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.
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, Mexico, 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 policymakers and airline industry leaders.
1. Navigating Postcolonial Aeromobilities. An Introduction
2.
Aeroméxicos 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 Lebanons 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 Angolas History and Modernity: An insider perspective on TAAGs
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
Bart Paul Vanspauwen is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology (INET-md) at NOVA University Lisbon (Portugal). He holds an MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from NOVA, as well as a postgraduate degree in cultural studies and a bachelors degree in literature from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). His research focuses on Afro-Portuguese and Portuguese-Brazilian cultural relations from a comparative postcolonial perspective. He previously held a postdoctoral fellowship for the Sounds of Tourism project at NOVA, exploring TAP Air Portugal, and is currently involved in the projects Constellations of Memory (University of Lisbon) and Lusophone Pop-Peripheral Music Networks (Fluminense Federal University).
Ińigo Sįnchez-Fuarros is a tenured researcher at the Institute of Heritage Sciences (INCIPIT) within the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He earned his PhD in anthropology from the University of Barcelona. His research explores the intersections of expressive culture, tourism, materiality, and critical heritage with particular emphasis on experimental methodologies combining ethnography, multimedia documentation, and sensory fieldwork techniques. He authored Cubaneando en Barcelona: Mśsica, migración y experiencia urbana (CSIC, 2012) and co-edited Ambiance, Tourism and the City (Routledge, 2023).
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