In the last post, I discussed gender as a system of symbolic meanings. People understood to be "men" are often expected to be "masculine" and associated with masculinity/ies; while people understood to be "women" are expected to be feminine, and associated with...
NATO agrees to missile-defense mission. Somewhat paradoxically, this is true even if you're lukewarm on ballistic missile defenses (BMD) in general, or the Phased Adaptive Approach in particular....
In discussing the planned handover of security responsibilities to the Afghan National Army, Vice President Joe Biden stated:"Daddy is going to start to take the training wheels off in October -- I...
(a letter I've thought about writing a dozen times over the last decade of being a feminist researcher)Dear Dr. Journal Editor, I submitted an article to your (big) journal in my (general) field. I...
In the days after the US midterm elections cable news outlets, radio programs, political pundits, newspapers, and activists on both sides of the ideological spectrum have exerted a great deal of blood and sweat to explain the nationwide drubbing of the Democrats. Democrats are predictably covering their behinds—conceding voter anger, but cautioning that the country has not lurched to the right in just two years. Republicans are claiming validation of their position and a greater ideological alignment with the American people. Activists and enthusiasts of all stripes are weaving narratives...
On Tuesday of this week, amid much pomp and fanfare (and a certain amount of suppressed hilarity) an Anglo-French Treaty was signed, providing for 50 years (no, really, 50 years) of defence co-operation. I’ve posted on this at the LSE blog here and haven’t much to add – basically there is less to this than meets the eye. Meanwhile, back in the real world, a little noticed policy poses a genuine threat to one of the major sources of British ‘soft’ power, the BBC World Service. As part of a wider deal on the funding of the BBC, funding for the Service is to be shifted from a grant from the...
In Diffused War, Andrew Hoskins and I argued we’ve entered a new paradigm of warfare. The wikileaks stories seem to confirm much of this account. War is mediatized, we wrote, as the institutions of war and those affected by war take a form governed by continual media recording, display and archiving. This creates diffuse causal relations between action and effect, since mediatization can amplify or contain the cognitive and emotional response any action generates in ways not dependent on the initial action itself. Militaries, NGOs, insurgents, journalists – none can predict the outcomes of...
Dan made some interesting points on the topic, but this angle -- the raw nativism -- is really impressive (also gotta love the role of IR professor). I saw this on CNN about 11pm last night:
I recently finished Diego Gambetta's Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate. For those looking for a more academic take on signaling (particularly from a sociological point of view) it's a great find. As I previously mentioned, Gambetta uses the extreme case of cooperation amongst criminals to tease out more general dynamics of trust, signaling, and communication. The Mafia can be considered a “hard-case” for theories of signaling trust; given the extreme incentives for criminals to lie and the lack of credibility they wield given the very fact that they are criminals, how is...
The participation of four Russian counter-narcotics agents in a US/ISAF raid on four heroin labs in Afghanistan has left many pundits wondering whether the war in Afghanistan as well as US/NATO/ISAF--Russian relations are entering a new phase. However, before one can speculate, there are a few misconceptions in news reports that I think should be clarified and corrected in order to place the story into its proper context.First, several news papers have adopted the narrative that the Soviet military was "defeated" in Afghanistan. The NY Times report (10/29/2010) states,"The operation, in...
At Gallup, we are officially predicting--regardless of turnout level--at least 40 seats for Republicans. Based on the numbers and our historical model, Republicans should land about 60+ House seats, easily gaining the majority.Personally, I'll say 65 just to be (arbitrarily) specific. I'll also predict that Republicans pick up 7 seats in the Senate, 3 short of a majority in that body.What do you think? Feel free to leave your own predictions in the comments section.
CBS Nevada reporter Nathan Baca tried to approach [Sharron] Angle during a stroll through the airport and the airport parking lot with questions about her foreign policy views.After going through several evasive answers, an irritated Angle replied: "I will answer those questions when I'm the senator."Much of the liberal reaction to Angle's latest evasion of the press has taken the form of "if she can't face reporters, how can she a U.S. Senator?" In light of Angle's general bizarreness, I can understand the comparative lack of attention given to issue areas she refused to address. But, as...