Chasing Dragons

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 131

This weekend in a reading roundup inspired by the scattered thoughts produced by too much travel in too little time:

• 'David Cameron: We Have a Few Questions for You' at guardian.co.uk  (British PM demonstrates just how big a merkin he is)

• 'Assassinating the Rule of Law' by Larry C. Goodman at inthesetimes.com

• 'Reading Peter Adey's Aerial LIfe' by Martin Coward at martincoward.net

• 'Comics and Graphic Storytelling: A Sample Syllabus' by Henry Jenkins at henryjenkins.org

• 'Pepper Spray: Even With Citizens in the Act, Issue Still a Pattern of Abuse by Police' by Michael Shaw at bagnewsnotes.com

A big thank you to all of those involved in hosting the 4th Annual Popular Culture and World Politics conference at the University of Lapland.It was a fantastic conference, the hospitality was biblical in proportions, and you brought a dynamic group of scholars together in a fabulous location! There will be more to say in the following days. But for now thanks again!

Photo credit: evoo73

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 111

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'My Lost Boy John Walker Lindh' by Frank Lindh at guardian.co.uk

• 'Convenient Killing: Armed Drones and the "Playstation" Mentality' by Chris Cole, Mary Dobbing, and Amy Hailwood at dronewarsuk

• 'When Children's Dolls Went Off to War (1916)' by Stephen J. Gertz at booktryst.com

• 'Bin Laden Killers Want to Maximize Brand Awareness' by Spencer Ackerman at dangerroom

Photo credit: The Big Quack

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 93

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Can Data Predict Political Revolutions' by Richard Florida at theatlantic.com

• 'The Political Power of Literature' by Riz Khan at aljazeera.net

• 'Ungoverned Areas and Threats from Safe Havens: Final Report of the Ungoverned Areas Project' by Robert D. Lamb available here [US Department of Defence Report outling the 'new' geopolitical threat matrix]

• 'Weather Architects of the Year 2050 A.D.' by Geoff Manaugh at bldgblog

• 'Akoha--A Direct Action Game?' by Benjamin Stokes at civicpaths.net

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: David Drexler

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 85

After a holiday break, we have an extensive weekend reading roundup:

• 'Can Sitting Too Much Kill You' by Travis Saunders at scientificamerican.com (for anyone who works from a desk, this is a must read)

• 'The Hipster in the Mirror' by Mark Greif at nytimes.com

• 'Christopher Nolan's Interview with Brother Jonathan in the "Inception" Shooting Script' by Kristopher Tapely at incontention.com

• 'Reflecting on 2011: The Year Online Organizers Got Real' by Joe Solomon at netsquared.org

• 'The Myth of the Overpaid Public Worker' at globalsociology.com

• 'The Aesthetics of the War in Afghanistan' by David Campbell at david-campbell.org

• 'Revising Huck Finn, Revising History' by Thomas Norman DeWolf at guernicamag.com

• 'Separating Terror from Terrorism' by Scott Stewart at stratfor.com

Happy new year and enjoy the weekend!

Photo credit: MJTR (' *w* )

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 69

This weekend, in the reading roundup:

• 'Spin War Shift: NATO Now Bragging About Afghan Airstrikes' by Spencer Ackerman at dangerroom

• 'The Source of the Deficit' by Michael Burke at leftfootforward.org

• 'Hallowed Ground, Wordly City: Ground Zero and the Struggle for Lower Manhattan' by James Sanders at designobserver.com

• 'God and Politics, Together Again' by Sam Tanenhaus at nytimes.com

• 'What Britain Could Learn From Portugal's Drug Policy' by Peter Beaumont at theobserver

• 'Tony Blair: Everybody's a Critic' at themediablog

For those in North America, enjoy the long weekend!

Photo credit: Stuck in Customs

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 67

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'US Matches Indian Outsourcing Costs' by James Lamont and John Leahy at ft.com (thanks to Lenin's Tomb for the link!)

• 'The Costs of Ownership: Why Copyright Protection Will Hurt the Fashion Industry' by Johanna Blakley at designobserver.com

• 'Gameworld Geopolitics and the Genre of the Quest' by Rachel Hughes (Lecturer in Geography at the Melbourne School of Land and Environment)

• 'Review of Natalie Bormann's National Missile Defence and the Politics of US Identity: A Poststructural Critique' by Kyle Grayson at the Journal of American Studies

• 'Can Assassinations Turn the Tide in Afghanistan' by Robert Baer at time.com

Hope the weather is as nice as it is here, where ever you may be!

