Bourdieu and Waquant (1992) argue that every field analysis should begin with a mapping out of the agents in the field and establishing their relationship to the field of power. While I have already indicated that the Polish state actors, representing ‘public administration’, overlap with the field of power, additionally there are private actors in Poland forming a social space in which nation branding has been introduced as a discourse on national identity construction. In the aftermath of political economy changes, the field has grown in complexity. Chong and Valencic (2001, p. 3) note the multifaceted character of contemporary national images management and emphasise the impact of the private sector on its actions. Given that pre-1989 the first
governmental departments empowered by the political class to represent the Polish state and national identities overseas were aligned with the diplomatic sub-field, and later grown in complexity, the above argument is relevant for the contemporary field of national images management in Poland. For Moloney (2005, p. 551), public institutions and other actors of the competitive game “speak multiple voices.” This pluralism, characteristic to level playing fields, echoes in the Polish field of national images management: the public administration actors are responsible for promotional policies, but private sector newcomers struggle to change its institutional dynamics.
Because I demonstrate that nation branding has been used as source of symbolic power, I present the outline of the field in accordance to theory of symbolic power (Bourdieu 1991). In my outline of the field, I include ‘structured structures’ and
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‘structuring structures’ enabling discursive performativity of nation branders and facilitating dissemination of this discourse. Thus far, among the ‘structured structures’ of the social space investigated in this study are the state actors including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Ministry of Economics; the Polish Information and Investment Agency, the Polish Tourism Organization; the Adam Mickiewicz Institute; the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development; and PL.2012, a governmental agency responsible for organisation and overseas communication practices during the EURO 2012
football tournament. They are the ‘stable elements’ (Rokkan 1975) of the field that were targeted by nation branders, but they relied on other ‘trans-connected’ spaces. The newcomers’ to the field listed earlier (p. 138), not only offered expertise in nation branding, but their entry into the field demonstrate new dynamics of capital relations.
The state field actors are aligned to the Government by the Council of Poland’s Promotion, a body formed by the government disposition (legal source) on 30 March 2004 and equipped in its share of the statist capital stake of advisory in the process of policy making. While all those actors enjoy a degree of autonomy in terms of
management, every day operations, and decision-making, the primary feature of the relationship between them was based on legal, cultural, political, economic, and personal relationships within the dominant coalitions. It is the management of those actors that was responsible for accumulation and distribution of resources relevant to the field operations. The managements’ power stemmed from their dominant
positions, their-decision making abilities and close affiliations with the field of power.
While it might be convenient to assume that the dominant capital in the field of national images management is that of symbolic capital engendered from transnational images of Poland and Poles, this universalising discursive statement begs a question about the other, field specific evidence of resources generation. In theory, nation branders turn this argument on its head. They argue that nation branding offers an opportunity to exchange symbolic capital into economic capital (Olins 2005). The Polish state as a holder of meta-capital (Bourdieu et al. 1994) accumulated multiple
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resources and symbolic capital is only one aspect of the state meta-capital. Indeed, the recorded field evidence suggests that, at the time of this investigation, the relevant types of field resources included: economic capital; human capital, cultural capital; social and political capital. In line with Bourdieu’s (1986) forms of capital, it is economic capital that forms the basis for performative discourse on nation branding.
The struggle for advancement of an autonomous field of nation branding in Poland involved particularly those agents which derived their statist capital from: (a) economic capital required to implement policies and its symbolic dimensions; (b) human capital within their structures; (c) social capital of networks; (d) cultural capital encapsulated in competences and expertise; (e) symbolic capital of reputation held by individual field actors; and (f) political capital. Finally, and most importantly, by deriving from those resources, the Polish field of power holds the decision-making capabilities with regards to the promotional policy goals and their directions, which, in return, has bearing on the quality of their relationship with nation branders. The above resources are highlighted in field discourse on nation branding.
