Other News

IPE researchers from PAIS have won the IATL Strategic Project Grant for I-PEEL: International Political Economy of Everyday Life.

This innovative teaching project aims to create an online teaching tool for use in political economy modules. Its content will be steered by students and geared to their development as self-directed learners. The central format will revolve around a set of front page 'tiles' (i.e. clickable squares) presented on a webpage, which will feature an image or object such as a cup of coffee, a bar of soap, or a development charity poster. Our pedagogical purpose is to provide students with an accessible route into the study of the global economy; a topic which is complex and can often feel like it is far removed from the realities of people’s daily existence. The project will achieve this by producing a platform website which will host a series of short academic reflections on the political economy of the objects and events of everyday life. Taking advantage of the online format, the text will also be supplemented with pictures and podcasts, hyperlinked sources, feeds on further reading, and linked forums for online discussion.

The project is funded by the University of Warwick Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning. Project team members are: James Brassett, Juanita Elias, Lena Rethel and Ben Richardson (all PAIS). The online platform will be developed in collaboration with IGGY.

We are currently in the process of recruiting volunteers for our student advisory board. Please email Lena at L.Rethel@warwick.ac.uk if you want to get involved.

We also gratefully acknowledge the support from colleagues in CAL, CIM, English and Comparative Literary Studies, Film and Television Studies, History, Law, Sociology, Theatre Studies and WBS.

Please see the below links for the two academic advertisements for Assistant Professor and Assistant/Associate Professor vacancies in PAIS.

Assistant Professor (76845-105)

Assistant or Associate Professor (72453-105)

Chris Browning and James Brassett have been selected as part of the new ‘Editor’s Choice’ collection for the European Journal of International Relations (EJIR). The Editors Choice articles are ‘specially selected to highlight the journal’s most noteworthy manuscripts’.

EJIR is a Top Ten (ISI) ranked journal in International Relations (IR) and it marks a testament to the research strength of PAIS to have two articles included in the ‘Critical Security Studies’ and ‘Global Political Economy’ sections, respectively. The article titles, abstracts and links are included below.

'The Future of Critical Security Studies: Ethics and the Politics of Security’, by Dr Chris Browning, Warwick and Dr Matt McDonald, Queensland.

Abstract

‘Critical security studies’ has come to occupy a prominent place within the lexicon of International Relations and security studies over the past two decades. While disagreement exists about the boundaries of this sub-discipline or indeed some of its central commitments, in this article we argue that we can indeed talk about a ‘critical security studies’ project orienting around three central themes. The first is a fundamental critique of traditional (realist) approaches to security; the second is a concern with the politics of security — the question of what security does politically; while the third is with the ethics of security — the question of what progressive practices look like regarding security. We suggest that it is the latter two of these concerns with the politics and ethics of security that ultimately define the ‘critical security studies’ project. Taking the so-called Welsh School and Copenhagen School frameworks as archetypal examples of ‘critical security studies’ (and its limits), in this article we argue that despite its promises, scholarship in this tradition has generally fallen short of providing us with a sophisticated, convincing account of either the politics or the ethics of security. At stake in the failure to provide such an account is the fundamental question of whether we need a ‘critical security studies’ at all.

Global Political Economy Collection: ‘British Comedy, Global Resistance: Russell Brand, Charlie Brooker, and Stewart Lee’, by Dr James Brassett, Warwick.

Abstract

The article provides a critical analysis of the possibilities and limits of comedy as a form of political resistance. Taking a cue from recent critiques of mainstream satire — that it profits from a cynical and easy criticism of political leaders — the article questions how comedy animates wider debates about political resistance in International Political Economy. The case is made for developing an everyday and cultural International Political Economy that treats resistance in performative terms, asking: what does it do? What possibilities and limits does it constitute? This approach is then read through a historical narrative of British comedy as a vernacular form of resistance that can (but does not necessarily) negotiate and contest hierarchies and exclusions in ‘particular’ and ‘particularly’ imaginative terms. In this vein, the work of Brand, Brooker and Lee is engaged as an important and challenging set of resistances to dominant forms of market subjectivity. Such comedy highlights the importance and ambiguity of affect, self-critique and ‘meaning’ in the politics of contemporary global markets.

