At Home with the Diplomats

There is a vast gulf between the public face of diplomacy and the opinions and actions that take place behind embassy doors. In At Home with the Diplomats, Iver B. Neumann offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of a foreign ministry.

Iver B. Neumann is Professor and Director of Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. He is the author of Uses of the Other: The "East" in European Identity Formation and coauthor most recently of Governing the Global Polity: Practice, Mentality, Rationality.

With this bookNeumannthe recently appointed Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Sciencetakes on the ambitious task of providing a 'historically informed ethnography of diplomacyin which I ask what diplomats do and how they come to do it'. Based primarily on his experience at the Norwegian MFAand deploying an anthropologist’s perspectivethe result is a readableslim volume that is informativeintriguing and thought-provoking.... At Home with the Diplomats is in many ways a ground-breaking book.... And it is fun at the same time. If that is not a sin, then this is a book worth reading.

Nigel Gould-Davis:

... Iver Neumann presents a bold new approach: the study of diplomacy as anthropology.... Neumann is well suited to parsing the grammar of this shared culture as a participant-observer of the diplomatic tribe.... By retrieving what this world looks and feels like, Neumann's work poses a series of questions that point the way to an exciting agenda for further research.

Paul Sharp, University of Minnesota Duluth, author of Diplomatic Theory of International Relations:

What is it actually like to be a diplomat, and what do diplomats actually do when they practice diplomacy? Reflecting on these questions, Iver B. Neumann combines sociological theory and anthropological insight, leavened by personal experience and judgment, to produce an extraordinary and pathbreaking ethnography of diplomacy. In so doing, however, he also demonstrates just how important it is that the study of international relations extends beyond its present narrow theoretical and methodological confines if it is to produce knowledge which is both valuable and interesting to people living in an era of transformation and growing uncertainty.

Cris Shore, The University of Auckland:

Based on a close ethnographic and historical analysis of Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iver B. Neumann’s book provides a detailed, fascinating insider account of the behavior of Norwegian diplomats. Neumann offers critical anthropological insight into the wider world of international diplomacy from its origins to the present day, including the cultural norms and values that define what it means to be a diplomat in our increasingly globalized world. A valuable contribution to the anthropology of elites and the study of modern government, this book should be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding modern bureaucracy and contemporary statecraft.