on the RICC project ‘Diasporic Pathways for Aspiring Cosmopolitan Cities’ which explored the links between city branding and migrant/diasporic networks.