Last blog??

As I look at the syllabus for this section I realize that it is called science and criticism. It isn’t called what is the meaning of empire, or is Judith Butler’s book well written, it is called science and criticism. What we are supposed to be debating, or at least what I thought we are supposed to be debating is, whether or not IR is about explaining the world or critiquing it. Jesse gave his lecture and told us to critique the world, but mentioned that Prof. Jackson does not see IR this way. So I have to ask, where is this mythical show down between the Master and his Padwan? WHY ARE WE NOT DEBATING WHETHER IR IS A SCIENCE OR A TOOL FOR CRITIQUE?

Obviously Prof. Jackson takes an approach to teaching that can best be called the “So” approach. (http://veracity.univpubs.american.edu/weeklypast/041106/). While I happen to like this about him (I have taken him twice and enjoyed both classes very much) at some point or another I feel like we do need to grapple with this issue. I have written about it in my blog, but I really want to see how the class would handle this issue. But since the last debate starts next week I guess that won’t be happening. It’s sad really. I think it would have been interesting. I guess I will just have to conduct this debate with all the different voices in my head, or maybe find some free time and stop by office hours.

Matt Bank

The Value of a Life

Judith Butler likes to talk a lot in her book how not all people are mournable. That some people have been dehumanified and thus their deaths are not as important as real humans. I think she has a point that not all deaths are equal but she draws the wrong conclusion from this. She assumes that since some people’s death means more to us than other that we devalue the others. I think it’s the other way around. That natural state between two human beings is one of not caring. Someone in China right now is probably dying, but I don’t know them and have no connection to them so I don’t care. This isn’t because I devalue them, it’s because I haven’t gotten to know them and thus haven't assigned any value to them.

In February my grandfather died, somewhat unexpectedly. The two of us were very close and his death hit me pretty hard. Then a few weeks ago an old friend of mine from high school committed suicide. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years and while we were friends we weren’t that close. While his suicide was a little shocking, I more or less went about the rest of my day as usual. His death effected me more than some random person in Africa, but it didn’t crush me. I didn’t devalue him relative to my grandfather, but I did value my grandfather more.

So what does this mean? Well Judith Butler seems to be saying that we need to stop devaluing other people. But we aren’t doing that. It’s just that we never got a chance to know those people. Thus I propose that what we need to figure out how to do is build connections between different groups of people so that we begin to know them, and thus value them.

Matt Bank

Empire or Awsdef

Nathan talked about this subject in his blog entry for the week but I would like to add on a little bit more http://irdebate.blogspot.com/2006/04/empire-who-cares.html.

In class on Thursday we were arguing over what the meaning of empire is and who fits that model. Everything from Rome to the Catholic Church to the US to big business were mentioned. Yet all three of these entities are very different. The constructivist answer to that would be to say that the meaning of empire is changing. We are recreating the world and how it functions. But I would say that the meaning of empire has not changed, instead we are just too lazy to come up with new words for new situations.

Big business clearly can not force governments to do what it wants them to do. Yet they do span the globe and have a lot of power in the economic interactions of the world. Now maybe we could stretch the definition of empire to include this kind of actor but instead I am going to call them an awsdef, and from a new word. From now on awsdef will mean an actor that is very much identical to big business c. 2005 (I’ll leave it to Miriam Webster to come up with a better definition). But I know that somewhere out there in an IR class in China (since it is tomorrow there already) someone is trying to stretch the meaning of my new word and destroying its initial meaning. Maybe I should also make up a word for doing that. How about, to lokjih? So people stop lokjihing awsdef. You have already lokjihed empire so stay away from awsdef.

I think a problem in both the “real world” and the academic world is an inability to see situations as new. We couldn’t see Saddam Hussein as just Saddam Hussein, people had to try to compare him to Hitler or Bin Laden. People can’t understand America as America we have to try to compare it to Rome or China or Britain. Maybe new things can happen and appear in the real world. There are plenty of examples out there so I’m not going to list them, but if you want an example come ask me in class. But trust me, not everything has a comparable event in the past so stop with the lokjihing already.

Matt Bank

I am running out of catchy ideas for titles

It seems to me that as I read historical materialism I am stuck by how realist it is. Just as world systems theory appeared to be structural realism with money, so too is historical materialism. The example that stuck me the most was that both of them deal with the interactions of great powers. Realism doesn’t care what Seychelles does because they don’t have any military power. Historical material doesn’t care about them because they aren’t a great capitalist power that is fighting for resources. Historical materialism is dealing with the same states and the same rivalries that realism is, and is looking at them in a strikingly similar way. Thus historical materialism is realist economics, it’s all about the strong trying to get stronger by securing resources and markets.

The only possible exception would be the Soviet Union. Realism was obviously very concerned with the Soviet Union, and still is. But since they weren’t a capitalist power historical materialism wouldn’t care about them. Right? But I would argue that historical materialism should be concerned about them since they were just as much of an empire trying to control resources as the US, or any of the European powers ever were.

