Sunday, October 27, 2013

Week 9 – Rethinking War (Laura Sjoberg, Gendering Global Conflict) - Part 1

Gendering Global Conflict, yet another book during the majority of which my reaction was, “Yes! Exactly!” I am particularly drawn to Sjoberg’s quote from Annick Wibben’s work: “the insistence on a singular narrative is itself a form of violence” (p. 41). I think this is something we ought to discuss in class.

Of course, the exclusion of gender perspectives constitutes, as Sjoberg argues, a grave shortcoming of IR as a discipline. Some scholars proclaim to have “heard” the call of feminists for integrating gendered analysis into IR research writ large. Some of these scholars thus “correct” for this by adding a chapter (often at the end) about gender (often framed as a crosscutting issue), as though by doing this it somehow erases the masculinized analytical lenses they employ throughout the majority of the rest of their work! I cannot say with certainty, but it seems to me that this faux-feminism actually does more harm than good. Although it appears to be a step in the right direction on account of the fact that some would argue that a chapter about gender is better than no chapter about gender (and that the perfect cannot become the enemy of the good), a separate gender analysis—particularly one that barely contradicts the underlying assumptions of all the other chapters—gives readers the false comfort that the book is somehow “balanced.” It is about as intellectually honest to say that a chapter about gender balances an otherwise masculine account of international relations as it is to argue that putting more women in power will lead to peace; both are, in my view, laughably disingenuous statements. This practice actually exemplifies the continuing dominance of masculine hierarchies within IR scholarship.

Sjoberg states that the book is “(not only multi-method but) multi-epistemological” (p. 56). What does she mean by this? On what epistemological traditions does she rely? This made me think of something Ann said in class: that some feminists seek to uncover truths and denaturalize assumptions about women’s status by using statistics. Is this what Sjoberg means or is she being somehow more tolerant (or inclusive) of different philosophical ontological orientations?


“I argue that feminist work can only be transformative of war studies if it convinces war studies to transform” (p. 57). Sjoberg argues that it necessarily follows that “convincing” can only occur if there is “engagement”—that feminist work must actively engage with war studies; it cannot simply retreat into debating within its own contours, ignoring the very object that it critiques. How do we know then when engagement causes, as Zalewski says, “critical atrophy” (p. 57)? How can critical theorists (regardless of their substantive orientation—feminist, post-colonialist, Marxist, etc.) learn to recognize what constitutes a decent level of engagement: one that sufficiently participates in discussions with dominant voices so to have persuasive power, but at the same time does not become overwhelmed by the legitimacy it grants those dominant voices?

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Onuf, part three... Or, uh, WTF????

I was tempted to post this as my discussion question yesterday after finishing the book:

"???????????????????????????????? .... brain overload... mind melt... total systems failure."

But I decided instead to 'marinate' in the millions of thoughts and questions I have jotted down on little post-its tucked in throughout the book. After talking to PTJ on Friday, I got a clearer sense of how to engage with the book: Onuf uses rules/rule as a [*ahem*] framework through which to view the historical and contemporary world. But his style is such that he takes you down one avenue of thought just to show you that you are going the wrong way! The first part of the book reveals that rules are really about rule; that order is really just privilege; that rule is an active process of seizing and instituting. I would have most likely missed this if PTJ hadn't called attention to it, but then Onuf turns this all upside down in Part 2 by revealing that the power or legitimacy or authority vested in these rules stems from the claim that they are authorless... that there is no claimant. It is one thing to argue that universals are socially and historically situated (one reading of 'rules are really about rule') - which I think most of us by now are like "uh, duh" - but it is entirely another thing to question or unearth where that authority comes from - which is that it comes from making it history-less. Pretty cool.

Of course, there are a hundred other threads of possible discussions in this book, several of which WIllow and Horia have already pointed out. I'm fairly certain I could grow ancient untangling the myriad threads of thought I came across. Onuf makes me feel illiterate. Seriously. Was he a monk in some previous existence to be able to sequester himself to 'closely read' these multitudes of [very dense] texts??