Photo credit: orvalrochefort

Newcastle University Launches World Politics and Popular Culture MA Degree

I am pleased to announce that Politics at Newcastle University will be launching a new MA degree in World Politics and Popular Culture for the 2010-11 academic year. Here is the course description:

• World Politics and Popular Culture is a distinctive interdisciplinary degree programme that examines the changing dynamics of contemporary international relations in the context of the politics of the various forces shaping and shaped by popular culture. The programme focuses on key theories, policies, and events in world politics in relation to both traditional and new media. You will learn not only how to think critically about how world politics is reflected or reproduced in popular culture, but also how the politics of popular culture shape the dynamics of world politics...

The programme entails three core modules in Politics (World Politics and Popular Culture, Theories and Approaches to the Study of Politics, and a Dissertation in World Politics and Popular Culture) with 4 optional modules that can be taken from politics, cultural studies, media studies, and film.

Admission requirements are an undergraduate degree from an accredited university with at least a 2.i result--the rough equivalent in North American systems would be a B average.

Please note that 'other qualifications or relevant professional experience may also satisfy the entrance requirements. Applicants whose first language is not English require IELTS 6.5, TOEFL 575 (paper-based) or 233 (computer-based), or equivalent.'

Information on how to apply can be found here. There is no formal deadline--apart from the start of classes at the end of September--but if you are applying from overseas, securing a student visa can take several weeks depending on your circumstances.

If you'd like to talk to someone to find out more about the World Politics and Popular Culture MA, you can contact  Matt Davies, whose tremendous efforts and vision saw this through from design to implementation.

I'm also happy to field any inquiries that you may have about the programme or pursuing a MA in politics in the UK.

Disclaimer: If there are any differences between information provided here and that contained on official Newcastle University web-pages, the latter should be viewed as the authoritative source.

Collage and photo credit: DerrickT (work displayed under a Creative Commons attribution license)

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 34

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Cameron's plan to plunder the oeuvre of Simon Cowell' by Marina Hyde at guardian.co.uk

• 'Obama and Afghanistan: America's Drug Corrupted War' by Peter Dale Scott at globalresearch.ca (thanks to TransformDrugs for the link!)

• Canadian Prime Minister suspends Parliament in order to dodge investigations into a cover-up of Afghan prisoner torture and to fill Senate seats with patronage appointments unopposed at thestar.com

• 'How to Destroy the Book' by Cory Doctorow: Part I and Part II via thevarsity.ca

Have a good weekend and a happy new year!

Image credit: Temari 09

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 22

Okay, I know the weekend has passed, apart from in Canada where it's Thanksgiving. But it's been a busy week with lots going on--hence the long radio silence--and I have a pretty good streak going here with the roundup that I'd like to maintain, even with the help of some creative accounting...

This 'weekend' for you reading pleasure, there are two reviews of my book Chasing Dragons: Security, Identity, and Illicit Drugs as featured in the new online journal Global Discourse: A Developmental Journal in Politics and International Relations. You can also find my response to them in the same issue.

A big thanks to Mark, Matt, and the rest of the Global Discourse team who approached me several months back about the possibility of taking part in such a forum.

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit:  lepiaf.geo (lost in translation)

Problems Are Processes

After mentioning it several weeks ago, I've finally finished Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose's Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social, and Political Life. It is an essential collection of updated essays on everything from the death of the social to the mobilization of the consumer.

But what unites the various chapters is their concern with the ways in which problems are identified in contemporary society, the mechanisms that are used to identify them, the types of experts that are called upon, the political possibilities that arise from these configurations--of problems, mechanisms, and experts--and ultimately the relations of power that they enable.

What Miller and Rose ask us to do is to reject problems as being things with an inherent or natural substance to them. Rather they advocate that if we are going to analyze politics and understand power, we need to conceptualize problems as processes:

•  problems are not pregiven, lying there waiting to be revealed. They have to be constructed and made visible, and this construction of a field of problems is a complex and often slow process. Issues and concerns have to be made to appear problematic, often in different ways, in different sites, and by different agents…[And] the activity of problematizing is intrinsically linked to devising ways to seek to remedy it’ (14-15).

Why care about problems? Because problems are an important means of mobilizing resources and establishing authority in a society. Thus, they form the very essence of political activity. So, the next time that a problem is presented to you in the media, remember that something political is going on.

Therefore, you need ask yourself the following questions:

1. Who is defining this issue as a problem?
2. How is the issue being defined--or framed--as a problem?
3. What forms of knowledge (e.g., science, religious, economic, medical) are being used to provide an understanding of the problem and to argue for its importance?
4. Who has the problem invested with expert status or new forms of authority?
5. Are there other ways that the problem could be defined or framed? Is it even worthy of the status of a problem?

By asking these questions, you will be able to form an initial basis for the kind of critical engagement that is currently in short supply in contemporary political discourse.

Photo credit: psd