Martin Davidson, Chief Executive, British Council

Executive summary

Many of the challenges facing governments in the twenty-first century are, and will continue to be, transnational. Cultural relations, with its emphasis on developing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships, can contribute to the development of solutions by building the networks through which diverse communities can develop new approaches to their common challenges. It achieves this by connecting people, emphasising a willingness to listen, and focusing on mutual benefit. Cultural relations not only develops greater mutual understanding, but can also provide the platform on which collective action on issues such as climate change can be based. The ability to construct networks through cultural relations will be a key component of the conduct and future development of public diplomacy.

The Cold War saw the end of one world; globalisation and the associated communications revolution has heralded the start of another. Recognising these rapid changes, David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla called for a ‘revolution in diplomatic affairs’ (RDA).[1] Their concept of noöpolitik emphasised the importance of engaging with non-state actors in a way which focused on cooperation, shared interests and common goals. While the changing context requires continuous innovation, many of the ideas upon which the call for an RDA was based have long been familiar to those committed to cultural relations. Foremost among these ideas is the need to construct and sustain networks through which collective effort and collaboration can thrive across cultures and national borders.

Cultural relations builds engagement and trust between people of different cultures by exchanging knowledge and ideas. It empowers transnational communities and connects them to networks. In doing so, cultural relations contributes to the collective enterprise that is public diplomacy, by developing the networks upon which solutions to common challenges can be based. Many of the challenges with which governments across the world are struggling derive from issues that they cannot address without influencing and engaging the broader global public. Equally, government-led activity alone is unlikely to produce all the solutions to these challenges – which include climate change, mass unplanned urbanisation and violent extremism. It is in precisely this context that cultural relations matters most; for it is at its core a relationship between peoples. It engages through shared interests and enables communities to search for solutions to their common challenges.

This chapter considers the key attributes that equip cultural relations to build networks through which some of the solutions to contemporary challenges can be developed. These attributes are the abilities to connect people, to foster active listening and to focus on mutual benefit. In doing so, it demonstrates the contribution that cultural relations can make to the future development of public diplomacy, drawing on the experience of the British Council, which has been active in this field for 70 years.

Connecting people

The first question to be asked is why we should want to connect people and create networks. Networks are important, because they provide the means to multiply the effort of individuals. When disconnected, each person must rely on his or her own resources and ability. However, once connected to a network, individuals both benefit from collective information and shared knowledge and avoid duplication of effort.[2] This exposition echoes Pierre Bourdieu’s argument that greater interconnectivity leads to greater trust and willingness to share resources and information, which benefit the whole community.[3] As a result, the network allows people to understand each other better and to share resources. This ultimately creates the potential for innovation in facing common challenges.

The international purview of cultural relations is also a vital part of fostering innovation, as more diverse networks tend to be more innovative. Cultural relations creates the opportunity for what social network analysts call ‘boundary spanners’: individuals who create the links between communities which allow the sharing of ideas and subsequent innovation.[4] This bridging activity can take the form of academic and scientific exchange programmes or initiatives to bring artists of different backgrounds together. For example, the British Council programme ‘Music Matbakh’ focused on ‘bringing Arab and UK musicians together for a residency in London to create a new work, drawing on modern and traditional influences’. [5] While this was a programme conducted in the physical world, it also used the internet social networking site MySpace to engage a wider network, thus creating a format for further innovation.[6] The participants had the opportunity to innovate through the interaction itself and then to share that experience with other members of their local communities, creating a second opportunity for innovation.

Networked organisations operating in virtual spaces, such as Avaaz.org with its 2 million members, highlight the potential of online network-building for future cultural relations activity.[7] However, experience from the past demonstrates the concrete and long-term benefits that can be gained from developing networks of empowered individuals on the ground. During the period of international sanctions against apartheid South Africa, and in the face of considerable criticism, the British Council remained active in the country, connecting ordinary South Africans with the outside world. This not only gave us the chance to work with groups excluded from power, particularly in the areas of education and governance; but our work in creating these networks also enabled the British Council to contribute to the development of the country after the end of apartheid and the introduction of democracy.

Effective cultural relations creates the opportunity for genuine exchange across cultural and political barriers, which in turn generates insight, dialogue and, over time, trust. This capacity to make connections and build long-term trust is crucial when intergovernmental relationships are difficult. For example, the British Council continues to operate in Zimbabwe, Iran and Burma, drawing on a fund of experience and goodwill that has been earned over generations. When, in the future, diplomatic relations with these countries become closer, these pre-existing relationships and networks, developed between communities within and beyond their borders, will be available to support the diplomatic process.

