To further the ever-growing discipline of Public Diplomacy, I have been invited to present my project “Qatar in Paris” in the annual conference of the International Studies Association, "Emerging Scholars in Public Diplomacy". The conference is is to be held in Chicago, March 2025. The purpose of this project is to highlight a unique angle that extends sports diplomacy and public diplomacy to the realm of identity performances in creating a cosmopolitan image on the world stage.
In this project, I use the unfavourable coverage of the 2022 World Cup by a large portion of the press as a springboard to talk about Qatar's ownership of the football team Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and how it serves as a vehicle for the performance of national identity in the years after the competition. I contend that PSG's ownership provides a more pristine example of identity performance than the World Cup since the team's innate cosmopolitanism serves as a capital bridge between the Qatari owners of the team and the Cultural West. It is this capital that breaks down the outmoded dichotomies of "east vs. west" and "us vs. them."
This more cohesive personality, which results from the team's achievements stemming from a wide range of unique circumstances, creates what Norbert Elias refers to as a "group charisma." This charm, I argue, somewhat mitigates earlier unfavourable perceptions of Qatar and is more in line with an image of an urban, stylish, varied, and successful football squad assembled under the sponsorship of Qatar. One argument is that a key component of this process is the pre-existing army of fans ready to ignore criticism in exchange for standing in for the team in public settings. This reasoning is also used to examine PSG's transfer policy, which has included the club bringing in a number of the most well-known football players in the world since the QSI took over. It is stated here that what Markowitz and Rensman refer to as "the Beckham effect" serves as a catalyst for enhancing Qatar's brand image by shifting the focus of the football world from established powerbrokers to up-and-coming players.
The key to this argument is to combine Michael Billig's ideas on banal nationalism with the celebrity power of some of the most well-known figures on the globe. My proposed result is a type of banal cosmopolitanism that boosts Qatar's reputation internationally by giving it entry to a dominant sports culture that was previously out of its grasp. In closing, the project poses some important queries regarding this attempt at identity performance. How useful is PSG ownership for Qatari nationals and those critical voices who live abroad as a course of association? Even for the supporters who have supported PSG before the QSI takeover, does it now amount to social nationalism on the part of the Qatari state to play for or even support the club?
Employing autoethnography as a research method, this study investigates critical questions regarding the effectiveness of PSG ownership as a vector of identification for both Qatari citizens and international audiences. Is the ownership of PSG by the Qatar Sports Investment Authority really a kind of subdued nationalism that may enhance the Gulf state's visibility to a worldwide sports audience? Lastly, will this identity performance succeed or fail on the pitch, and if it fails, will this lead to the type of subtle disempowerment that has been more noticeable in the lead-up to and following the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar?
