On January 30, we held our first workshop with the participation of our internal and external experts. Professors Victoria De Grazia, Anya Schiffrin, Richard John, Jack Snyder, and Charles Armstrong, Andrew Nathan, and Marcelo Ridenti of Columbia University along with Peter Katzenstein (Cornell University), Edward Keene (University of Oxford), Thomas Diez (University of Tübingen) came together at Columbia Journalism School. Graduate students from the History and Communications Ph.D programs joined the conversation as well.
Our goal for this meeting was to lay the groundwork for the overall project by discussing the debates in Europe over normative power in light of similar American undertakings. After a full day of very thoughtful and rich discussion, we are now preparing an agenda for the historical-conceptual approach to de-provincializing soft power, which will later be complemented with case studies from Turkey, China, and Brazil.
De-Provincializing Soft Power project will also organize its first regional workshop at Columbia University's Global Center in Istanbul on June 11-12, 2015. This 2-day conference aims to discuss Turkey’s recent efforts in public diplomacy and development projects in East Africa in light of the project's overall goal to rethink historical-conceptual approaches to soft power. Columbia University faculty and graduate students along with external experts from Turkey and Europe will debate the roles that cultural legacies, reputation, moral norms, and other aspects of power to persuade play in regional contexts. There will also be a graduate student workshop for students from Turkey and Columbia University.
