Afterword: The construction of markets for place branding and public diplomacy: A view from the north

This afterword is an attempt to draw some general conclusions from the case studies presented in the individual articles and try to situate the analyses from these in a broader context of globalisation and modernity. It is specifically argued that symbolic assets and actions are becoming increasingly important for the modern project, and hence that new types of value forms, e.g. sign value, are coming to be important as the basis for the transformation of nations and regions into commodities. The article ends with discussing some epistemological and ontological implications for future research in this area.