Description
Book SynopsisThere 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.
Trade Review... Iver Neumann presents a bold new approach: the study of diplomacy as anthropology.... Neumann is well suited to parsing the grammar of this shared culture as a participant-observer of the diplomatic tribe.... By retrieving what this world looks and feels like, Neumann's work poses a series of questions that point the way to an exciting agenda for further research.
-- Nigel Gould-Davis * International Affairs *
With this bookNeumannthe recently appointed Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Sciencetakes on the ambitious task of providing a 'historically informed ethnography of diplomacyin which I ask what diplomats do and how they come to do it'. Based primarily on his experience at the Norwegian MFAand deploying an anthropologist’s perspectivethe result is a readableslim volume that is informativeintriguing and thought-provoking.... At Home with the Diplomats is in many ways a ground-breaking book.... And it is fun at the same time. If that is not a sin, then this is a book worth reading.
-- Jeremy Cresswell * The Hague Journal of Diplomacy *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Who Are They and Where Do They Come From?
Chapter 1. Abroad: The Emergence of Permanent Diplomacy
Chapter 2. At Home: The Emergence of the Foreign Ministry
Chapter 3. The Bureaucratic Mode of Knowledge Production
Chapter 4. To Be a Diplomat
Chapter 5. Diplomats Gendered and Classed
Conclusion: Diplomatic KnowledgeReferences
Index
