Do you have someone in your life who is obsessed with public diplomacy or cultural relations?, do they read French? Is your other half asking you what you want for Christmas? Then PD Networks can recommnent the perfect present: it’s the Atlas de l’Influence Francaise au XXIe Siecle new from the Institut Francaise
It’s exactly what it sounds like it’s an atlas with a set of maps that plot France’s influence in the world across numerous spheres of activity: language, development, health, architecture, books, cinema, science, the cultural network etc. Each map is accompanied by a commentary and there are case studies of influence in different regions. You can see pages from the atlas here and there’s an interview the editor here
My copy turned up today so I haven’t had much of chance to look at the contents carefully but there’s an effort to explain why the concept of influence is different from soft power, influence is a much broader concept. For an up to date French view of where the game is this looks invaluable.
If you’re a foreign ministry or cultural relations organization that wants to make the case for what you do this looks a pretty valuable tool in two ways: either you can go ‘we ought to have something like that’ or you can wave it at the people with the money and go ‘look at all the things that the French are doing’.
Amazon will even gift wrap it for you.
Thanks to Louis Clerc (@luikki) for alerting me to this.