PTJ and Dan discuss Cynthia Weber’s 1994 book, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State an…
Episode 28: Are We Living in a Simulation… of Sovereignty?
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Recent Posts
Climate, Justice, and IR
Adam, Daniela and Jarrod discuss the challenge of thinking about climate justice in the context of IR and existing models of justice and reparations. Does the Holocaust and other...
How should IR scholars respond to tragedy?
Like many, I woke up in shock at the massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria. The earthquake, centered in Gaziantep, has killed 3,000 as of Monday afternoon devastated southeast Turkey and...
Episode 27: Everything is Relational
It's a nostalgia episode for our two hosts, Patrick and Dan. They tackle Mustafa Emirbayer's 1997 article in the American Journal of Sociology, "Manifesto for a Relational...
More Recent Posts
Grand Strategy is Worldmaking
I think a lot of people are kidding themselves about what grand strategy is—it’s worldmaking. It’s an attempt to put the power of the state in service of grand political purpose. States big and small can have grand strategies because states big and small have elites who use state power to serve...
Helen Kinsella
Professor Helen Kinsella joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Kinsella grew up in Ithaca, New York, and she reflects on what that was like, plus a reluctance or indifference to going to college. She eventually chose Bryn Mawr and she talks about what an amazing environment she experienced...
Episode 26: Anarchy vs. The Anarchy
The University of Chicago’s Paul Poast claims that G. Lowes Dickinson is was the OG “modern” theo…
Peace, Just Peace, and Ukraine
Many around the world are on edge over the possibility of Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons to stem Ukraine's battlefield successes. This has revived calls, present since before Putin invaded Russia's neighbor, to negotiate a way out of this war. Those issuing these calls see...
Nuclear Precarity and the Russia Crisis
Everybody’s talking about nuclear war with Russia right now and it bugs me, not least because I’ve seen this nuclear frenzy before. Now, I think people have good reason to be worried about Russian nuclear use, as I wrote some five months ago. But what gets me about “the...
Why Would Putin Sabotage Nord Stream?
Initial speculation about Nord Stream reveals both the strengths and limitations of using international-relations models to make sense of unfolding events
Making Sense of “Rules-Based” Anti-Liberalism
Dozens of regimes around the world are anti-liberal—autocratic to varying degrees—but also big fans of a "rules-based" international order, which for the past 50 years or so has been a neoliberal economic order. Not a coincidence. The reason an anti-liberal might also be a...
What makes for a successful conference?
Like many, I've finally gotten back on schedule after the American Political Science Association conference last week. The travel was easier for me than most others; the site, Montreal, is only two miles from home so I didn't have to deal with any airline mishaps. But I still, as always, wonder if...
Antagonistic Trust, Asian Insecurity, and “Strategic” Competition
I was on a refreshingly contrarian panel recently as part of Victoria Forum, this big shindig in Canada (at University of Victoria in British Columbia, not to be confused with Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where I teach). The topic was “Trust-Building in Asia in an Era of Great...
The More Things Change…
Some more excerpts from G. Loews Dickinson’s writings on international affairs.
Our syllabi should be full of surprises
It’s no surprise that current events regularly lead us to update our syllabi. That doesn’t mean we can’t make “surprise” an important feature of our courses.
6+1 Questions about Social Positioning and International Order Contestation in Early Modern Southeast Asia
Rather than accept subordination to the Ming and Qing, Southeast Asian states contested Chinese international ordering in the early modern period.