by Ricardo Abad
Impression management is the name of the game. In the World Expo 2010, staged in Shanghai, each country boasts in its pavilion the best that their nation can show the world – its “idealized self,” so to speak. Forget the backstage of financial woes, corruption, electoral fraud, unemployment, and gross inequalities. It’s time to put the best front stage act a country can muster, and in so doing win the respect and admiration of other nations. Some countries showcase their advances in technology, others their efforts to clean the environment. Still others display their magnificent arts and crafts, and some dwell on its people. Host China has the largest and tallest pavilion, towering over others at the center of the vast Expo grounds, a monument asserting the country’s strength, power, and grace -- a nation impressing the world of its great influence in world affairs. Indeed, the entire Expo is a gigantic front stage assertion as well: a league of nations telling the world that diverse countries can work together in harmony for the survival of planet Earth. The rhetoric is inspiring and the sights awesome, but as Goffman points out, one must learn to take these assertions with a little grain of salt.
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