[Review by Kadir Jun Ayhan of James Pamment and Karin Gwinn Wilkins (Eds.), Communicating National Image through Development and Diplomacy: The Politics of Foreign Aid]

International Journal of Communication 13 (2019), Book Review 2351–2354

1932–8036/2019BKR0009 Copyright © 2019 (Kadir Jun Ayhan, kadirayhan@gmail.com). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.

Excerpt:

James Pamment and Karin Gwinn Wilkins (Eds.), Communicating National Image through Development and Diplomacy: The Politics of Foreign Aid, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 272 pp., $66.41 (hardcover).

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Reviewed by Kadir Jun Ayhan

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea

Public diplomacy [JB emphasis] research and practice have become more prominent in the last two decades. Recent studies tried to identify the intersections between this emerging field of inquiry with other more consolidated disciplines, particularly public relations. In that respect, Communicating National Image through Development and Diplomacy: The Politics of Foreign Aid is a significant contribution for cross-fertilization of an emerging field of public diplomacy and a more studied field of international development. The two editors of the book are important representatives of this intersection of two fields. Prior to publication of this book, James Pamment had been a pioneer in bringing together development and public diplomacy with his numerous articles and books (Pamment, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2018). Karin Gwinn Wilkins is one of the most authoritative names in the field of development communication. The book brings together scholars from various disciplines and from different parts of the world inquiring the intersection between foreign aid and communication of national image.

The introductory chapter begins with a review of the intersections between cultural imperialism and soft power. While the cultural imperialism theory, which was central to early development communication studies, faded away recently, soft power, as a means to transpose power across different aspects of international relations, has become fundamental to the study of public diplomacy, which is conceptualized as “the actualization of soft power resources” (p. 8). Based on Pamment’s previous work (Pamment, 2016b), the editors divide development communication into three layers: communicating for development for purposes of social change; communicating about development problematizing underlying assumptions of social change articulation; and communication of development, which is the central theme of the book, that is concerned with how aid activities are promoted for image and reputation purposes.

Pamment further builds the conceptual framework of the book in chapter 2, where he elaborates on the common grounds between public diplomacy and development communication: aiming to achieve change in communities as an outcome by influencing beliefs and behaviors, negotiating the meaning of common good, collaborating with influential mediating actors, and intertwining of diplomatic issues and techniques with quotidian issues. Pamment argues that these principles are enough to establish a theory (p. 27). While this endeavor contributes to theory building, the theory itself does not seem to be established yet in this book. Missing from the two introductory chapters is what attraction or co-option, the defining feature of soft power, entails in foreign aid and how this is different than structural or productive types of power (cf. Barnett & Duvall, 2005), which are potentially relevant to communication about development. ...

Overall, Communicating National Image through Development and Diplomacy: The Politics of Foreign  Aid is a long-needed book that brings together concepts at the intersection of international  development and public diplomacy. This book serves as an introduction to this intersection without developing a theory or a
theoretical framework. However, the “call for theoretical convergence” (p. 45) between these two fields stands for future research. Informed by the conceptual frameworks of this book, future research can design structured, focused comparison across case studies with the agenda of theory building. ...