Instead, I will share what struck me the most from World of Our Making, which is his use of epigraphs. They tell a story. In fact, for me at least, they weave together the story of his entire book in a way that is both elegant (not KKV elegance, fyi) and devious.

He starts the book with Goethe:

"It is written, "In the beginning was the Word!"
Already I have to stop! Who'll help me on?
It's impossible to put such trust in the Word!
I must translate some other way
If I am truly enlightened by the spirit.
It is written: "In the beginning was the Thought!"
Think hard of that first line,
Make sure that your pen does not outrun itself!
Is it the Thought that moves and creates everything?
It should be: "In the beginning was the Power!"
Yet even as I write it down,
Already something warns me not to keep it.
The spirit helps me! All at once I see the answer
And write confidently, "In the beginning was the Deed!" 

Part 1: Rules starts with Foucault (The Archeology of Knowledge):
What, in short, we wish to do is dispense with 'things'. To 'depresentify' them. ... To substitute for the enigmatic treasure of 'things' anterior to discourse, the regular formation of objects that emerge only in discourse. To define these objects without reference to the ground, the foundation of things, but by relating them to the body of rules that enable them to form as objects of a discourse and thus constitute the conditions of their historical appearance.

Chapter 1: Constructivism begins with Wittgenstein:
Language - I want to say - 
is a refinement, im Anfang war die Tat
('in the beginning was the deed').

Part 2: Rule starts again with Foucault (Language, Counter-Memory, Practice):
Rules are empty in themselves, violent and unfinalized; they are impersonal and can be bent to any purpose. The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules ... 

Chapter 8: Rationality and Resources ends with Wittgenstein:
...the difficulty - I might say - is not that of finding the solution but rather of recognizing as the solution something that looks as if it were only preliminary to it ... the solution of the difficulty is a description, if we give it the right place in our considerations. If we dwell upon it, and do not try to get beyond it.
The difficulty here is: to stop.

And he ends the book with Goethe again:
All theory, dear friend, is gray -
The Golden tree of life is green.

I will not offer any more interpretations, but perhaps we can discuss this 'strategery' (one of the only good things to come of George W. in my humble opinion) and what it might mean tomorrow.


Onuf- World of Our Making- part 2


 Onuf uses close readings to “supply materials for a disciplinary construction project.” (p. 23) For him, IR has as its central puzzles the “need for order, equilibrium, or cooperation in face of unconfined political activities.” (p. 14) He has doubts about anarchy as a central/defining feature of IR. Instead, he looks at reality as being constructed to begin with. His central idea is that human beings construct society and society constructs humans out of inner nature and outer nature (of material circumstances) (p. 46) He does not see a sharp distinction between social and material reality. Instead, people and societies construct each other, but this is not done “wholly out of mind.”
In his SEARCH for ways to explain how “rules make reality social”, Onuf employs close readings in a wide range of disciplines.

Here are some questions...thoughts I had as I read the text:

1. ) How does the figure on page 57 compare with PTJ’s matrix on methodological approaches?

2.) In the opening to chapter 3, Onuf states “Reasoning takes practice; cognition is conduct.” (p. 96) On page 97, he then goes on to talk about “stages” of moral development (with reference to Piaget and Kohlberg). When I was teaching at a private school in Los Angeles, the school used the Kohlberg ideas of moral development and we, as teachers, were supposed to discuss what “stage” we felt the kids were in for their moral development. I took advantage of my position as a part-time music teacher to not engage in these discussions as I did not agree with placing kids into categories in this way. For Onuf, cognition is mindful and reasoning is about learning and knowing how to use knowledge. But, while he does not state a needed preference of an order or sequence to stages, it seems implicit in this formulation. For Onuf, “Practice and consciousness taken together yield judgment. We do not simply learn to respond to instruction-, directive-, and commitment-rules, having learned to recognize them in successive states of development. We judge them differently, once we have learned how to, and respond accordingly.” (p. 119) This statement seems contradictory because he is saying we do not respond, but then we learn how to respond. Is this a point about the level of consciousness of these states/stages? I know that at the high school where I worked that the students had workshops on the stages and were given opportunities to “practice” their moral development through community service. Does the practice then stay conscious, and, if so, what does that say about the moral aspects of these stages and how they are performed?

