Book Chapter

Corporate Cosmopolitanism

Gillespie, Marie, Webb, Alban

2013,2012

Overview

The BBC World Service has derived much of its intellectual, creative and diplomatic significance from the diasporic broadcasters who have been at the heart of the BBC's foreign language services. Yet, across 80 years of overseas broadcasting they have remained largely absent from the public understanding of the World Service (including the BBC's narration of its own corporate story) and have not been accorded the kind of academic attention which they merit. This book seeks to redress these lacunae and to make visible the roles played by successive waves of exiled, refugee, dissident and migrant intellectuals and writers who, once assembled at Bush House, the London home of the World Service for over 70 years, helped to establish and renew the BBC's reputation as one of the world's most credible international broadcasters (Mansell 1982; Tusa 1992; Walker 1992). This reputation for trustworthiness holds today in many parts of the world despite British government funding through a parliamentary grant-inaid administered by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) 1 that prescribes where, when and in which languages the BBC broadcasts - and in so doing defines the parameters of its diplomatic functions (Gillespie, Webb and Mackay 2011; BBC Advertising 2011; BBC Trust 2007). 2 This book analyses the relationship between the diasporic engagements and diplomatic imperatives that have shaped the BBC World Service.

• Publisher: Routledge,Taylor & Francis Group
• Subject: Ethnic studies / Sociology
• ISBN: 9781138822962, 0415508800, 9780415508803, 1138822965