I had a nice life imitating art (or science) today. I was lecturing about identity and the stuff we political scientists have borrowed from social psychology to explain ethnic conflict today. The idea is to get my IR of Ethnic Conflict class exposed to the basics before we move on to the international relations issues that are the heart of this course.
So, today, I am quite aware of my identity and how my self-esteem depends on how I see my group and how others see my group. Then I notice a blog about Teaching Political Science which links to an article that focuses almost entirely on American Politics and a smidge on Comparative Politics. I would not mind it if the article was not entitled “Ten Things Political Scientists Know …” But since it entirely ignores International Relations (and Political Theory, I guees), I have a pretty gut level emotional response of the marginalization of the group with which I identify.
One of the upsides of residing in Canada has been that the border pretty much does away with imperialist Americanists trying to define the field only in terms of their narrow subfield (one that would be considered a sub-subfield of Comparative Politics in other countries, as it is in Canada).* Sure, I have long since realized that Americanists are pretty handy since they tend to insist that the grad students have strong quant skills which make them useful to those of us who are falling further behind on high tech skills.
* Canadian Politics is the parallel subfield up here, but Canadianists tend not to be so forceful and tend not to seek dominance (we are what we study?).
But moments like this make me realize:
- Americanists might still be pretty damned narrow-minded about what Political Science is, more so than the other subfields.
- My lecture today about the logic of invidious comparisons (explicating Horowitz 1985) is not just for my class but also for understanding why I am so provoked right now.
Canadianists often have a narrow conception of what political science is as well. It may be that the ‘domestic politics’ field in each country is more likely than other sub-fields to attract the ‘politics is elections’ types.
The other conclusion you might draw is: Why do we need an American subfield? Just make them part of comparative politics, working on some theoretical issues or within the area studies of the US. Of course, politics explains a great deal as to why we have an American subfield in the first place.
There is simply no comparison between a chosen field of study and ethnicity. In most countries what is called ethnicity is merely race with the genetics removed in favor of primordial culture. In places like Canada or the US where there is some degree of voluntary association involved in ethnic identification it is still not comparable. Nobody kills other people or dies to promote the study of certain branches of political science. Nobody makes funding of political science their single issue at elections the way for instance many American Jews do with regards to Israel. The only things that are comparable to ethnicity are the related “primordial” identities of race, nation, and some cases religion. Although as I noted before ethnicity is often racialized so the differences between these overlapping categories is not sharp at all.