2.) Onuf’s discussion of gender on pp. 125-26 attempts to move beyond the binary of women’s concerns as concrete and men’s concerns as abstract. Instead he proposes abduction- with “an ethic of affect, of honor and pity.” He offers, that “people choose different categories of reasoning to deal with moral dilemmas.” (pl. 126). Thus, the way that people reason is based on the rules that are supported - but what happens when people have conflicting messages  about rules because of belonging/sensing in multiple identities? 

Rethinking the World (part 1)

I buy a ton of what Onuf is saying (or perhaps more accurately, a ton of what I understand Onuf to be saying, which may be a decidedly smaller sample from the population *statistics! winky face*). Therefore, there are large swaths of this book that I will not comment on via this blog post. Here's a first thought (I'll probably post more follow up materials tomorrow morning--I'm embarrassingly still processing the latter part of the book!).

Besides being irritated at Onuf's appreciation of some of Clifford Geertz's work, which (although I have obviously not read it all) I cannot say I share, I find Onuf's discussion of culture in chapter 3 to revert back to the structuralism he criticizes in earlier chapters. Take for instance the statement: "to the extent that a guilt culture, like that of the West, creates a conspicuous public place for rights, the point is not just that such rules need not be internalized, but that the response to their violation is…" (p. 123). I need not to finish the quote. My point is that Onuf ends up treating culture as a static category (just like Geertz!… Although Geertz professes that it is not at all static, that claim does not seem to hold up against how he actually talks about "what culture does"). I also do not see Onuf's attempt to mitigate the problem caused by the way he refers to geographically/temporally/population-linked cultural attributes as sufficiently corrective ("That the Balinese favor instruction-rules, or men abstraction, are generalizations admitting to significant individual variation, and not categorical statements" p. 126). This inadequacy comes from the fact that Onuf corrects for "abstracting" diversity into broad categories. He does not show that (1) cultural "attributes" or identities, and (2) patterns of interaction among actors are co-constitutive. Can culture be anything but constructed in the same manner as "rules"? Do you find this internal contradiction to be damning?

...And a definitional issue, Onuf says: "In the introduction I define as political whatever the members of a social unit decide is important for their unit. This is implicitly a distributive view of politics (Young 1968b: 65-78). The criterion of importance must be taken to mean: whatever might be important enough that its distribution is contested" (p. 229). Can moral and/or social issues (i.e. equal protection of individuals who are not cis-gender, heterosexual) really be reduced to distributional issues (the issue of marriage benefits for homosexual couples, sure, but otherwise?)? I'm not convinced. Thus, Onuf's definition of that which constitutes "political," albeit still constructivist (in the sense that actors produce notions of distributive importance), is narrow for not including other types of political issues that are of a non-distributive character. 

(I also appreciate Onuf's discussion of Wittgenstein because, at this point, I feel I need a lens through which to interpret my first reading of some of his work.)

Sunday, October 13, 2013

On Global Order


In 2008 Jean Pierre Bemba, a Congolese former rebel leader and an acting senator was arrested in Brussels and taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The basis of his arrest was the accusation that while helping the president of the Central African Republic to fight an insurgency, Jean-Pierre Bemba troops committed violations against humanity (including acts of torture, massive rapes and even incidence of cannibalism). Sadly enough, what make Jean Pierre Bemba’s arrest remarkable is not the gravity of the crimes that his troops allegedly committed but also the selectivity of the ICC. At the same time as Jean Pierre Bemba was indicted and arrested President Kagame of Rwanda and Museveni of Uganda had long been accused of crimes against humanity in their countries and in the Congo. So long as Kagame and Museveni are in good terms with the big dogs in the Arena (i.e. the US, England and other big players) their involvement in the Congolese conflict and the acts of barbarity that their armies committed in the Congo will never be accounted for. That is a crude slice of African politics. That is how most Africans understand the concept of “world order”.