Having grasped why we should build networks, we need to understand how in practice to facilitate the connections between people. Building productive networks of empowered individuals is about more than having long lists of contacts; it is about connecting the right people with one another in the right way. An effective cultural relations organisation needs to act as what June Holley and Valdis Krebs term a ‘network weaver’: an actor who develops empowering connections within a network.[8] To do this, those working in cultural relations have to combine their clear rationale for connecting people with the other key attributes of this approach to public diplomacy, namely listening and mutual benefit. Through this combination they are able to connect the right people in ways which resonate with their diverse communities to produce a conduit for the flow of information and understanding and, ultimately, a platform for innovation.

Listening

The power of cultural relations is that it can turn listening from a passive into an active notion yielding positive benefit. Some may confuse this active form of listening with audience analysis and research on public opinion. Joseph Nye refers to the passive kind of listening when he states that ‘by definition, soft power means getting others to want the outcomes you want, and that requires understanding how they are hearing your message, and fine-tuning it accordingly’.[9] In contrast, listening as part of cultural relations ‘reflects a genuine interest in the other’s perspective’ and ‘demonstrates that different viewpoints are taken seriously and that other perspectives are given consideration’.[10] Developing a network through building relationships requires that we listen carefully.

To argue for the importance of this active form of listening is not to deny that persuasion is an important part of public diplomacy. Rather, it is to emphasise that developing a relationship requires both sides to be willing to identify shared goals and common interests through listening receptively to alternative perspectives. The benefit of this approach is clear from the following comment from the Minister of Islamic Affairs in a Middle Eastern country:

‘The British Council is one of the few institutions that understood the role of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and dealt with staff with great respect, encouraged their participation, and greatly valued their ideas. Unlike others, they listened . . . some of us had hostile attitudes towards foreigners based on doubting and distrusting their objective, but after . . . this attitude changed, and they have become more receptive to foreigners.’ 

Multiplied over many such encounters, the explicit emphasis on this form of listening generates the insight and trust upon which strong networks can be built.

Mutual benefit

The idea of mutuality, of benefit for all, is a fundamental organising principle in cultural relations. Cultural relations activity is based on exchange, from which each partner gets something tangible.[11] As Jan Melissen noted in describing this type of public diplomacy, ‘success requires listening to others, recognising the “value of other cultures,” showing a desire to learn from them, and conducting programs as a “two-way street”.’[12]

To partners of the British Council, this exchange offers access to the skills, knowledge and opportunities needed to prosper in a globalised world. This means access to high-quality training for those who want to learn the English language; to globally recognised qualifications and, through these, access to employment and trade in a global economy; to leadership and citizenship skills; and to the culture and arts of a developed liberal democracy.

While the benefit for partners is apparent, how does this benefit the UK?

First, offering such access reinforces the capacity of cultural relations to build connections and trust. This is why the British Council is providing support for teaching at Al-Azhar, the centre for Islamic thought in Cairo, in the form of English classes to enhance international communication. This is why work continues with madrasas (Muslim religious schools) in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

Second, the exchange helps to build and maintain a network of opinion formers, agents for change and future leaders across the world. For example, as its website makes clear, the British Council’s InterAction programme, which offers leadership training and development in sub-Saharan Africa, aspires to create a network that will increasingly see the UK’s commitments to Africa in a positive light, and the UK as a country worth partnering in pursuit of positive social change.[13]

Clearly, future leaders who take part in cultural relations projects are not automatically going to factor the interests of (in this instance) the UK into their decisions and actions. However, such participation gives future opinionformers an instinctive understanding of the UK’s position, develops contacts which may be useful to diplomats in the future, and creates the space for persuasion and influence.

Furthermore, while this form of exchange makes a vital contribution to public diplomacy, this is not the only role for mutual benefit. Cultural relations also has the potential to go beyond exchange to foster the creation of networks based on collective action. This in turn offers the potential of innovation based on collaboration, drawing on the strengths of all participants in a dynamic attempt to address shared challenges.

This type of collective action is exemplified by the Global Xchange programme (GX), run as a managed partnership between the British Council and the international volunteering and development charity VSO. GX is a ‘six-month exchange programme which gives young people from different countries a unique opportunity to work together, to develop and share valuable skills and to make a practical contribution where it is needed in local communities’.[14] As the networks grow, this type of collaboration has the potential, for example, to contribute to the development of mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change, through bringing together experience from around the world. While the potential which these networks offer is in line with the strategic objectives of the UK government, they will not function effectively if they are designed solely to promote a specific policy. This is because specific direction of the network would limit both the exchange of the ‘two-way street’ and the power of collective action.

