Friday Morning Linkage

10 August 2012, 1230 EDT

From Her Majesty’s Explorer.

The Battle of Aleppo continues, but things are looking worse for the rebels.
Matt Fay at Hegemonic Obsessions ruminates on what we debaters used to call the “Japan Prolif” scenario.
Jay says that the CCP is right to be worried about protests. I agree. But he’s got a model and stuff.
Robert Farley and Taylor Fravel discuss China on Rob’s bloggingheads subchannel, Foreign Entanglements. Yeah, well, has Rob ever crushed Taylor in Halo 2? Huh?
Tim Burke writes with great wisdom about how his intellectual focus has shifted since his first days as a professor.
I came across an interesting article by Christine Ferguson called “Surface Tension: Steampunk, Subculture, and the Ideology of Style” (PDF). Two of the big issues surrounding the development of steampunk as a genre and as an aesthetic center around postmodernism and imperialism. Steampunk would seem to be quintessentially postmodern, not so much in the sense of superficial aesthetics but in the sense of its pastiche-like quality — both in form and in substance. It also evinces a strong sense of nostalgia for the height of European imperialism, one that, despite various claims to subversive currents and sub-movements, seems pretty difficult to dislodge.
This will be news to most of my fellow bloggers, but I’ve got a shadow wordpress version of the Duck of Minerva up and running. I’ve got two major problems: disqus comments and the fact that the “best” importing procedures did something odd to the “more” tag. My google-fu hasn’t helped me much. If you’ve got suggestions, please email me.
No Saturday Morning Linkage this week. Maybe not on Sunday either. But there should be a podcast this weekend.
Like any of you care. Where’s the love people? Bloggers do not live on upward trending numbers of unique and return visitors alone. I mean, I slave over my RSS, Twitter, and Facebook feeds for a whole twenty minutes just to satisfy your insatiable needs for fresh content. Charli publishes field notes from the research trips she goes on. Field notes, people!
I mean… ah, what the heck, I’ll settle for a drink at the next ISA.
Speaking of which, is there any interest in an IR blogging reception? Excellent! Any suggestions for sponsors?

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.