This volume examines the potentially deleterious impact of place branding on the social fabric, ecosystems and local economies of the places concerned. As the different essays show, place branding is a fundamentally political practice, often driven by hidden agendas that marginalize certain groups within society. Contributors explore place branding from a wide variety of angles, including: the role played by the visual arts in city branding; the applied arts, and speci cally the fashion industrys potential for shaping perceptions of a particular place; the different ways in which sport has been exploited by the political elites; the role of design in place branding, including the architectural design of sports stadia; and the potentially insidious economic and societal consequences of excessive consumption of branded places.

Pascale Cohen-Avenel is a full professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Paris Nanterre where she co-directs the CRPM, Centre de Recherches Pluridisciplinaires Multilingues. Her research focuses on national stereotypes in popular culture and globalization as well as on representations of violence in the Franco-German wars. Graham H. Roberts is a member of the Centre de Recherches Plurilingues et Multidisciplinaires (CRPM, EA 4418) at the University of Paris Nanterre. He is Associate Editor of the journals Film, Fashion and Consumption, and The International Journal of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles, which he co-founded in 2021 with Debbie Moorhouse of the University of Huddersfield in the UK.