Autonomy equals credibility

The credibility required to develop trust and genuine exchange in turn requires an operational space distinct from that of policy advocacy. This operational space gives a cultural relations organisation the capacity to engage with networks of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who also vigorously defend their independence from government control. This role for cultural relations is becoming increasingly important, given the rapid growth in global civil society, the concomitant increase in the number of NGOs and the development of networks to link together the efforts of individual NGOs to produce greater impact through collective action.[15] The importance of these transnational networks has been demonstrated by Canadian engagement with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and by the regular Norwegian public diplomacy engagement with NGOs.[16] While advocacy initiatives are best pursued through public diplomacy conducted by foreign ministries, which have the authority to make policy, there are other initiatives that would better be conducted by cultural relations agencies. While these must complement, not undermine, government’s strategic objectives, they are most effective when the agency is operating on terms of parity with other transnational NGOs and not functioning – or perceived as functioning – as a government stalking horse.

As the British Palestinian academic Sultan Barakat wrote in a report commissioned by Counterpoint, the British Council’s think-tank, ‘If the British Council simply parrots what the Embassy says about Britain we are not interested. But there’s a Britain we’d like it to show us – the Britain of the million marchers against the [Iraq] war in February 2003.’ [17] The autonomy to develop the networks vital to future engagement, rather than pressure to function within an official policy perspective, provides the potential to work towards longer-term benefit.

Even within an atmosphere of trust, connecting people and building networks is difficult. At times, the essential focus on mutual benefit and listening may not produce the specific image of the UK that would have been selected for policy promotion. However, it is only by allowing – indeed, encouraging – individuals to share their own images that authentic crossborder networks and understanding can be built. This was the rationale for a British Council project which invited young British photographers to record aspects of Muslim experience in the UK. They were free to choose any area of life they wanted and no attempt was made to guide or censor their images. The resulting exhibition, called ‘Common Ground’, opened in Indonesia and Malaysia, and has since toured many parts of the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East and Gulf states.[18]

The resulting media debate suggested that this approach fostered a degree of interest and debate around shared values that a more didactic approach might not have achieved. A review in the Independent argued that the exhibition was ‘ground breaking . . . its impact on Arab viewers cannot be overestimated. For Saudi Arabia, it is the first significant collection to be imported from the West in more than three decades.’[19] Achieving this level of engagement requires cultural relations to emphasise the development of networks and 85 relationships over the insistence on specific policy advocacy.

The relevance of cultural relations in today’s world

Cultural relations makes a vital contribution to the public diplomacy of the twenty-first century. Many of the challenges that nations will face in the future will cross borders and cultures; they will be shared by many diverse and dispersed populations around the world. To be effective in facing these challenges we need to be clear that there are several distinctly different approaches to public diplomacy. This chapter has set out the key attributes of cultural relations that allow it to build networks as a basis upon which some of the solutions to contemporary and future challenges can be developed. This is not to say it is the only answer; on the contrary, the contribution that cultural relations makes is enhanced when it is considered in conjunction with other forms of public diplomacy. This is because public diplomacy is most effective when civil societies are interconnected.[20]

Aiding the development of connections between civil societies both creates the potential for innovation and provides a context in which the persuasion approach, to which cultural relations is less well suited, actually thrives. This is because the assertive approach has a greater likelihood of success where networks already exist that are sympathetic to that type of messaging.[21] Experience tells us that the approaches will at times overlap and at other times come into tension. Nevertheless, effective public diplomacy will recognise the respective strengths of the different approaches.

Climate change and the response to it offer a clear example of the complementary roles of the two approaches, and of the particular value of cultural relations. The negotiation of a post-Kyoto agreement is clearly a responsibility of governments. Likewise, persuading populations of the need for specific provisions in any such treaty is a role for government-led public diplomacy. However, the building of networks to raise understanding of climate change, and to facilitate innovation that can produce mitigation and adaptation responses, is an area where cultural relations can contribute, through its emphasis on both exchange and collective action.