I have an uneasiness to engage Andrew Hurrell since his work is more descriptive than argumentative. For the most part, his description of the changing nature of the international space is accurate, as far I am concerned. However, I am not convinced that the “patterns of governance and institutionalization in world politics have already changed,” as Hurell seem to suggest. In part, it is because Hurell does not convincingly elaborate on the directionality or nature of the so-called “change”. Secondly, the diffusion of norms or values and the maintenance of “order” continue to essentially be subject to political, military and economic powers. Jean Pierre Bemba was arrested not because he violated values or norms of warfare (which he did). Kagame, Museveni and George Bush violated international norms as well, but they were never arrested. Jean Pierre Bemba was arrested because he was not on the side of the most powerful.

I am wiling to admit that the centrality of the state has been affected since the end of the Cold War and the deepening of economic interdependence. Non-state actors such as NGOs, INGOs, and even insurgent groups such as AL Qaida and Boko Haram, have been able to make their voice heard and influence at some extent the course of the international politics. However, for developing countries, it seems that the diffusion of international norms, values and the maintenance of “world order” continue to depend on the decisions of the most powerful.

For instance, the chief of IMF, Christine Lagarde, just warned that a US default would send the global economy into recession. Certainly, “liberal solidarism complicates” the question of legitimacy, and economic interdependence has caused fissures in the sovereignty of peripheral economies. For, instance many African states rely on international aid and bilateral cooperation for their annual budgets (Moyo, 2009, and Collier, 2007), this put their governments at the mercy of the donor community. I consider “liberal solidarism” as a materialization of the dominant strategy. This being said, is there a substantial difference between “pluralism” and liberal solidarism? And what does the “world order” represent for you? Finally, can we say that the “patterns of governance and institutionalization in world politics” have changed while our language, our money, our policies and our military continue to influence the majority of the world?       

Sunday, October 06, 2013

"Is Science Multicultural?": Part 2!

And now, To pile on to Willow’s observations…. This text sent me back to our ongoing discussion of why and how we should be trying to reclaim understandings of science and reason rather than ceding to the center the ability to define and own these ideas as central concepts of debate. Harding engages these questions also—why bother trying to change understandings of “objectivity” and “neutrality” and “science?” Her resulting argument about the rhetorical power of these words and their association with central positions of power echoes our conversations in class, but I can’t help but wonder whether the idea that these words are an important part of the power struggle over what constitutes the discipline is missing a, maybe not more important, but certainly just as important, issue: how do these concepts underlie our ability to seek and produce knowledge, the paths available to us? Given that much of the text actually sheds light on that question, I found it odd not to see it clearly referenced in her direct discussion of why it was important to redefine these terms. Oh, I’m supposed to pose a question about this? How about this one: Why should we be concerned about using these words rather than others? I don’t want to say is their value “just” rhetorical, because I actually think rhetoric is really important and substantive because it shapes our understandings. But what is the purpose of that reshaping? Should some of those possible purposes be considered more important than others? To borrow the statement DeRaismes keeps using, if DeRaismes defines what she does as scientific inquiry that is expanding knowledge, does she have to care if anybody else thinks so, too? I really wanted to be 100% on board with Harding’s thoughts on the “strong objectivity” program of work. Her argument that we should separate objectivity, which she is hesitant to define but links roughly to our desire to produce knowledge consistent with “natural order” or “nature’s regularities,” from neutrality, which she argues masks the politics of the powerful position and inhibits reflection on that positionality, is a compelling one. I do think that a broader reflection on the assumptions, norms, and power distributions that underlie our inquiries would let us expand knowledge and more meaningfully evaluate competing claims of description, explanation, and understanding. But even after re-reading this chapter a few times, I’m left confused as to what this would really look like when we take this approach and use it. Harding is adamant that what she is proposing is distinct from a relativism in which all claims are equally valid, their value claims both examined and undermined by relative evaluation, and their relationship to “facts,” “observations,” or the “natural order” is unimportant. But I’m still struggling to grasp how we would really evaluate competing claims and the extent to which that comparison should be an objective of the process of scientific inquiry. The repeated use of the term “natural order” also gave me pause—the term felt like an attempt to have dualism without being dualist. While I sort of felt what she meant, and I want it to make sense (because it made sense to me), I wonder whether that’s logically possible. This is where the issue of whether we’re reclaiming objectivity for purely rhetorical purposes gets important—as an attempt to assert that reflective work conscious of the scholar as embedded and inevitably influenced by context is still reliable science, can we have our cake and eat it too on the presence of an approximate-able, if unknowable, “natural order” in a world inextricable of our observation of it? I may be second-guessing myself because I liked this book too much, and any time something seems to offer up answers that make sense I get worried it could be too good to be true (and it usually is, because we probably wouldn't spend a lot of time debating these issues if someone had a perfect answer ready to go). But I think there are some instabilities here worth leaning into.

