Sun Bin has an interesting retortto Kaplan’s piece on intervening in Myanmar (archived copy at Coming Anarchy) which emphasizes the ‘Ok, now what?’ and potential risks of instability after the initial intervention. Not to mention the pottery barn rule. What would William Slim say?
Data is reminded of Black Hawk Down by Andrew Sullivan. There just *has* *got* to be someone who has already published on how the BHD narrative plays out in deliberations in American foreign policy making, anyone knows?
On twasher’s second post comparing two humanitarianisms, I’d just like to add that while Myanmar has oil, it just doesn’t have enough to warrant the reaction encapsulated by the opening clip of Have I Got News for You. *toothy grin* *thumbs up* Her first post on how the regime survival imperative trumps all else - QED on international security not equal state security not equal regime security not equal individual security. She also points to an interesting puzzle which might be fun to irritate my normative theory colleagues with: killing own citizens with soldiers is a more obvious breach of human rights than failing in opening the country to humanitarian workers - why, then, does the latter feel even more sickening and has prompted the Kaplan-type talk of intervention that we didn’t really see much of when the monks and their supporters got crushed?
To say that my abstract reasoning abilities are poor would be an understatement. Perhaps it has something to do with finding it hard to remember basic definitions such as the difference between deductive analysis (’In empirical social science, the use of theories and hypotheses to make empirical predictions, which are then routinely tested against data.’ Henry E. Brady and David Collier (eds), Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (2004), 284) and inductive analysis (’A method that employs data about specific cases to research more general conclusions.’ RSI, 291) - incidentally I also have problems distinguishing between left and right and usually have to wiggle the appropriate little finger to confirm it to myself.
New issues in historical sociology: Interesting portrayals of the actuality of grad students being worker bees who add just a small amount to a much much larger collective but that’s ain’t gonna get them motivated about their research - the advisor/supervisor has a role to play in encouraging a sense of ownership and pride in the student (confluence of pastoral and intellectual mentorship imho). Because most grad students are, by their second year at the latest, already painfully aware of the very limited contribution (if any) of their work to the vast sum of human knowledge.
Social science ‘paradigm’: Music to the ears of the historical institutionalists on contingency in processes and mechanisms. Social science intervening the subject matters they study by research or speech. ‘The tyranny of the current administration’ LOL Methological localism - another name for typological theory aka middle range theory (George and Bennett)?
The great and late Charles Tilly (via Duck of Minerva) interviewed and recorded in 8 videos. Well known by many students of IR (who have probably never even read a single book or article by Tilly) for the pithy quote: ‘War makes the state and the state makes war.’
Interview origins, Vendee 1: process itself rather than comparative statics - summing up Emirbayer AJS, Vol.103 No.1, 1997 (PDF) in one sentence? LOL
Despite the novelty of actually being able to cast a ballot paper here in London (always walkover in Singapore), I wasn’t motivated to vote in the 1st May Mayoral and London Assembly elections. Mainly because I wasn’t keen on either Ken or Boris and Brian Paddick didn’t stand a chance. Bleah. But I duly trooped out to my local polling station in the end at the urging of the ULU Student Union to Stop the BNP. Alas the BNP did manage to cross the 5% threshold and gained a seat allocated under proportional representation. There was talk of shunning the BNP assembly member but this is a classic case of the liberal dilemma, how far should libertarians extend liberal treatment to anti-liberals, especially who have some form of democratic mandate? (Institutional conflict between democratic and liberal principle)
The following letter in today’s thelondonpaper (yes yes I know, Murdoch paper but hey it’s free!) summed up the best way forward IMHO:
BNP got voted in
In response to your story “Angry protests as BNP takes seat at City Hall” (Friday): indeed it is a sad day when the British National Party has a democratically elected representative in the London Assembly. However, anti-fascist activists and the rest of us should direct our anger on this issue towards the three main political parties for their failure to address the issue of mass immigration, which the vast majority of the population is very concerned about, and which is the fundamental reason for the electoral success of the extremist BNP. The repeated protests against Richard Barnbrook, the new BNP member of the London Assembly, are missing the point.
