Paradoxes of ‘public diplomacy’: Ethnographic perspectives on the European Union delegations in the antipodes Tess Altman and Cris Shore The University of Auckland ‘Public diplomacy’ is a term increasingly used among policy makers and academics, yet its meaning is ambiguous and contested. Advocates proclaim it as a new approach to statecraft entailing a participatory approach of shared meaning-making between politicians and the pub- lic markedly different from the elitist, Machiavellian inter-governmental practices of tradi- tional (‘Westphalian’) diplomacy. The European Union (EU) has embraced these ideals, proclaiming public diplomacy a cornerstone of European external relations policy. We exam- ine these claims in the context of the EU’s delegations to Australia and New Zealand. Using three ethnographic case studies, we highlight discrepancies between official discourses on pub- lic diplomacy and its practice. The participatory ideals of EU public diplomacy, we argue, are undermined by the EU’s preoccupation with image and branding, public relations and mar- keting techniques, and continuing reliance on traditional ‘backstage’ methods of diplomacy. We conclude by outlining the implications of these paradoxes for both anthropological research and EU external relations. Keywords: public diplomacy, EU delegations, EU external relations, soft power, political symbols, ethnographic perspectives INTRODUCTION: THE CONCEPT OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY Traditional diplomacy often conjures up images of aristocracy, handshakes and deal brokering, official banquets, and all the pomp and circumstance and backroom manoeuvring that tends to accompany a visiting head of state (Neumann 2012). The development of diplomacy parallels the transformation of international relations from the realm of kings and their emissaries to one of foreign policy, domestic politics and media manipulation (Brown 2001: 3696). Until the end of the Second World War, the rules of statecraft and diplomacy were governed by the legacy of the Treaty of West- phalia. Yet changes in the latter half of the twentieth century—including the Cold War, decolonisation, self-determination movements, the rise of human rights ideolo- gies, revolutions in information and communication technologies, and new challenges of climate change and global terrorism—have profoundly altered the international landscape and affected the trajectory of diplomacy (Brown 2001: 3696). These changes have contributed significantly to the rise of the term ‘public diplomacy’, a concept that The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2014) 25, 337–356 doi:10.1111/taja.12102 © 2014 Australian Anthropological Society 337