The State: A Modern Love Story or a Chilling Tale of Anarchy?

One of my favourite articles in IR theory is Ken Booth's John Vincent Memorial Lecture (1994) which was published in International Affairs: "The camera always lies. We all know that childhood holidays were not always sunny, or full of smiles, but the material (photographic) evidence now suggests otherwise. We know that the camera always lies, yet we conspire to believe the opposite. We conspire to believe that the camera objectively records the truth; the cliche asserts that it never lies".

We need to be pay attention to the ways in which we symbolically structure 'the international' through our preconceived ideas of what we think qualifies as 'international relations'. I made these 'mash up' YouTube trailers to illustrate how the familiar stock of images we associate with international politics can produce different types of readings about the state. What struck me was how important background conditions (e.g. soundtracks, aesthetic and visual considerations) produce different readings of a text or an idea in everyday life. 

International Relations is an interpretative discipline rather than a mimetic one. This means that international relations does not mirror (mimesis) the world out there but is actively engaged in taking vignettes or snapshots of what it thinks international politics looks like. Following from this is the importance of thinking of key concepts within international relations away from the 'comfort zone' of cliche. I have taken images traditionally associated with contemporary international relations (From Thatcher to Gorbachev to Aung San Suu Kyi) in order to see how these can be made to tell different stories about progress and modernity according to editorial placement of sounds, signs and images. 

These formed part of my lecture on our first year module Introduction to Key Concepts and Issues in International Relations. Has international politics suffered as a result of the love affair with the state? Has the study of international relations and international theory been held hostage to the story of anarchy and its haunting within international politics? 

These videos hope to encourage discussion around the placement of the state within the modern political experience. The state is a moral and ethical domain (thanks Professor Hegel for this point) and it is important that we explore its standing within contemporary discourse. 

The State: A Modern Love Story

The State: A Chilling Tale of Anarchy

The Think Tank Policy Assignment: Authentic Assessment in the Dilemmas of International Ethics?

Rationale for the Think Tank Policy Task

The Think Tank Policy Task is modelled on the Carnegie Council’s Junior Fellows Program, which is targeted at graduates in political science and associated fields. The Think Tank Policy Task is designed to encourage critical reflection of the applied dimensions of ethics within international relations by considering the policy-relevant implications of ethics within IR. Students will be required to identify a policy area within IR and link these to ethical concerns. 

Students are required to devise a hypothetical ‘think tank’ around a substantive issue within IR and put together a (1,500 word) briefing paper and a print-ready pamphlet which promotes the agenda of their 'think tank' (no more than 1,000 words). These will be marked together and file submission details will be available under the 'assessment tab' in Blackboard. 

The briefing paper and print-ready pamphlet will be submitted and marked together in accordance with the standard University grading scheme. Students will also present their think-tank ideas in the last week of semester (week 12 - December 12 2013) and this will function as a substantive component of the way we provide feedback on the task itself. 

This assessment is explicitly linked to the employability agenda by encouraging work-ready skills for students in their final year of undergraduate studies. Students will be provided with a number of examples of Think Tank policy briefings and pamphlets via the module Blackboard site. 

The Think Tank Policy Task is designed to allow for an authentic assessment of the challenges of policy work within the field of politics and international relations. The task is designed to encourage:

• Critical thinking skills, especially in making applied policy judgements within international relations (IR);

• Applied knowledge, by encouraging students to perform a 'real world’ task and construct appropriate policy recommendations;

• Employability, by encouraging students to think reflexively about the value of social science research within policy networks in IR;

• Active Citizenship, by encouraging students to contribute authoritatively and meaningfully to policy debates within IR.

What areas can I look at in the Think Tank Policy Task?
There are no limits on the topics you can select as part of the Think Tank Policy Task. You must be able to demonstrate why a given topic or theme has ethical significance in both the practice and study of International Relations. If you are in doubt, please ensure you speak with your seminar leader (Greg, Christian) or with the module leader (Thomas Moore).

Uploading Your File

Turnitin currently accepts the following file types for upload into an assignment:

The file size may not exceed 20 MB. Files of larger size may be reduced in size by removal of non-text content. Files that are password protected, encrypted, hidden, system files, or read only files cannot be uploaded or submitted to Turnitin.

• Microsoft Word® (DOC and DOCX)

• Corel WordPerfect®

• HTML

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• Plain text (TXT)

• Rich Text Format (RTF)

• Portable Document Format (PDF)

• Hangul (HWP)

I am a pirate King? Geopolitics, piracy and the international

The word piracy is derived from the Greek peiran (to test, to try, to risk) and implicit in this definition of piracy is an assumption about the spatial ordering of the sea vis-à-vis the earth. 

This paper examines the geopolitical framing of piracy in the international thought of Carl Schmitt and identifies the metaphoric value of piracy for understanding the emergence of geopolitical orders. 

Dispossessed of the illusions of the leviathan that accompany Classical realist interpretations of international relations, the account of international politics as a discourse of piracy allows us to understand the political articulation of spatial orders within world politics. Carl Schmitt declares the pirate to be ‘the enemy of the human race’ (hostis generes humani) and this paper examines how piracy is attached to complex geopolitical orders concerned with the allocation of space, scale and property in international politics. 

Piracy tests the legitimacy of international orders and, in so doing, gestures at popular narratives concerned with discourses of legitimacy and illegitimacy in world politics. A preoccupation with the ontological status of anarchy in world politics (or, status naturalis) has meant that the politics of acquiring space has been marginalized from the popular narrative of world politics. The pirate disturbs political order, allowing us to see how transgressions in order are understood as legal, criminal or exceptional in international politics.

