ISA-West 2008 Call For Papers

ISA-West 2008 will be held in San Francisco, California on the September 26-27, 2008. The 2008 conference will continue ISA-West’s work with the Carnegie Institute for Ethics and International Affairs, the International Ethics Section of the ISA, the Active Learning in International Studies Section of the ISA, and Women in International Security to bring in exciting roundtables, knowledgeable speakers, and practical applications of International Relations scholarship. As always, ISA-West welcomes submissions from all areas within international relations and comparative politics across disciplines. ISA-West also welcomes pedagogical proposals, roundtables, and full panel proposals.  Panel proposals should have 3-4 papers, a chair and a discussant. The 2008 conference will also continue ISA-West’s scholarly and activist exploration of questions of ethics in International Relations.

It is in that spirit that we introduce the ISA-West 2008 conference theme: “Prioritizing People in a Globalizing World.” The theme calls for papers which analyze the relationship between the individual and the political in an increasingly globalizing world. With the securitization of issues from domestic violence to influenza, the issue of individual safety has never been more timely in international politics. “Individual,” “inclusive,” “human,” or “food” security are concepts that have gained a high profile in recent years in international relations. This theme invites contributors to analyze the role of people as agents and actors as well as subjects and victims in global politics.

The theme also invites participants to think about the ethical dimensions of policies across international relations as they relate to and impact people’s lives. How do we calculate the justice of a given international intervention? Does such a calculation necessarily involve weighing the impacts on the lives of people in the area of the intervention? What are the ethical concerns that should be dealt with when we see global politics as a forum not only for state interaction but for human interaction?

We invite proposals for papers and panels that seek both to shed light on the challenges and to explore just resolutions to them, and look forward to continuing ISA-West’s forum for discussions of ethics in global politics. We also look forward to ISA-West’s substantive and methodological diversity.

Please email your proposals to isawest AT gmail DOT com. When you do, please include your name, a title, an abstract, and whether you are faculty, a graduate student, an undergraduate student, or none of the above. Faculty will be expected to serve as chairs and discussants. Further, if you submit a proposal to ISA-West, please be certain that you can attend if accepted. Participants dropping after September 1 in the absence of an emergency will be blacklisted from applying to or participating in ISA-West 2009. For more information, please see the conference website. The deadline for the conference is May 30, 2008.