Iran’s Soft Power: Thousand Paths not Yet Trodden
Tap Iran’s massive cultural potentials. By Mahmoud Reza Golshan-pazhouh.
1. Forty-five-day sale of one of China’s biggest film projects, ‘The Founding of a Republic’, equaled 15-day sale of James Cameron’s blockbuster ‘Avatar’ in theatres. Debates over Chinese and American ‘soft power’ urged Wang Wen to write: “The ratio of 1:3 is close to mirroring the GDP gap between the two nations, and more pertinently the gap in soft power.” (Global Times, 28th of January 2010). Weng darted the core indeed.
As Avatar outflanked another Chinese product, the story of the life of legendary Chinese philosopher Confucius, and its sale skyrocketed, debates in China comparing Hollywood products and domestic products on the Chinese history and civilization heated.
As Weng quotes in his article, American political scientist Samuel Huntington believed that “the distribution of cultures around the world reflects the distribution of power”.
In studies of politics and international relations, soft power is a newly-emerged theme. The term has been coined to describe a more abstract face, opposed to the general ‘hard’ perception of power. Soft power addresses a unique type of influence which is not based on force, but on absorption and persuasion. Under soft power, the target acts consciously or unconsciously in accord to the demands of the influential party. But soft power is also about priority. Not only the target’s objectives, but also its priorities may become what we desire.
2. In the age of communication, more and more countries launch ‘soft’ campaigns to improve their international image and advance their preferences. Huge budgets and intelligent strategies are taken into service to present cultural, artistic, historical and tourist magnets. The apparent goal may be face-improvement, but deeper as we go, it turns into a tool for meeting diplomatic and security objectives. India’s enormous investment on Yoga to turn it into a commodity symbolizing its culture and civilization, Cuba’s dispatching of its world-known doctors across the globe for voluntary missions, United States’ Hollywood, MacDonald and Coca Cola, China’s capitalization in Confucian studies’ institutes around the globe, Germany’s promotion of its famous brands Mercedes-Benz and BMW, Korea’s integration of historical icons and technological achievements are just to name a few. And optimum use of communication mega-vectors is never overlooked.
3. Joseph Nye refers to cultural and ideological values as one of the three constituents of soft power. Culture permeates different layers of art, religion, entertainment, literature, tradition, folklore, unique behavioral traits and even food. The potential power of culture lies in the strength of the bond between these layers and hidden archetypes of a society’s civilization and ideology. In its thirty-year life, the Islamic Republic has set, (re)defined and exploited many of the tools at its disposal as the heir to a great Islamic-Iranian civilization. A mere focus on cultural potentials reveals what massive resources are left yet to be tapped.
4. Knowing about the enormous potentials of our Islamic-Iranian civilization gives us mixed feelings: we can be proud of living in a land with rich, diverse culture and we may be sad knowing how countries with significantly lower potentials have reinforced their security wielding soft power.
5. Back to Wang Wen, he says: “Before the Americans get up early and wait in the cold for several hours just to enjoy a Chinese cultural product, China still needs to "keep a low profile." This isn’t to say we should do nothing. In fact, it puts a heavier burden on us to up our own game in the future.”
6. A food for thought: as Iranians, how could we make Iranian art and culture an inseparable part of the global culture? How could we return the Persian Carpet its lost stature? Could we turn ‘Made in Iran’ into a globally acknowledged trademark? What could we do to make watching an Iranian movie or possessing an Iranian artifact a global vogue? Could we bring a day when traveling Iran needs booking an advance ticket? If even thinking about it seems a day-dream, then we have a long way to go.
As Avatar outflanked another Chinese product, the story of the life of legendary Chinese philosopher Confucius, and its sale skyrocketed, debates in China comparing Hollywood products and domestic products on the Chinese history and civilization heated.
As Weng quotes in his article, American political scientist Samuel Huntington believed that “the distribution of cultures around the world reflects the distribution of power”.
In studies of politics and international relations, soft power is a newly-emerged theme. The term has been coined to describe a more abstract face, opposed to the general ‘hard’ perception of power. Soft power addresses a unique type of influence which is not based on force, but on absorption and persuasion. Under soft power, the target acts consciously or unconsciously in accord to the demands of the influential party. But soft power is also about priority. Not only the target’s objectives, but also its priorities may become what we desire.
2. In the age of communication, more and more countries launch ‘soft’ campaigns to improve their international image and advance their preferences. Huge budgets and intelligent strategies are taken into service to present cultural, artistic, historical and tourist magnets. The apparent goal may be face-improvement, but deeper as we go, it turns into a tool for meeting diplomatic and security objectives. India’s enormous investment on Yoga to turn it into a commodity symbolizing its culture and civilization, Cuba’s dispatching of its world-known doctors across the globe for voluntary missions, United States’ Hollywood, MacDonald and Coca Cola, China’s capitalization in Confucian studies’ institutes around the globe, Germany’s promotion of its famous brands Mercedes-Benz and BMW, Korea’s integration of historical icons and technological achievements are just to name a few. And optimum use of communication mega-vectors is never overlooked.
3. Joseph Nye refers to cultural and ideological values as one of the three constituents of soft power. Culture permeates different layers of art, religion, entertainment, literature, tradition, folklore, unique behavioral traits and even food. The potential power of culture lies in the strength of the bond between these layers and hidden archetypes of a society’s civilization and ideology. In its thirty-year life, the Islamic Republic has set, (re)defined and exploited many of the tools at its disposal as the heir to a great Islamic-Iranian civilization. A mere focus on cultural potentials reveals what massive resources are left yet to be tapped.
4. Knowing about the enormous potentials of our Islamic-Iranian civilization gives us mixed feelings: we can be proud of living in a land with rich, diverse culture and we may be sad knowing how countries with significantly lower potentials have reinforced their security wielding soft power.
5. Back to Wang Wen, he says: “Before the Americans get up early and wait in the cold for several hours just to enjoy a Chinese cultural product, China still needs to "keep a low profile." This isn’t to say we should do nothing. In fact, it puts a heavier burden on us to up our own game in the future.”
6. A food for thought: as Iranians, how could we make Iranian art and culture an inseparable part of the global culture? How could we return the Persian Carpet its lost stature? Could we turn ‘Made in Iran’ into a globally acknowledged trademark? What could we do to make watching an Iranian movie or possessing an Iranian artifact a global vogue? Could we bring a day when traveling Iran needs booking an advance ticket? If even thinking about it seems a day-dream, then we have a long way to go.