Professor Julie Kaarbo discusses Foreign Policy Analysis.
Episode 4: Julie Kaarbo
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Rumor, Social Media, and the Question of Knowledge
Some time ago, Charli reviewed an article I published in International Organization. In that review, Charli asked how do we know what we ‘know’ about the nature of external states. At the time, I...
Why Americans Never Forget to Remember 9/11
As you know, the footage appeared live, as bodies began falling from the flaming and smoke-filled North Tower, as US Airlines Flight 175 was flown into the frame and South Tower at 0903, and as the...
Christianity and the Sino-American Relationship
Last week, the Economist reported on the expanding sway of Christianity in China. While the numbers are difficult to pin down, The Economist reports that some argue that the number of Christians in...
More identity Posts
Political Homophobia in Uganda and a (Very) Belated Apology
In what I suspect is the least auspicious debut ever made by a Duck guest blogger, six months after being welcomed by the Duck team, I'm finally posting. It turns out that starting a new job, prepping a new course, learning how to shovel snow, and attempting to finish a book manuscript all at once is not particularly conducive to being a good guest blogger. I'd like to thank the Duck team for their patience, and for their completely unwarranted confidence in still welcoming me to blog here. And I promise to do better from here on out. As Charli noted, my area of interest is in questions at...
Constructing the Democratic Peace
Democratic peace theory is featured prominently in the latest issues of two different major IR journals. First, in International Studies Perspectives, Jameson Lee Ungerer tells us that the democratic peace exemplifies in three respects the Lakatosian ideal of a progressive research program, and provides an overview of the research agenda from 1970s to the present. He describes many (though not all) of the key causal arguments claiming to explain the democratic peace, concluding that: Of all the theories examines, two [are] the most progressive: the economic norms explanation, which proposed...
The Hurt Locker, again
Duck of Minerva bloggers have already written quite a bit about "The Hurt Locker," which won the Best Picture prize at this week's Academy Awards ceremony. I saw the movie on DVD a few weeks ago and have been digesting some of the reactions to the film. Like many critics of this film, Michael Kamber of the NY Times offers a list of serious errors in "The Hurt Locker." Viewers see the bomb disposal team leave on missions without much other military support. The team members clear buildings by themselves, become skilled snipers and spotters when they stumble upon some British mercenaries, and...
Facebook Back in the Hot Seat
A few weeks ago Facebook unleashed its new Terms of Use on the unsuspecting user community. As anyone with a FB site knows, though the changes were touted as enabling greater user control over personal information, FB's new default settings enabled "Everyone" to view users' information unless users were savvy enough to update their settings - a change that caused the Electronic Privacy Information Center to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.Even worse, FB initially included profile pictures and friend lists as "public" information that could not be made private even by savvy...
Territoriality and Beyond
Stacie Goddard has a guest post at the IR Blog promoting her new book, Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy:In international relations, territory often appears indivisible: actors are unable to divide territory through negotiation, shared sovereignty, compensation, or other mechanisms of division... As the site of competing national and religious claims, it may seem little wonder that Jerusalem, Northern Ireland, Kashmir and Taiwan are indivisible; how could it be any other way?... It’s exactly this conventional wisdom that this book attempts to challenge.My central argument...
Identification and clientelism
Patrick Porter writes about two contending visions of the Afghan insurgency:Burke is playing down the economic angle. But there is a certain tension, or tradeoff, between ‘power’/'politics’ and ‘tribal vendettas’/'ethnicity.’Identity can define allegiance, but not exhaustively. Calculations about power balances can wreck the whole day of cultural ties.In Afghanistan, it is more prudent, given the impermanence with which different power brokers rule, to hedge, and at the right time, to flip, to change sides and align with the winning side. As Fontini Christie and Michael Semple argue:After...
Introduction to constructivist IR theory: a video lecture
Having uploaded my quick-and-dirty video APSA presentation, I thought I might also upload some other movies I've made over the years relating to international-relations theory and topics. The four-part series showcased below is an extended video supplement I did for "Introduction to International Politics." I've used the same lecture, more or less, ever since. If anyone cares, the content comes after one I posted a long time ago on typifications and social facts.Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4FYI, the images are all credited at the end.
Reconstructing nationalism
Nicole Itano of the Christian Science Monitor reports on a fascinating project that seeks to change the parameters of national identity in the Balkans:In this still-fragile region, history is often served up as a nationalistic tale that highlights the wrongs perpetrated by others. Now a group of historians from across the region is trying to change the way the past is taught in southeast Europe – from Croatia to Turkey – in an effort to encourage reconciliation rather than division."History plays an important role in shaping national identity," said Christina Koulouri, the editor of a series...