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Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge
At Home with the Diplomats: Inside a European Foreign Ministry
The 2010 WikiLeaks release of 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables has made it eminently clear that there is a vast gulf between the public face of diplomacy and the opinions and actions that take place behind embassy doors. In At Home with the Diplomats, Iver B. Neumann offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of a foreign ministry. Neumann worked for several years at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he had an up-close view of how diplomats conduct their business and how they perceive their own practices. In this book he shows us how diplomacy is conducted on a day-to-day basis.
Approaching contemporary diplomacy from an anthropological perspective, Neumann examines the various aspects of diplomatic work and practice, including immunity, permanent representation, diplomatic sociability, accreditation, and issues of gender equality. Neumann shows that the diplomat working abroad and the diplomat at home are engaged in two different modes of knowledge production. Diplomats in the field focus primarily on gathering and processing information. In contrast, the diplomat based in his or her home capital is caught up in the seemingly endless production of reports, speeches, position papers, and the like. Neumann leaves the reader with a keen sense of the practices of relations with foreign ministries, mediating between other people’s positions while integrating personal and professional into a cohesive whole, adherence to compulsory routines and agendas, and, above all, the generation of knowledge. Yet even as they come to master such quotidian tasks, diplomats are regularly called upon to do exceptional things, such as negotiating peace.
Approaching contemporary diplomacy from an anthropological perspective, Neumann examines the various aspects of diplomatic work and practice, including immunity, permanent representation, diplomatic sociability, accreditation, and issues of gender equality. Neumann shows that the diplomat working abroad and the diplomat at home are engaged in two different modes of knowledge production. Diplomats in the field focus primarily on gathering and processing information. In contrast, the diplomat based in his or her home capital is caught up in the seemingly endless production of reports, speeches, position papers, and the like. Neumann leaves the reader with a keen sense of the practices of relations with foreign ministries, mediating between other people’s positions while integrating personal and professional into a cohesive whole, adherence to compulsory routines and agendas, and, above all, the generation of knowledge. Yet even as they come to master such quotidian tasks, diplomats are regularly called upon to do exceptional things, such as negotiating peace.
229 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 23, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 24, 2018
An interesting book. Rather than being an expose into the life of an average diplomat, Neumann's work is in fact far more interesting as an academic work. He constructs an ethnography of diplomacy, in order to break down our existing stereotypes and generalisations. This ethnography serves to provide the reader a sense of how diplomats themselves perceive their jobs.
As an example of the type of nuance Neumann brings, he draws a contrast between the ways in which a diplomat operates at home and abroad- at home they are a beaurocrat and abroad they follow a 'hero script' (95). This leads to a semse of listlessness when a diplomat returns home, a feeling exacerbated if said diplomat has not procured a leading overseas job by 50.
Overall, Neumann's work does a good job in convincing the reader of the importance of diplomats and diplomatic culture in today's world system. His innovative ethnographic methodology brings nuance to the 'men who sign the letters', and further study in the area would no doubt prove fruitful.
Quotes:
1.
“State diplomacy is not continuously fixated on state-to-state relations, but works through all sorts of channels.”
“Diplomats may end up working in all kinds of social locales, not only in foreign capitals. They may work as consuls in major cities that are not capitals, in state delegations to international organizations (IOs), in IOs themselves, or on secondment from an international organization. In fact, for the greater part of their careers they are not even posted to another country but work “at home,” by which they mean in the ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) of the state of their employ—which for the last couple of hundred years has been the state of which they are citizens.” (2)
2.
“Any phenomenon is shaped not only by its present form but also by our awareness of its pasts and our expectations about its futures. It follows that debates about diplomacy’s future stand to gain from an awareness of diplomacy’s pasts.” (4)
3.
“It is true that the statesman is the last link in the decision-making chain and, by implication, the first link in the implementing chain. Regardless of whether the diplomat is seen as a hero in her own right or as a subcontractor to the hero-statesman, however, the point stands that everyday policy formation in this area is in the hands of diplomats. Had that not been the case, Kissinger would have had little reason for his steady critique over more than half a century of how diplomats are organized and how they work.” (6-7)
4.
“When diplomats are in charge of producing a text, they seek out the opinion of each and every part of the foreign ministry that may conceivably have, or may be expected to gain, an interest in the matter at hand. As a result, the writing up of a diplomatic text is not primarily a question of communicating a certain point of view to the outside world, or producing a tight analysis. It is rather an exercise in consensus building. One effect of this mode of knowledge production is that texts emanating from a foreign ministry are all, at least ideally, in the same voice.” (7)
5.
“Anthropologists focus on the preconditions of political order, and political scientists on how that order is maintained” (183)
As an example of the type of nuance Neumann brings, he draws a contrast between the ways in which a diplomat operates at home and abroad- at home they are a beaurocrat and abroad they follow a 'hero script' (95). This leads to a semse of listlessness when a diplomat returns home, a feeling exacerbated if said diplomat has not procured a leading overseas job by 50.
Overall, Neumann's work does a good job in convincing the reader of the importance of diplomats and diplomatic culture in today's world system. His innovative ethnographic methodology brings nuance to the 'men who sign the letters', and further study in the area would no doubt prove fruitful.
Quotes:
1.
“State diplomacy is not continuously fixated on state-to-state relations, but works through all sorts of channels.”
“Diplomats may end up working in all kinds of social locales, not only in foreign capitals. They may work as consuls in major cities that are not capitals, in state delegations to international organizations (IOs), in IOs themselves, or on secondment from an international organization. In fact, for the greater part of their careers they are not even posted to another country but work “at home,” by which they mean in the ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) of the state of their employ—which for the last couple of hundred years has been the state of which they are citizens.” (2)
2.
“Any phenomenon is shaped not only by its present form but also by our awareness of its pasts and our expectations about its futures. It follows that debates about diplomacy’s future stand to gain from an awareness of diplomacy’s pasts.” (4)
3.
“It is true that the statesman is the last link in the decision-making chain and, by implication, the first link in the implementing chain. Regardless of whether the diplomat is seen as a hero in her own right or as a subcontractor to the hero-statesman, however, the point stands that everyday policy formation in this area is in the hands of diplomats. Had that not been the case, Kissinger would have had little reason for his steady critique over more than half a century of how diplomats are organized and how they work.” (6-7)
4.
“When diplomats are in charge of producing a text, they seek out the opinion of each and every part of the foreign ministry that may conceivably have, or may be expected to gain, an interest in the matter at hand. As a result, the writing up of a diplomatic text is not primarily a question of communicating a certain point of view to the outside world, or producing a tight analysis. It is rather an exercise in consensus building. One effect of this mode of knowledge production is that texts emanating from a foreign ministry are all, at least ideally, in the same voice.” (7)
5.
“Anthropologists focus on the preconditions of political order, and political scientists on how that order is maintained” (183)
May 4, 2020
A good, transparent insight into the workings of the Norwegian MFA. I came into this books expecting a biographic look into how a day in the life of a diplomat would look like, but pleasantly surprised to see the book combines elements of historiography, gender studies and more literary theories of discourse as well. Recommended, but may not be what you want if you're looking for an easy, slice-of-life type of read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews