From Kinship to Global Brand

This work analyzes the political instrumentalization of culture. Theanalysis takes, as an example, official Nordic cultural cooperation inthe post-war period. During this time, cultural exchange became thesubject of political attention establishing itself as part of the Nordicinter-governmental coop [...]
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This work analyzes the political instrumentalization of culture. Theanalysis takes, as an example, official Nordic cultural cooperation inthe post-war period. During this time, cultural exchange became thesubject of political attention establishing itself as part of the Nordicinter-governmental cooperation framework.This work focuses on three key moments in the history of officialNordic cultural cooperation: (i) the failure of the NORDEK plan andthe establishment of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 1971; (ii) thecollapse of the Soviet system at the end of the 1980s - beginning of the1990s; and (iii) the movement towards promoting the Nordic regionon the global market in the first decade of the 2000s.The analysis traces the lack of convergence between the official arm'slength principle in cultural policy and how cultural cooperationactually worked. The results of the research both demonstratethe various ways culture was instrumentalized and also provethat the politically defined concept of culture can receive differentinterpretations in the official discourse depending on current politicalgoals.