CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Andreescu, Ioana Raluca |
|---|---|
| Title | From the Castle to the Agora: Romanian Cultural Institutes Abroad in the Making of National Culture |
| Summary | This paper presents the Romanian cultural institutes abroad in the process of making and exporting national culture. It is a particularly interesting process, as Romanian culture is a fluid concept, considering dualities like official and unofficial culture, tradition and innovation, culture and politics (particularly cultural diplomacy for cultural institutes abroad), modern and post-modern features. There are also tensions concerning practical strategies of functioning, namely between the center and the local branch, between the “fortress” and the “open space”, and between the concentrated model of the state and the networking, de-concentrated supranational model of EU. Nevertheless, though the cleavages are real, I have identified a major historical shift of the Romanian institutes: they become more open and de-concentrated, moving from the “castle” model to the one of the “agora”, both as a discourse and as institutional de-concentration. These discursive and administrative shifts in the Romanian cultural institutes abroad reflect macro sociological historical changes, such as the passage from modernity to post-modernity, the existence of two different models of discourse and strategy (the national state and the European Union), and an increasing cultural dimension as opposed to the decreasing role of diplomacy in the activities of Romanian cultural institutes abroad. I have analyzed two Romanian cultural institutes in Italy (in Rome and Venice) and their relation to the Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest. My results demonstrate that Romanian cultural institutes abroad are changing from the national model to a more European one, based on innovation, cultural networking and promotion of cultural events that motivate the public in the “host” country, all integrated in the larger frame of cultural relativism as proposed by post-modernity. |
| Supervisor | Prof. Fabiani, Jean-Louis; Kowalski, Alexandra |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/andreescu_ioana.pdf |
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