Ok so world systems theory and historical materialism both look like realism but what does this mean. Maybe it means that the world is an anarchic place which requires power and force (whether military or economic, although the two reinforce each other) to be able to survive or prosper. Thus as someone who sees a lot of value in realism I feel as though both of the two theories we read about this week are useful tools for me to have at my disposal. They serve as good corollaries to realism. And that’s about the best compliment I am going to give to a bunch of dirty hippies.

Matt Bank

life lessons

This whole feminism debate really gets at the point of this third section of our class. Is IR an analytical science meant to tell us how the world works, it is it a tool to critique the world. My own personal vote goes towards a science, but critical theory needs to remain around in some form or another. So I guess the question then becomes where? To answer this question I would like to give an analogy. It’s not a great analogy but it amuses me so I’m going to run with it anyways. When you were a little kid growing up you lived in the same house as your parents. They ran the house and you had to follow their rules. But eventually as you got older you didn’t want to follow all their rules so inevitably you moved out at one point or another. You had to leave the comfort of home to be able to live your own life. Critical IR theory needs to move out of its parents house in order to live its own lift. As long as it is a part of the IR household it will be held to the rules of IR by many scholars. These rules say that you should be trying to figure out how the world works and give advice on proper foreign policy moves. But that’s not what critical theory wants to do. Critical theory wants to try to change the world, not just describe it. So if critical theory goes out and gets its own apartment then it can do what it wants, when it wants.

So what does this mean in the real world? I feel that for Critical theory, to be able to do what it wants to do, needs to leave IR and form its own field. Name it what ever you want but it really ought to be separate. The two fields will always be close, as a family should be, just like physics and math, but they need to be separate. I feel that this way both can do what they want, and need, to do. If they remain living in the same house they will just argue and bicker and get angry. Just like people, different approaches, need their own space. So to critical theory I say, “I think it’s time that you take that big step. Go out into the real world and learn how to survive on your own. But you had better call once and week and come home for the holidays.”

Matt Bank

Feminism and the World

I have mentioned this before in one of my blog entries but and I will mention it again. I feel that the purpose of research in IR is to explain how the world works. Why states do what they do. That, in my humble opinion, is why there is IR research. So my problem with the article that Julie Mertus is that the first thing she does is tell a person story about when she was living in Yugoslavia. In statistics we would call that anecdotal evidence and the first thing that I learned on the first day of class in statistics is that anecdotal evidence is no good. Mrs. Mertus wants to hear the individual stories on individual people. That sounds good in theory and there is nothing wrong with wanted to connect to your fellow human, but the problem that arises is that it isn’t a very good way to understand the world. Unless she puts together a random sampling of all of the people in Yugoslavia at the time of the Kosovo crisis, and then talks to each of the people that are chosen in her sample she does not have valid data. It might be very interesting data, it probably has value to understanding how those individual people were living, and it would make a great book, but it doesn’t explain the world. Mrs. Mertus is doing very interesting research, but isn’t doing IR research.

I don’t want this to be construed as an attack on feminist theory. Feminist theory has its place (in the kitchen, just kidding but I had to get at lease one joke in here) but that place isn’t IR. I imagine it would fit much better in sociology, or psychology or something else like that. Individual stories can tell us something about the world we live in. But they are can’t tell us how the world works, unless they happen to be the stories of the people that are actually controlling the world, political leaders, military leaders, business leaders and such (notice how all of my examples contained the word leader, not average person). The feminist theory that Mrs. Mertus chooses to use is flawed from the start. Not by any fault of hers but because the way that it approaches IR does not fulfill the primary goal of IR, understanding how the world works.

Matt Bank

Reflections on Resolution

The seemingly obvious thing to talk about in the aftermath of our debate would be the whole what is a “consensus” debate. Did the realists ultimately win because they were able to show the logical flaw in the argument by the constructivists? Can the constructivists vote for the resolution if some people were not going to vote for it? Did the constructivists really make an attempt and building a consensus? But instead of talking about these things since I have already dealt with the whole Habermassian debate before I would like to talk about the resolution itself. The whole argument in the class seemed to deal with weather or not the resolution was morally valid with out the support of the realists but no one wondering if it was actually a good resolution or not. I personally do not think that it was a very good resolution. And the reason it isn’t is because of the compromises that were made between the liberals and the constructivists. The liberals allowed language into the resolution that dealt with changing norms, which they should have thought was crazy talk; while the constructivists allowed language that talked about interests and gains which they were actively trying to change. How can they say that they are going to change the norms of the world when they are voting for a resolution that is actively recreating those norms right in front of them? That is my biggest issue with the resolution. I guess maybe since everyone that voted for it had something in there that they liked they can focus on that aspect and ignore the others, but when it comes to implementing it there are going to be some serious problems since the two sides believe that they have given birth to two very different resolutions. But that will be a fight on a later day that I wont have to deal with so though luck for them.

Matt Bank