Romanian Cultural Institutes Abroad in the Making of National Culture: Politics and Culture

?From the Castle to the Agora : Romanian Cultural Institutes Abroad in the Making of National Culture? presents the Romanian cultural institutes abroad in the process of making and exporting national culture. It is a particularly interesting process, as it is not obvious what Romanian culture is, considering dualities like official and unofficial culture, tradition and innovation, culture and politics, modern and post-modern features. There are also tensions concerning practical strategies of functioning, namely between the center and the local branch and between the ?fortress? and the ?open space?, as represented by the concentrated model of the state and the networking, de-concentrated supranational model of EU. The discursive and administrative shifts in the Romanian cultural institutes abroad reflect macro sociological historical changes, namely the passage from modernity to post-modernity, the existence of two different models of discourse and strategy (the national state and the European Union), and an increasing cultural dimension as opposed to the decreasing role of diplomacy in the activities of Romanian cultural institutes abroad.