While I do not reveal its ‘amounts’, the dominant indicators of cultural capital in the field have been indicated by capturing the ‘amount of institutional competences’; ‘professional experience in nation branding consultancy’; ‘amount of projects
accomplished’; ‘knowledge of place branding’; ‘amount of previously accomplished projects’; ‘knowledge of public relations techniques’; ‘amount of academic or professional publications on the subject of nation branding’; ‘academic titles’; ‘linguistic abilities’; ‘knowledge regarding images of the Polish state and the Polish nation’; and ‘market research expertise’. Additionally, a tacit feature of the field resourcing is social capital accumulated through access to the relevant institutional political and business networks (Zofia, personal interview, 2009). Finally, nation branding has been understood as a having potential to be exchanged into unspecified political careers (Darek, personal interview, 2009). Particularly, central to this study, ‘Nation brand building programme’, if successful, was seen as an opportunity to
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convert prestige derived from its accomplishment into political capital and was explicitly linked with a political career opportunity. In Bourdieusian terms, all the above, represent institutional resources accompanying the enactment of nation branding and correction of trajectories of performance. The findings section further accounts for how agents reported on this capital and used it to their advantage.
It is beyond the scope of this study to capture the amount of all sources of capital within the field. Later, its main narrative reveals those exchanges explicitly relating to practices signified as nation branding and its corresponding ‘revenue streams’ pursuit by nation branders. At this stage, however, I only indicate the relevance of sources of capitals and their links with the field. Moreover, I use ‘economic capital’ and ‘human capital’ to contextualise the positions in the field (Bourdieu 1986). The relevance of those capitals is articulated in a policy statement:
...Poland allocates on promotion of its overseas interests comparatively small funds, even if compared with budgets of commercial actors operating in Poland. Despite that there are significant differences in allocating funds into different areas of promotion, it is hard to argue that in any of those areas funding is sufficient. Therefore, we argue, that promotion of Poland is significantly underfinanced.
This argument is reinforced further if we compare budgets in Poland with relevant budgets of other countries in the region (e.g. Czech Republic, Hungary) which spend more on some aspects of promotion (e.g. economy, tourism) and are considerably smaller then Poland. The insufficient funding is particularly visible if we look at specific institutions, e.g. Swedish Institute has a budget eight times bigger than its corresponding Institute of Adam Mickiewicz in Warsaw. If
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forty times smaller. What makes the situation in Poland look
comparatively worse is that those institutions are well-known for cost- effectiveness and employ small number of personnel (up to 100 staff). The financial situation in Poland does not even compare with the British Council or the Goethe Institute frequently recalled in Poland
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2009a, p. 42-43).
The structuring contextual exercise has enabled me to sketch out the field structure. It was clear from the data archive that economic capital enables the Polish state actors to operate and this type of capital was derived from either the Polish state budget or the EU funds. Furthermore, human capital was considered by the Polish state actors as important to the field, particularly because pre-1989 promotional policies making was underinvested by the field of power in terms of manpower.
What is fundamental to understanding this section, and indeed is an indicator of the infancy of nation branding, is the fact that this communicative practice has become an additional, but not an exclusive, streams of capital revenue for the institutional field actors. This aside, at this stage, I present a map of the field structure based on ‘human capital’ and ‘economic capital’ as an indication of the ‘objective positions’ of the field actors. The financial data revealing economic capital presents an aggregated annual turnover of each field actors. In fact, nation branding has not been an exclusive source of economic capital generation, neither for public nor for private sector actors. The distribution of funds among actors has been cross-examined between the interview data, policy documents and financial reports. Despite the fact that nation branding has become a source of capital, all field actors, public and private, were engaged in
additional practices enabling economic capital exchanges. The field stratification that I present below is based on findings of aggregated annual economic capital, integrated with human capital of the institutional actors participating in performative discourse on nation branding. This procedure enables contextualisation of the field structure and captures the positions of the agents by using data for the year 2009 (Figure 1).
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This positioning map helps to understand the socio-economic conditions within the field and highlights structural relations between the agents. Although it is an oversimplification to claim that economic capital is dominant in the field, it drives the agency and the field itself. While economic capital is significant to the analysis of nation branders’ actions, human capital is an indication of the backstage resources of the state and non-state actors engaged in nation branding. Nevertheless, there are other types of capital crucial to understanding ‘the exchange rates’ (Swart 1997) between actors in the field. Economic and human capital, however, speak for redistributions in the field in terms of allowing access to the field by non-state actors. Put simply, labour relations in the field are being reconfigured and extended beyond its initial boundaries.
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FIGURE 2 THE POSITIONS OF AGENTS IN THE FIELD IN 2009