Description
Branding is a profoundly geographical type of commodification process. Many things become commodities that are compared and valuated on markets around the globe. Places such as cities or regions, countries and nations attempt to acquire visibility through branding. Geographical imaginations are evoked to brand goods and places as commodities in order to show or create connections and add value. Yet, not all that is branded was originally intended and created for markets.
This volume aims to broaden current understanding of branding through a series of contributions from geography, history, political studies, cultural, and media studies, offering insight into how ordinary places, objects and practices become commodities through branding. In so doing, the contributions also show how nation, place and product as targets of branding can be seen as intertwined. To discuss these forms of branding, book chapters refer to states, cities, holiday destinations, food malls, movies, dances, post stamps and other items that serve as brands and/or are branded.
The book will be of interest to students and scholars in geography, sociology, history, cultural studies and business studies who would like to gain an understanding of the intricate and surprising ways in which things, places, and cultural practices become brands.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction Ulrich Ermann and Klaus-J Hermanik 2. Origination: the geographies of brands and branding Andy Pike 3. The State Branding of US Postage Stamps for State Commemorative Years: From Heritage, Iconography and Place to Placelessness Stanley D. Brunn 4. Ghostly cities: some notes on urban branding and the imagining of places Alberto Vanolo 5. Becoming Eataly: the magic of the mall & the magic of the brand Annalisa Colombino 6. The on-screen branding and rebranding of identity politics in Cyprus Costas Constandinides 7. Tango Argentino as a nation brand Rita Rieger 8. Tourism, Nation-Branding and the Commercial Hegemony of Nation-building in the post-Yugoslav states Florian Bieber 9. Promoting the nation in Austria and Switzerland: A pre-history of nation branding Oliver Kühschelm