"Is Science Multicultural?"


In having her book title as a question, Harding immediately pulls the reader into the role of questioning assumptions about what science is, should be, has and can include. 

1. Universality/relativism/standpoints....
I wrote a paper for an undergraduate music history seminar on the Baroque period on the conquest, conversion, and conversation between Spain and Mexico through a music history lens. While it was only an initial examination of the topic, I was interested to learn about how percussion and flute instruments were introduced to Europe from the Americas. I also learned about how the Catholic Church used music as a tool for conversion. The reason I am bringing this up is that there are so many parallels between the points that Harding makes about Eurocentrism and how European music history has been taught. This includes the narrative of how instruments developed, as an indicator of advancement in technology, as well as the myth of the universality and “advancement” of Western music. For example, many scholars/historians of European music have argued that music transcends culture, but there are numerous examples that this is not the case, instead, music is rooted in social, historical and political contexts, languages, and expectations.
In Is Science Multicultural?, Sandra Harding argues for an understanding of science that is inclusive of global and local histories and interactions. The underlying issue of Eurocentric models of science/technology is that these narratives “fail to acknowledge” (p. 36) these interactions resulting from centuries of trade, expansion, and exploitation.
I think the main point is that by articulating a standpoint, all contributions to knowledge are then a piece of this universal thing called “science”. By refusing to be “relative,” Harding is claiming space for voices, histories, and cultures that have actually been part of science, but just not acknowledged.
Again, I feel frustrated that the problem is that only those with privilege can “choose” their standpoint as postcolonial or feminist, but since this is a choice, many of these narratives of Europe’s expansion and science/technology contributions still persist.

2. “cultures as toolboxes”...what does this mean? Harding says, “knowledge proves to be a resource for the collective growth of human knowledge about that natural world.” (p. 69) And, again on p. 83- she talks about postcolonial and northern feminisms ability to make contributions as dependent on “the ability of each to make use of the local resources at their disposal.”
Ok, so what does it mean for the global/local construct when cultural knowledge is viewed as a resource? How can “local” knowledge be used by postcolonial feminist standpoints without the local being “used” in a negative sense? I pull this out into thinking about fieldwork and thinking about how various disciplines/scholars have conceptualized/problematized how to represent and make “use” of knowledge. If the “local” is not always “internal” (p. 121) (apologies- some scare quotes are hers, some are mine, inspired by hers....), how does it become also external or included and by whom? Where do these dialogues occur and what/where is this “multiplicity of local resources” (p. 194) located in dominant discourses? As an international communications scholar, I am also thinking about the implications of these questions. Are multiple voices being heard more because of new media and possibilities for content creation in multiple spaces/spheres? But, I keep coming back to the Inayatullah and Blaney piece where they insist that their work not become another piece of evidence for “larger N” studies. How do all these voices then become appropriated, represented, understood, without perpetuating the same dynamics as articulated by Harding?