With the expansion of the European Union eastwards, nations have adopted various
strategies for being included in the European community. This article discusses
examples of cultural technologies used by post-communist countries in aligning with
Western Europe. It is argued that the phenomenon is in fact not new, as the
marketing of nations has occurred since at least the World’s Fairs of the
19th century. However, while the World’s Fairs addressed the nation-states
of high industrialism, cultural technologies are the features used in a
post-industrialized context, where it is more important to impress with abilities of
symbolic production rather than with traditional industrial production. In terms of
modernization processes, it can be argued that the increased emphasis on symbolic
production indicates a shift from techno-industrial modernization to techno-cultural modernization.
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