Pod Academy

In a globalised market economy, even nations have been branding themselves. 'Cool Britannia', Brazil a vibrant world class player, Italy the nation of high fashion and great food are just some examples.  Can rebranding really maintain, extend, or even reconstitute the nation? Jeff Pooley of Muhlenberg College, interviews Rutgers' Melissa Aronczyk, author of Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity. This podcast first appeared on New Books in Communications, a channel of the New Books Network. In Branding the Nation, Melissa locates the rise of nation branding as a response to the perceived need to sculpt national identity in the face of a fiercely competitive global economy. Tracking the history of the nation-branding phenomenon, Aronczyk recounts the rise and spread of the very idea of national “competitiveness,” a discourse that, in effect, created a market that branding specialists then tapped. The book engages with the large scholarly literature on nations and nationalism, argui