Charles A. Dainoff, Robert M. Farley, and Geoffrey F. Williams answer questions about their new book
6+1 Questions about Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages
read more
Recent Posts
On the Global Entanglements of Race, Empire, and Knowledge
Decolonial methods, and the bringing of attention to race in knowledge production is necessarily historical. It demands a close re-reading of archives, forgotten texts, and sometimes “canonical” works. As a result, through this special issue and the wider work the authors build upon, we now have a very different understanding of the historical entanglements of race and international affairs knowledge.
Now what?
Now that the myth of “theory-practice gap” has been largely refuted what role might IR and journals like International Affairs play in crafting a “reparative praxis”?
Introduction to the Symposium on “Race and Imperialism in International Relations”
The International Affairs Centenary Special Issue on “Race and Imperialism in International Relations: Theory and Practice” was published two years ago in the aftermath of the global Black Lives Matter movement; it marked an atypical period of introspection by many scholars, departments, and journals of International Relations on the general paucity of attention given to matters of race and imperialism in IR research and teaching.
More Recent Posts
Someone needs to stop these violent psychopaths!
state takes precedence over their own lives. Focusing on states as persons distracts us from how violence travels across levels of analysis. States don’t do violence to one another. They inflict violence on actual living beings.
Awkward States
I have mixed feelings about Adam’s article. On the one hand, I think it does a very good job of outlining the realist metaphysical argument for treating states and other similar corporate actors as conscious, or as having minds, if you’re the sort of person who needs that. On the other hand, I am...
States of Mind, Minds of States
A state of mind is a contagious thingSpread it around you never know what the future brings…Marillion, “State of Mind” n his later writings, Ludwig Wittgenstein spends quite a bit of time thinking about the problem of exactly what we are doing when we refer to the “inner”...
Are States Conscious? A Symposium
Way back in the summer I commissioned a symposium on Adam Lerner's provocative 2021 International Theory (vol. 13, no 2: 260-286) article, "What's it Like to be a State? An Argument for State Consciousness." Questions of consciousness pervade the social sciences. Yet, despite persistent tendencies...
How international organizations can resist political shocks
As long as international organizations have existed their relationships with their member states have been conflict-ridden. States use numerous methods to influence international organizations according to their interests or to contest the authority and policies of international organizations,...
Joseph Nye 85: From Integration Theory to Complex Interdependence to Soft Power
Peter Cutler is living the quiet life of a Princeton professor when the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate asks him to become his foreign policy adviser. Cutler takes the job and his gambit pays off: the presidential candidate wins and Cutler is appointed to be Under Secretary of State in...
In Memoriam: Jon Western
Back in the Duck of Minerva's heyday, Jon Western was one of its anchors. Indeed, it wasn't that long ago that we were talking about his returning. Jon said that he'd gained important perspective on the state of higher education from his time as dean of faculty and vice president for academic...
Ban the “Failed Search”?
How do colleges and universities go about hiring tenure-line (or the equivalent) faculty in politics and international relations? Back in 2013, I provided a short overview of the typical U.S. process: Starting in the late summer, political-science departments post position announcements with the...
Economic Hegemony, Strategy, and Durable Peace: Part I of III
This piece is the first of a three-part series grappling with the role of political economy in making a just, sustainable international order. hat’s America’s story for how economic policy relates to international security? I think for a long time the story was some...
Episode 21: Constructivists All the Way Down
Is Constructivism best understood as a scholarly disposition, a body of theory, or an intellectua…
Whisk(e)y and Epistemic Pluralism: A Quack-and-Forth (Part III)
This is the third and final part of a three part interview between Adam B. Lerner (ABL) and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (PTJ). It is the first instalment of a new series of interviews on Duck of Minerva entitled Quack-and-Forths.
6+1 Questions about China’s Western Frontier and Eurasia: The Politics of State and Region-Building
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) originated in provincial-level efforts that sought to simultaneously integrate interior and frontier provinces to the rest of China as well as neighboring countries during the 1990s.