Nordic perspectives on place branding

• Nordic place branding is an emerging field of academic research and practice. Place branding's evolution, expansion, and geographical spread in the Nordic region has been studied in several ways, however these studies have not fully explored the peculiarity of the Nordic context and its characteristics. The limited scope of previous studies on place branding paired with a widespread international interest for the ”Nordic” as a geographical place, moral orientation, and discourse calls for more research into the global relevance of Nordic place branding. In this special issue, our aim is to collect, examine, and systematise diverse instances of the Nordic place branding tradition. How can ”Nordicity” in place branding be defined and what can we learn from it? Moreover, it deals with how the Nordic place brand travels, that is to say, ways in which the Nordic is appropriated and incorporated into international place branding practices and the conflicts that may arise when the Nordic travels. Contributions in this special issue unpack the specificity of “Nordicity in regards to place branding by – for instance - offering novel, points of critic, modes of analysis, novel conceptualisations of and ways to translate and transform Nordic place branding to an international context. Unpacking Nordic place branding reveals historical and contemporary stereotypes of national and regional differences. The special issue aims to examine the values, ideologies and practices that the Nordic countries have used to construct themselves with particular relevance for place branding. Such claimed values include cooperation, consensus, solidarity, democracy, freedom, social cohesion, and gender equality. Contributions also scrutinise the social, cultural and geopolitical reasons to why these values historically have been emphasised in the region.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Communication Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Nordic

place branding

perspective

regionalism

contestation

Publication and Content Type

ovr (subject category)

ref (subject category)