Chasing Dragons

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 60

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Realer than Real: The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari' by Brian Massumi, available here.

• 'The Vienna Declaration' a demand for a full global policy reorientation with regards to illicit drugs, available to be read and signed here.

• 'India's Epic Head Count' by Meena Kadri at designobserver.com

• 'He-Man and the Masters of Transmedia' by Henry Jenkins at henryjenkins.org

• 'Foucault and Philosophy' by Clare O'Farrell at refractedinput

Happy Independence Day to all the American readers of this blog and a belated Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians!

Photo credit: Lightmash

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 57

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Barcelona Rebels Against Tourist Invasion' by Giles Tremlett at guardian.co.uk

• 'The Art of War: Deleuze, Guattari, Debord, and the Israeli Defence Force' by Eyal Weizman at mutemagazine

• 'Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, and Arbitrary Killings: Special Report on Targeted Killings' by Philip Alston at the United Nations Human Rights Council

• 'Ten Things that Terrify Right-Wingers' by Joshua Holland at truthout.org

• 'Is NATO to Blame for Russia's Afghan Heroin Problem' by Simon Shuster at time.com

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: bitzcelt

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. 54

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Partners with Apartheid' by Sasha Polakow-Suransky at guernicamag.com

• 'Bangkok: The Future of Urban War' by Martin Coward at martincoward.net

• 'Darth Vader's Guide to Winning Your Political Campaign' at killercampaigning.com

• 'France's Pupils to View Cinema Classics in the Classroom' by Lizzy Davies at guardian.co.uk

• 'Why Middlesex Matters' by Jon Protevi at timeshigher.co.uk (or why it is an unwise decision to close the highly regarded philosophy department at Middlesex University)

• And last but not least, 'The Coalition: Our Programme for Government' (see paragraph 1, p. 35 for the true priority) available here

Enjoy your weekend!

Photo credit: kevindooley

Call for Papers: 'Security Studies as Critique', June 24-25, 2010

At the danger of committing a shameless act of self-promotion, I thought that the following conference would be of interest to the chasingdragons readership. I'm very humbled to have been asked to give a presentation by the conference organizers. More importantly, I'm looking forward to meeting other early career scholars who are working at the intersections of critical social theory and the politics of security.

Call for Papers

'Security Studies as Critique': The Third Annual Graduate Conference in Security Studies

Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

Keynote Speakers: Dr. Kyle Grayson (Newcastle University) and Columba Peoples (University of Bristol)

June 24-25, 2010

Over the past two decades the field of security studies has become ever more concerned with critique.  For those sympathetic towards critical approaches to security this is a development to be applauded, with critical security studies being built upon a prevailing dissatisfaction with ‘traditional approaches’.  Critique has been a vital part of the broadening and deepening of the field: opening up new possibilities for thinking and practising security; showing the promise of opportunities for transformation; helping scholars understand the numerous flaws of previous approaches.  Critique has helped to enliven the field, and maybe even to humanise it.  Yet perhaps we should now turn to the matter of critique itself and ask to what extent it has come to define the field of security studies.  It may well be the case that critical security studies has become too absorbed in critique, too focused on trying to devalue neorealism, so much so that by continually comparing itself to ‘traditional approaches’ it only serves to tighten the neorealist grip on international political thought.  Moreover, it is possible that the intellectual integrity of critical security studies is compromised when understandings of both ‘security’ and ‘critical’ are so hotly contested.  Whereas some authors would happily embrace an ethos of critique, others argue this is an unsatisfactory and intellectually self-indulgent way to engage with the profound matter of security and suggest a need for reconstruction.  After all these years of questions, what is now the role of ‘critique’ in security studies?  

We invite you to join us for a friendly and collegial graduate conference. Bursaries for travel and accommodation will be available.  We encourage papers from research students addressing, but not limited by, any of the following questions:

• How useful and relevant is the traditional/critical distinction in security studies?

•  To what extent should security studies be normatively driven - whether under the leitmotif of emancipation, resistance or liberation?  What is ‘critical’ about critical approaches to security?  What is ‘traditional’ about traditional approaches? 

• To what extent have critical approaches to security posed a challenge to contemporary power relations?  How much should be expected?  Are critical security studies, more provocatively, merely enmeshed in what Foucault termed the ‘great warm and tender Freemasonry of useless erudition’? What is the relationship between theory and practice in traditional/critical approaches?  

• How successful have critical approaches been at traversing the analytic spectrum from meta-theory to ‘real world’ empirical analyses?  Are traditional approaches more successful in this endeavour and if so why?

• What is the relationship between the different critical approaches to security? Are they incompatible? Are they synergistic? Are certain approaches more conducive to the ‘critical’ project’, however that is defined?

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to pgsecurityconf@warwick.ac.uk by 30th April, 2010.

Click here for more details.

Photo credit: kk+

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 45

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'A Carefully Crafted F**K You: Nathan Schneider Interviews Judith Butler' at guernica.com

• 'Robert Cox on World Orders, Historical Change, and The Purpose of Theory in International Relations' at theory-talks.org

• 'White House Shifts Away From "War on Drugs" Rhetoric' by Mike Lillis at washingtonindependent.com

• 'Visualising Africa: Moving Beyond "Postive Versus "Negative" Photographs' at david-campbell.org

And for anyone interested in the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (or MIME-Net), check out the Gametech 2010 conference site.

Photo credit: kevindooley

Baudrillard and the Battle of Marjah

As information about Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan--a coalition offensive purportedly against a key Taliban stronghold of 80,000 residents called Marjah--becomes available from web muckrakers like BagnewsNotes and Truthout, I can't help but think of the following passage from Jean Baudrillard's essay on Simulacra and Simulations:

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true...

...Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.

In many ways, we can see Afghanistan as a governing assemblage of simulacra: democracy, humanitarianism, human rights, community capacity building, reconstruction, and the war on terror. Unfortunately, the bodies of the dead, maimed, sick, and injured--from all sides--remind us that the desert of the real is also a very brutal place.

Photo credit: Paolo Alfieri (his flickr-stream of Afghan landscapes is pretty stunning)

Call for Papers: 'Beauty Will Save The World': A Workshop on Art and Social Change

Are you currently working on a Masters or Ph.D. that explores aspects of how art and social change are related? Or are you really interested in the topic? If so, the following workshop organized by colleagues at the University of Bristol might just be for you. Please see the details below:

‘Beauty will save the world’*: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop on Art and Social Change

University of Bristol, 7-8 September 2010

Hosted by the Department of Politics and sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Global Insecurities Centre, University of Bristol

How does art construct, resist and contest dominant identities and social practices? How does art open up possibilities for (re)creating the world? What are the relationships between art, aesthetics, and politics?  What are the power relations involved in art? Whose art, and whose values are best placed to change the world? Can engaging with art help us develop new epistemologies and research methodologies? Can beauty ‘save’ the world?

This two-day interdisciplinary postgraduate workshop is premised on the assumption that art actively constructs social ‘reality’, as opposed to merely reflecting it. Against dominant pronouncements privileging the centrality of rationalism and science as the legitimate avenues towards knowledge and social change, this workshop poses the question: what does the ‘serious’ pursuit of ‘progress’ miss out on when it disqualifies the artist’s imaginary as superfluous, lacking impact, unimportant?

The workshop aims to bring together postgraduate students working in and across various disciplines to share research which looks at the contested meanings of art and aesthetics, explores art in different cultural and historical settings, and examines the ways in which art and its constructions of beauty, society, politics can help in understanding, and changing, the social world. The workshop will also enable postgraduate students to engage and network with more established scholars, who will be present at the workshop as keynote speakers, panel chairs and roundtable discussants.

We welcome paper and panel proposals (2-3 presenters per panel) which engage specifically with the theme of art and social change, from various disciplines, including but not limited to: Archaeology, Anthropology, Classics, English, Modern Languages, History, History of Art, Visual and Performing Arts, Cultural Studies, Geography, Philosophy, Sociology and Politics.

Ideas for papers might include:

• Art as nationalism;
• The aesthetics of social movements, protest and revolution;
• The envisioning of utopia(s);
• ‘The world as a stage’: playwrights, audiences and social change;
• Art as methodology.

Papers can include think pieces or works in progress. We encourage a diversity of presentation styles, from ‘traditional’ papers to interactive sessions, involving short film screenings, musical and dramatic performances, and the display of paintings, sculpture, photographs, and installation art. Presenters will be assigned a 30-minute slot for their presentation, which can be used by the presenter as they wish, but must include at least 5 minutes for audience questions.

Please email abstracts (maximum 300 words) of proposed presentations to both Cerelia Athanasiou (cerelia.athanasiou@bristol.ac.uk) and Shaira Kadir (shaira.kadir@bristol.ac.uk) by 31 May 2010.

Presenters will be able to make use of a digital data projector and DVD/CD player. However, we will not be able to provide musical instruments or any other specialist equipment.

*From Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. 

Photo credit: mafleen

Download Beauty will save the world Call for Papers 

Final Call for Papers on Finance, World Politics, and Aesthetics

Please see the message from Matt Davies below, in his capacity as the head convenor of 'The Critical Limits of the Financial Crisis: World, Politics, Aesthetics, and Re-politicization' section for the upcoming Standing Group on International Relations Conference in Stockholm. As an associate convenor, I'd just like to reiterate our desire to solicit as many interesting papers as possible!

Call For Papers

The SGIR 7th Pan-European Conference on IR will take place in Stockholm, Sweden, from September 9-11, 2010. The deadline for submitting paper or panel proposals is 28 February and proposals must be submitted on-line at here.

There are 43 sections for the conference, all dealing in different ways with the conference theme, “Politics in Hard Times.” Our section, number 9, “The Critical Limits to the Financial Crisis: World Politics, Aesthetics, and Re-politicization” especially invites panels that bring together both specialists in political economy and specialists in aesthetic or cultural theory for dialog about the contemporary crisis and how finance fits in it, or papers that could contribute to these kinds of panels. The section’s call for papers can be found here.

We have had several inquiries about what this might mean and just to be clear, we do not see these contributions as being limited to papers that examine “the aesthetics of finance” understood narrowly (though such proposals would be most welcome). The panels should bring together diverse approaches to common concerns: for example, a political economic analysis of the role of the housing bubble in the financial crisis could be brought into dialog with a paper on the aesthetics of housing in times of boom or bust. Finance and visuality have been brought together in very interesting ways in cultural political economy, and the notion of “financial architecture” provides another common meeting ground between political economy and aesthetics.

Please contact any of the section convenors, listed on the section’s call for papers, if you have any questions and please feel free to circulate this call to any interested colleagues across the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences.

Photo credits: TRAFFIK [US] and  calico_13

Getting Engagement Right: The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security

How can academics better convey their research findings to multiple constituencies in a digital age?

Well, Jef Huysmans and Francesco Ragazzi, two of the participants in CHALLENGE (The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security), a European Commission funded FP6 project (2004-2009), have put together a really interesting  collection of texts, videos and audio that conveys key research findings.

They describe the collection as 'a multimedia module that critically engages with debates about balancing liberty and security in the European Union, including the changing nature of border controls and war.'

I really like both the medium and the message. What do you think?

Photo credit: Anonymous Account