Joseph, NW2
Being a foreigner (albeit a Commonwealth one) who pays national insurance and taxes from my miserable TA salary), it puts a whole different perspective to my instinctive agreement to the cry that Singaporeans should be given priority for jobs, housing, medical treatment. And as a member of an ethnic minority here in the UK, I’ve had to rethink my ‘it’s just good business’ thought in response to unhappiness about preference given to Chinese-speakers in job ads. (Conflict between logics of belonging [citizenship] and welcoming [weren't most of our ancestors immigrants too?])
FT Weekend article (18 Apr 2007), ‘On Your Bike’ by Richard Tomkins offered a surprisingly nuanced, almost anthropological-thick description look at incapacity benefit; I’ll have to take part all those things that I said about the FT being market fundamentalist and in the pockets of the top hats.
First, the increase in people on incapacity benefit was partly due to the drive to reduce the number of unemployment benefits claimants. Classic J.C. Scott type of situation where quantitative targets in one area create problems in another. It remains to see how the drive to reduce claimants on incapacity benefit will blowback in other areas.
Second, tightening up the criteria for claiming incapacity benefit actually discouraged people to go off it since it was so hard to get it in the first place: ‘Going back to work introduces uncertainty, especially for people who are afraid of suffering a fresh bout of illness, losing their jobs and having to go through all the hoops to get back on to benefit again.’ (p.20) Applicable to means testing? Corollary: In my own very limited experience with social work in Sg and pastoral duties with my undergrad students here in London, the most serious cases (and the ones who really need the most help) often come in a package all tightly bundled together like a Gordian knot: health (physical and mental), family (abuse, estrangement, divorce, imprisonment), unemployment (skills, experience, the longer the more difficult), sheer bad luck (traffic accident, death in the family, being swindled by a relative/friend) etc etc.
Third, there were some good stories about civil society NGOs (supported with state funds) like the Acumen Development Trust that helped a former bank clerk to come off incapacity benefit and set up a bakery business. Or Action Team for Jobs helping a former builder to help other unemployed people as a community engagement officer. There’s an argument for centralization but these stories suggest to me that a devolved model may work better; state agencies can set the parameters and check on VFM/progress but leave the implementation details to the people and organizations on the ground but the crucial element is these civil society NGOs are genuinely independent, existing prior to state schemes rather than the result of them.
Demography is not destiny but it has a heavy hand in some of the most challenging socio-political problems throughout history such as pensions, health care and even existential security. Amid declining fertility in some states, politicians have warned that if women don’t give birth to enough children, then a nation may shrink or even disappear. This problematization itself can, of course, be problematized.
And the levels of analysis (individual versus social/state) can conflict. As can the different dynamics of modern capitalist societies (traditional family versus liberal economics) throw up seemingly intractable incompatibilities.
But it’s striking how the ‘problem’ of female singleness is very much grounded in demography and social policy while male singleness (such as China’s gender imbalance) has been seen by some (in the media but not sure about academic writing?) as a precursor or even direct cause of future social instability or even inter-state conflict. Somehow I don’t think so because of atomization often reduces/confines the issue to a personal level and the market analogy encourages a deficit explanation, much like the way liberal economics tends to explain structural unemployment through individual skill deficits.
But the differing securitizations still conform to a ‘women as child bearers/carers’ and men as ‘warriors/soldiers’ stereotype.
P.S. In any case, it seems both sexes took part in Black Day event, perhaps even together.
From the Big Issue’s Apr 21-27, 2008 (p.16) review of Kimberly Pierce’s Stop-Loss where the main character, played by Ryan Phillippe, goes AWOL after being stop-lossed:
As Pierce was working on a storyline about a ‘band of brothers’ returning the war, she received a message from a soldier in Iraq asking if she had heard of a policy called stop-loss. She hadn’t. He said it was a ‘backdoor draft’, that the government was ‘…involuntarily extending the tours of soldiers who have already fulfilled their contract, and were recycling the guys who should be getting out. He was so pissed off,’ remembers Pierce, ‘because his friend, who he’d been in combat with, was stop-lossed, and should have been getting out, but was going on to a third tour.’ …So this was not a guy who was going to take to the street. He was not a political activist. But the minute you screw his buddy, he’s going to get political.
