Short description:

This edited collection explores how national airlines in postcolonial states operate at the complex intersection of corporate branding, cultural governance, tourism development, and national identity formation.

Long description:

This edited collection explores how national airlines in postcolonial states operate at the complex intersection of corporate branding, cultural governance, tourism development, and national identity formation. It conceptualizes airplanes and airports as both tangible infrastructural spaces and symbolic domains that connect geographically distant regions while embodying aspirations of political sovereignty and cultural unity. Through diverse case studies spanning multiple continents, the book examines how commercial aviation's physical and cultural spaces either reinforce or challenge colonial histories and imperial legacies.

The volume reveals how modern Western imperial narratives were shaped through specific cultural and social negotiations that played out in airline branding, route networks, service standards, and cultural policies. It analyzes how airlines serve as vehicles for projecting soft power and cultural diplomacy while mediating between local traditions and global modernity. Drawing on rich empirical examples from Angola, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Jamaica, Kenya, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Lebanon, México, Peru, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States, this collection demonstrates how airlines employ sophisticated cultural management and corporate branding strategies to shape national and regional identities.

By examining airlines as sites where business strategy, cultural policy, and identity politics intersect, this collection advances our understanding of how transportation infrastructure shapes social imaginaries and power relations in our increasingly connected yet culturally diverse world. The research has important implications for scholars of business history, cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and transportation geography, while offering practical insights for policy makers and airline industry leaders.

Table of Contents:

1. Navigating Postcolonial Aeromobilities. An Introduction  2. Aeroméxico?s DNA Discounts: Viral Advertisement, Genomics, and Postcoloniality in the U.S. and Mexico  3. From Colonial Elitism to Mass Travel: Reading Air France Posters in the post-World War II Era  4. Cosmopolitan Nationalism: Public Images of Argentina's Commercial Airlines (1950-1973)  5. Flight Paths of Identity: Colonial Legacies, National Branding, and Cultural Expressions in East African Airways & Kenya Airways (1950-2000)  6. Gates of Departure: Sabena and the Visual Legacy of Belgian Colonial Governance  7. ?More highways in the sky and more Brazil on the routes around the world:? Aviation and National Development from a Postcolonial Perspective  8. Between the Middle East and the Metropole: Postcolonial Histories of Lebanon?s National Airline  9. Aero-regionalism: Branding, Mobility, and Settler Cultural Heritage in Regional Airlines in Australia  10. Flying a New Flag: The Transformation of Airline Aesthetics in Indonesia and South Africa as Reimagining Postcolonial Cultural Heritage  11. Navigating Angola?s History and Modernity: An insider perspective on TAAG?s Austral Inflight Magazine  12. Intra-regional Airline Connections: A Caribbean Identity Perspective  13. ?Come Fly with Me, Let's Float Down to Peru.? Managing Latin America in a Commercial Airline  14. Wardrobe Dynamics:  Cathay Pacific Female Flight Attendants? Changing Uniform for a City in Flux  15. Flying over the Postcolonial: Turkish Airlines in Sub-Saharan Africa  Afterword: Reflections of Aeromobilities ?Beyond the West?