by Dan Nexon | 26 Jun 2012 | Featured
This is the second in a series of guest posts by Stuart J. Kaufman of the University of Delaware. Stuart advances a long-running dispute with PTJ about whether "what goes on inside people's heads" is relevant to social constructionism. PTJ doesn't think so; Stuart disagrees. The first post can be found here. After the final post, we will make the entire piece available as a PDF -- consider it our first true "working paper" publication.Since...
by Dan Nexon | 26 Jun 2012 | Featured
Note: signatures are only valid for those who are members of International Studies Association at the time of review. Please do not sign if you are not, or will not, be an ISA member.Below is a letter requesting support for a new section of the ISA on "Historical International Relations." The section would be cognate to BISA's Historical Sociology working group and APSA's International History and Politics section. The idea came out of...
by Dan Nexon | 25 Jun 2012 | Featured
This is the first in a series of guest posts by Stuart J. Kaufman of the University of Delaware. Stuart advances a long-running dispute with PTJ about whether "what goes on inside people's heads" is relevant to social constructionism. PTJ doesn't think so; Stuart disagrees. After the final post, we will make the entire piece available as a PDF -- consider it our first true "working paper" publication.When scholars hold up physics as a model for...
by Dan Nexon | 25 Jun 2012 | Featured
This is a guest post by Michael C. Horowitz, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.Who can see the future? For us mere mortals, it’s hard, even for so-called experts. There are so many cognitive biases to take into consideration and even knowing your own weaknesses often does not help. Neither does being smart, apparently. So, what does make for “good judgment” when it comes to forecasting? When, if ever,...
by Megan MacKenzie | 25 Jun 2012 | Featured
My students and I have unlocked the key to writing a blockbuster romantic comedy script. When lecturing on masculinities in my Gender and Human Rights course I gave students the following challenge: think of an stereotypical, ideal-type character that symbolizes one form of hegemonic masculinity. Remembering that hegemonic masculinities are fluid ideal types that vary across history and context, students came up with answers like "the macho...
by Steve Saideman | 24 Jun 2012 | Featured
[cross-posted at SSSpew]When Political Scientists Do Not Understand Political Science .... they get published in the New York Times.I tried, I really tried, to ignore the screed at the NYT against political science (especially of the quant variety), but Jacqueline Stevens's rant is such a poor effort that I know it will be widely read and influential. Why? Because bad ideas often spread further and faster than good ones (see Clash of...
by Dan Nexon | 24 Jun 2012 | Featured
Some time ago Thomas Rid had an amazing post arguing for an open-access revolution in our field. I won't repeat the arguments here; you can read them for yourself. The open-access movement is showing signs of momentum. Indeed, at BISA/ISA in Edinburgh, a number of people agitated for open access for the Review of International Studies (RIS) at its relaunch event.It seems that there are very few significant IR journals in a position to go open...
by Dan Nexon | 23 Jun 2012 | Featured
At the BISA/ISA panel on pluralism Jennifer Sterling-Folker stressed that realism is not the "dominant paradigm" of North American international-relations scholarship. Instead, she argued, neoliberal institutionalism rules the roost. How do we know this? Among other reasons, neoliberal institutionalists don't spend a lot of time on 'big theory' -- on thinking about the scientific ontology of world politics. They take their worldview for...
by Laura Sjoberg | 23 Jun 2012 | Featured
Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent Atlantic article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," has stirred up a fair amount of controversy in the last couple of days. Dozens of my Facebook friends have posted and reposted it, and it has prompted many of them to reflect on their personal experiences with womanhood, femininity, parenting, and/or motherhood. Several students have asked me about the article and my opinions on it, and it seems to be stirring...
by Charli Carpenter | 22 Jun 2012 | Featured
From Mother Jones, of all places. Gayle Falkenthal comments.
by Brian Rathbun | 22 Jun 2012 | Featured
Political scientists love summer break. They do not sail, as they have no money for a boat. They do not sun bathe, as they would burn outdoors. Spending time with children is not high on the priority list, at least for male political scientists, who generally use their paternity leave as a sabbatical to finish a book. And it is well known that political scientists are all deathly afraid of kites. No, political scientists love summer break for...
by PM | 21 Jun 2012 | Featured
I'm pretty sure this is a Soviet poster for International Women's Day.Are IR scholars relevant to policy? IR scholar and famous policymaker Anne-Marie Slaughter addresses that puzzle, which principally concerns only IR scholars, in a roundabout way in a new article in The Atlantic asking whether women can "have it all"--a puzzle that concerns a great many more people. She also addresses these concerns in a follow-up Q&A on The New York Times...