Professor Shaun Breslin has written for Chatham House on how Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech at the UN highlight China’s latest strategies for shaping its vision of a new type of global leadership.

It has become routine for China’s leaders to use high profile international events as a means of projecting a preferred image of what China stands for and how it will act as a great power, one that is perhaps now second only to the US in the league table of global powers. So it is no surprise that Xi Jinping has used his interventions at the UN development summit and his address to the General Assembly to showcase China’s growing role as a global aid actor, and to call for greater ‘democratization’ of global governance institutions (or, in other words, a greater role and say for China and other developing countries). China’s alleged and self-proclaimed (and challenged) predilection for peace, a desire to build a ‘new type’ of (vaguely defined) international relations, and support for the UN as the sole arbiter of when sovereignty might possibly be put aside (instead of the US or a coalition of the willing) are also now relatively well-established and rehearsed Chinese positions.

In addition to wielding China’s financial power in support of this national image projection, Xi’s activities also represent a move towards mobilizing discursive power (话语权) as well. To date, and for a number of years, this discursive power has been primarily deployed in a defensive manner, with the aim of denying the supposed universal nature of many of the norms and principles of the international order. These norms, as articulated by both Chinese government officials and some supportive academic scholars, are not universal at all, but merely the product of a small number of Western countries’ histories, philosophies and developmental trajectories. So, in this formulation, while it is important to have a common set of principles and responsibilities as the basis for international interactions, each country should be free to develop its own nation-specific definitions based on its own unique histories and contexts. And it is only these Chinese-inspired definitions and aspirations – of human rights, for example, or development – that China should be judged against.

To read the rest of Professor Breslin's article, please see the Chatham House website.

The PAIS Seminar Series launches this Wednesday, October 14th, with a talk from Dr Kristin Bakke.

Kristin M. Bakke is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at University College London and Senior Research Associate at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. She has previously taught at Leiden University and been a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research, focusing on self-determination struggles and post-war states, has appeared in journals such as Annals of American Association of Geographers, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. Her first book, Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québec, was recently published with Cambridge University Press. She has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, the National Science Foundation (US), and the Norwegian Research Council. She is an associate editor at Journal of Peace Research and serves on the advisory board of Nations and Nationalism, editorial board of Journal of Global Security Studies, management committee of the European Network of Conflict Research, and council of the British Conflict Research Society.

Dr Bakke will be speaking to the title: 'War and Peace (and Institutions)'

One of the hotly debated policy prescriptions for states facing self-determination demands, from Iraq and Spain to Ukraine, is some form of decentralized governance—including regional autonomy arrangements and federalism—which grants minority groups a degree of self-rule. Yet the track record of existing decentralized states suggests that these have widely divergent capacity to contain conflicts within their borders. Through in-depth case studies, as well as a statistical cross-country analysis, Kristin M. Bakke shows in her recent book Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québecthat while policy, fiscal approach, and political decentralization can, indeed, be peace-preserving at times, the effects of these institutions are conditioned by traits of the societies they (are meant to) govern. There is no one-size-fits-all decentralized fix to deeply divided and conflict-ridden states. Decentralization may help preserve peace in one country or in one region, but it may have just the opposite effect in a country or region with different ethnic and economic characteristics.

The seminar takes place at 4pm, in LIB 2 and is welcome to all.

The PAIS Departmental Seminar Series is the focal point of the Department's research culture and activity. The objective is to engage critically and constructively with current research from staff members, their external collaborators, invited speakers, and visiting researchers. To see a full schedule, please see the Events and Seminars page.