Pedagogic Questions: Teaching Popular Culture and World Politics

What should the status of pop culture be in 'traditional' disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities? 

Don't worry, I'm not going to give up the focus in the blog of teaching and thinking about ethics. But thought I'd share some thoughts on the relationship between popular culture and world politics in the curriculum. If we started a first year module in International Relations by getting students to watch Independence Day or Lord of the Flies would we be denying them the opportunity to engage with the traditional paradigms of international relations long-associated with undergraduate programmes in international politics?

As I type today's blog entry from the Popular Culture and World Politics at Stockholm University, I'm Can and indeed should we engage the visual, the aesthetic, the poetical in thinking about pedagogy in international politics?
conscious of the fact that the discourses of international relations are largely taught (and processed) as textual discourses.

Nick Robinson (University of Leeds) asks: Should we be using popular culture as an artefact in its own right or just as a way (a pedagogical tool) to open up theory in the discipline of International Relations?
If we bring popular culture into the IR curriculum does this mean that you are 'dumbing down' the discipline?

There are important question to reflect upon as the panel progresses, do students get something extra from thinking about how international politics is iterated through forms of popular culture?

Is there a danger that if we don't think about different forms that world politics takes that we replicate the vision of international politics as depicted in Baylis and Smith's Globalization of World Politics. This is a world which starts with anarchy (the ontological problem of IR), suggests that the world has liberal institutions (yes, but, so what?), is formed exploitatively through markets (Marxists R Us) and then has a few 'issues' to do with the left out (post-colonialism, gender, sexualities etc).

We should be not treating IR theory as flattened accounts of the international system, but locating the co-constitutive nature of both traditional theory and popular culture artefacts in thinking about international politics.

Watch this space for further thoughts.

P.S. Thanks to the panel for a great discussion: Matt Davies, Kyle Grayson, David Mutiner, and Simon Philpott.

On Wikileaks: Popular Culture and World Politics Conference in Stockholm

I'm blogging live from the Popular Culture and World Politics conference at the University of Stockholm. There is a documentary screening taking place now called 'Wikirebels: The Documentary' which has been made by Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist.

There are a lot of pertinent ethical issues that arise from the documentary and the case of Julian Assange more broadly.

Knowledge as Power

Do the public have a right to know? What types of ethical considerations need to be taken into account in order to understand the politics of whistle-blowing? Did Julian Assange globalise whistle-blowing? Is taking information that is owned by the state (and if we follow the normative line in social contract theory, its citizens) a form of modern (information) piracy? Can information contained in the Wikileaks documents actually prevent the deployment of violence and weapons? 

Knowledge as Governed

Do states have a right to ensure that secrets remain secret, despite their potential to expose flaws within the democratic fabric of their respective societies? Thailand, China and Iran blocked access to the Wikileaks website: was this the right thing to do?

Knowledge as Voice

It is a truism of war that 'war is hell'. There is no such thing as a clean war, despite attempts to encase violations of justice in the hygienic morality of the doctrine of double effect. Does Wikileaks offer a voice to the voiceless? There is some pretty horrendous footage of men being shot dead by a helicopter in Iraq. Do we repeat the violence in showing this? Should we see this and, more importantly, what types of ethical burdens does knowing about violations in long held assumptions about jus in bello impose upon us? 

Knowledge as Freedom

Julian Assange claims that (to paraphrase him) what annoys him is that people who abuse their power and use this power to abuse innocents. Does this make knowledge the currency of political freedom?

Anyway... Back to the conference.

This is where democracy begins? Your 'ethical' voice required....

The purpose of today's entry is a plea to fill in a survey about what ethical issues YOU are interested (excuse the shouting!).

Having devoted most of my time today following the Australian election and listening to a debate on Radio 4 about whether the UK Parliament's Syria defeat diminished Britain's role in the world, it is now time to think about shaping our syllabus.


I've amassed quite a bit of new literature in the past couple of weeks and will use this as a basis to revise the module. There will still be the opportunity to engage with classical ethical theories but I really want to ensure we are making our discussions both contemporaneous and cutting edge in terms of the placement of ethics in the world today.

The previous post on the blog (which is below) listed some of the topics I've been exploring through the Carnegie Council and Chatham House. This is just a starting point and I'm hoping to find some time before a conference next week to explore other policy areas and initiatives (e.g. Brookings Institution, Clinton Global Initiative).

You can find the survey by CLICKING HERE (don't worry - this isn't a spam link trying to sell you steak knives).

Enjoy your weekend....

Ethics and International Relations: Renewing the syllabus!

I've now had a chance to look at the electronic resources from Chatham House and the Carnegie Council in an attempt to narrow down some of the topics and themes for the module this year. My working practices are quite similar to the process of writing an article or essay, involving me dropping relevant articles into Dropbox folders so that these can act as receptacles for knowledge. 

As mentioned previously, I've decided to not be too 'theory heavy' in terms of the initial framing of the module as I want the theories to filter through the case studies in our discussions. 

Possible topics include:

• Think-Tanks and international activism
• Anti-Diplomacy and International Relations
• Wikileaks and After
• Is there such a thing as transnational justice?
• Choosing the 'greatest' good?
• The ethics of remote warfare
• Syria and the democratic minimum
• Global Justice and Inequality
• International Criminal Law
• Is there such a thing as an 'ethical' foreign policy?
• Just wars? Unjust wars?
• Keep 'em out? The Politics of Migration
• Morality and International Relations
• Private Military and Security Companies
• The ethical limits of national sovereignty

This leaves me with 15 topics or themes in a 12 week module!