When practitioners of the different approaches come together so that each can benefit from the work of the other, the combination offers the potential to create an impact greater than the individual approaches working alone. This synergetic outcome has been summarised by Krebs and Holley in their phrase: ‘Connect through your similarity and innovate through your diversity.’[22] This not only describes the way in which cultural relations can interact with other forms of public diplomacy to create the greatest impact; it also describes the approach that must be adopted to engage effectively in cultural relations.

I would contend that one clear result of the combined forces of globalisation and the revolution in communication technology is a change in how people want to interact. They want a conversation rather than a message; they are no longer prepared, if they ever were, to sit passively and absorb others’ influences.[23] People want to challenge and be challenged. Traditional approaches to influencing seem rigid by comparison, often appear incapable of accepting alternative views and can be all too easily dismissed as spin or propaganda, thereby losing credibility and, most importantly, trust. The ability to build networks will be central to the conduct and future development of public diplomacy, both in the UK and elsewhere, as we seek to develop solutions to the challenges that confront us all.

1. The call for RDA was based on the rapid pace of technological innovation, the massive expansion of new organisations, particularly NGOs, engaging with populations overseas, and the ‘recognition that “information” and “power” are increasingly intertwined’. See David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla, ‘The promise of noöpolitik’, First Monday 12: 8, Aug. 2007, http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/ronfeldt/index.html. See also the chapter by David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla in Nancy Snow and Philip Taylor, eds, Handbook of public diplomacy (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2008).
   
2. This argument has been made effectively by Martin Kearns, co-founder of the Green Media Toolshed: see http://www.greenmediatoolshed.org/.
   
3. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The forms of social capital’, in John G. Richardson, ed., Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (New York: Greenwood, 1986), pp. 241–58, quoted in R. S. Zaharna, ‘The soft power differential: mass communication and network communication’ (forthcoming).
   
4. See, for example, Valdis Krebs and June Holley, Building sustainable communities through network building, 2002, http://www.ccnreno.org/rflyer/BuildingNetworks.pdf; Henry J.
   Steadman, ‘Boundary spanners: a key component for the effective interactions of the justice and mental health systems’, Law and Human Behavior 16: 1, 1992, pp. 75–87; Paul Williams, ‘The competent boundary spanner’, Public Administration 80: 1, 2002, pp. 103–24.
   
5. See http://www.britishcouncil.org/musicmatbakh
   
6. See http://www.myspace.com/musicmatbakh
   
7. Avaaz.org (http://www.avaaz.org) is a community of global citizens who use the internet to take action on the major issues facing the world today.
   
8. Krebs and Holley, Building sustainable communities through network building.
   
9. Joseph Nye, Soft power: the means to success in world politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), p. 111.
   
10. Ali Fisher and Aurélie Bröckerhoff, Options for influence: global campaigns of persuasion in the new worlds of public diplomacy (London: Counterpoint, 2008) p. 23. See also Wandren
    PD, ‘Power down the transmitter: the potential of listening exercises’, 9 April 2008, http://wandrenpd.com
    
11. For a full discussion of mutuality, see Martin Rose and Nick Wadham-Smith, Mutuality, trust and cultural relations (London: Counterpoint, 2004).
    
12. Jan Melissen, ‘The new public diplomacy: between theory and practice’ in Jan Mellissen, ed., The new public diplomacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 18.
    
13. See http://www.bc-interaction.org/
    
14. See http://www.vso.org.uk/globalxchange/
    
15. Ronfeldt and Arquilla, ‘The promise of noöpolitik’.
    
16. See, for example, Alan Henrikson, ‘Niche diplomacy in the public arena: Canada and Norway’, in Melissen, ed., The new public diplomacy.
    
17. Sultan Barakat, Recreating trust in the Middle East (London: Counterpoint, 2004).
    
18. The exhibition began its tour in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia in 2003 and 2004, moving on to Bahrain (Nov. 2005), Sharjah (Feb. 2006), Abu Dhabi (March 2006), Saudi Arabia (April 2006) and Oman (June 2006).
    
19. ‘Photo exhibition depicting the lives of British Muslim women tours the globe’, Independent, 27 June 2006, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/photoexhibition-
    depicting-the-lives-of-british-muslim-women-tours-the-globe-405604.html.
    
20. Melissen, ‘The new public diplomacy’, p. 10.
    
21. See Zaharna, ‘The soft power differential’.
    
22. Krebs and Holley, Building sustainable communities through network building.
    
23. See Fisher and Bröckerhoff, Options for influence, pp. 42–3; Ali Fisher, ‘Music for a jilted generation: open source public diplomacy’, Hague Journal of Diplomacy, forthcoming.