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Soft power has offered a compelling alternative to coercive power by emphasizing attraction, persuasion, and cultural appeal. Yet its apparent simplicity has obscured profound conceptual tensions. These conceptual weaknesses are compounded by an enduring focus on the state as the primary agent of soft power and a geopolitical inheritance merging from Western imaginary which does not reflect the cultural influence which today flows through the Global South.
This collection of papers critically reassesses the concept of soft power by examining how cultural influence is produced, circulated, and contested in contemporary digital and postcolonial contexts. Decentering soft power along three dimensions: conceptually, institutionally, and geopolitically, the contributions trace across diverse empirical contexts how cultural influence is produced, circulated, resisted, and reconfigured through creative labor, heritage work, digital platforms, and counter-narratives, often in tension with official strategies. Together, contributors advance a decentered understanding of cultural power in contemporary digital and global cultural ecosystems.
Rather than seeking to rescue or refine soft power as a policy tool, De.Centering Soft Power proposes an alternative architecture that foregrounds instability over coherence, circulation over control, and multiplicity over ownership.
Egbert Amoncio is a postdoctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
Sonia Campanini is a postdoctoral researcher in Film and Media Studies at the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
Tom Simmert is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.
Cornelia Storz is Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
Beyond Attraction: Rethinking Soft Power across Cultural Organizations, Politics and Infrastructures in a Multipolar World; Egbert Amoncio, Sonia Campanini, Tom Simmert, and Cornelia Storz
Section I. Attraction
Chapter 1. Have We Been Too Soft on Soft Power?; Gary D. Rawnsley
Chapter 2. Soft Power as a Cracked Multiplayer Digital Game; Paola Voci
Chapter 3. Soft Power Is Hard to Bureaucratize: Lessons from Japan; Nissim Otmazgin
Section II. Agency
Chapter 4. Cultural Diplomacy, Global K-Pop Fans, and the Korean Government: A Case Study on Strategies to Employ K-Pop Fans as Cultural Diplomats; Tabitha Adler
Chapter 5. Performing Soft Power: Nigeria’s Creative Economy under the Tinubu Government; Tom Simmert
Chapter 6. Soft Power, Hardened Positions: The Case of the Nigerian State against Queer Nigerian Media; Artemis Saleh
Section III. Global Architecture
Chapter 7. Early Films on Ghana and the Rest of the World: Independent Africa in Global Diplomacy; Rebecca Ohene-Asah
Chapter 8. Digital Cultural Heritage as Soft Power: The Case of the Korean Film Archive - KOFA; Sonia Campanini
Chapter 9. The Cinemas of Africa: Boosting Soft Power through Film Gaze; Ezinne M. Ezepue