ISA Annual Convention 2009 Blog

Foucault Panel Proposal

Contributions are invited for a proposed panel on Foucault and World Politics: Re-thinking Security, Governmentality, & Political Economy to be convened during the International Studies Association Annual Convention in New York, February 15-18, 2009

International Relations (IR) theory is turning increasingly to Michel Foucault’s writings on governmentality and biopolitics for guidance on how to explore the complex discursive interdependencies between the globalization of neoliberal norms of governance and contemporary modalities of war. For some, Foucault is useful precisely because he talks about liberalism as a regime of security, building on his arguments concerning the architectonic role played by the concept of security in the genealogy of nineteenth century liberal government. Theorists following this approach eschew traditional categories of the critique of the imperial state and invite us to think anew about other possible scales and sites of security. For others, however, this is a flawed application of Foucault, prematurely assuming that the practices of governmental power can simply be ‘scaled’ without the interventions of specific state-imperial powers. Simply put, these critics suggest, theories of global biopower lack the historical nuance to recognize the constitutive role of imperialism in the foundation and reproduction of the international system.

This panel seeks to evaluate this emerging debate, and to determine what sort of contribution it makes to IR scholarship. It seeks to explore specifically the following problematic aspects of this literature: a lack of serious engagement with a large body of Foucauldian research in other disciplines, especially anthropology and human geography; a tendency to reproduce intra-disciplinary divisions, especially those that separate political economy from security studies; and a failure to adequately theorize contemporary global capitalism. Papers in the panel will also address the criticism that the understanding of the notion of ‘discourse’ in poststructuralist approaches obscures the workings of structural power and the role of agency in relations of power. While acknowledging that this shortcoming is present in much of Foucauldian IR, the paper argues that this need not be the result of employing a Foucauldian approach to the study of world politics.

Please send 400 word abstracts along with information about your institutional affiliation should by May 28th (final ISA deadline is May 30th).

Panels on this theme will be proposed to ISA under International Political Sociology & International Political Economy.

Submissions should be addressed to either Nicholas Kiersey at njk4y@virginia.edu or Jason Weidner at jweid001@fiu.edu.

Complexity Science and IR

Following on from the successful ISA venture workshop on Complexity Science and International Relations held in San Francisco, the workshop organizers invite paper proposals for ISA 2009 that engage with core concepts from complexity science and assess their usefulness in relation to some of the key concerns of IR. We welcome abstracts from academics engaging with concepts such as emergence, self organization, non-linear causality, feedback and recursiveness, open systems and decentralized networks in their work. Some of the key concerns of International Relations to which such concepts could be applied include, but are not limited to, the formation and nature of states and other political entities and their interactions, the agent/structure debate, the levels of analysis question, and issues of governance and order. This panel seeks to further an ongoing project aimed at producing a comprehensive and critical evaluation of both the potentialities and limitations of concepts drawn from complexity science for the reinvigoration and renewal of thinking on international organization in the twenty-first century.

Those who are interested should send inquiries or a paper proposal to David C. Earnest, Department of Political Science and Geography, Old Dominion University, at dearnest@odu.edu.

CFP: Russia Encounters Asia: Interests and Identities

Papers are invited for a panel on "Russia Encounters Asia: Interests and Identities" to be convened at the ISA Annual Convention in New York, February 2009.

Panel organizers: Dr. Alexander Bukh, Tsukuba University, Japan,and Dr. Mikhail A. Molchanov, St. Thomas University, Canada.

Russia's identity as not only European, but also a Eurasian nation has always been subject to a debate. With the center of global politics and finance now moving to Asia, this debate acquires new significance from the perspective of changing regional and global orders. The panel aims to explore the relationship between Russia and Asia, broadly defined. Methodology,temporal span as well as the choice of empirical cases are open.

One set of research questions deals with Russia's evolving engagement with select Asian countries, such as China, India, or Japan, and regional organizations, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the APEC. The overall strategic direction of Russia's foreign policy in North-East Asia or the lack thereof remains an underexplored issue which the panelists are invited to consider.

Another group of questions concerns the link between the state and national identities and interests, as reflected in these states' foreign policies. The discursive construction of the states' identities vis-à-vis regional "others" influences policy formulation and understanding of national priorities. We will therefore invite contributions that consider domestic sources of foreign policy in Russia and Eurasia, as well as the role of Russia-related imagery in foreign policies of such countries as Japan, China, India, Iran, or
Kazakhstan.

Please submit your abstract proposals (around 200 words), together with the name, institutional affiliation, present position and contact details to abukh70@gmail.com and molchan@stu.ca by the 23rd of May 2008.

CFP: Crisis of Academia in Modernity

A panel on the theme ""The Crisis of Academia in Modernity" is being organized for next year's ISA convention at New York City February 15-18, 2009. If you are interested we need to get your abstract along with your contact information by May 14, in order to be able to submit it to ISA by May 15th. Do let us know whether you would be willing to do a round table panel on this topic as well.

Panel Call For Papers
The Crisis of the Academia in Modernity

The soundings of crisis in the worldwide institution of the university are today everywhere to be heard. As the institutional space of the university is penetrated by market forces, ideological contests, class and factional interests, and sovereign pronouncements of the necessities of security and war, the relative autonomy of this space seems more and more a nostalgic remembrance, less and less a contemporary reality. The Kantian architecture of the university might once have been everywhere celebrated and near-universally replicated, where the faculty of philosophy convenes the tribunal of reason and passes judgment upon all other faculties.

When today it is said that the university is in crisis, this is the architecture that is said to be threatened: within the university, the centrality and regulative force of the tribunal of reason—and, with it, the authority of the lower faculties and their capacities to justify the thinking and teaching they do—is itself in doubt and on trial. And when today the call goes out to resist those forces penetrating the university, imperiling its relative autonomy, and depriving it of its capacities to function as a site of critical reflection on society, this is the architecture whose restoration is called for. This panel proposes to question such interpretations of the university and its relation to society and the political.

Sincerely,

Richard K. Ashley
Arizona State University

Halit Mustafa Tagma
Arizona State University

Please send paper abstracts and discussant proposals to halit.tagma@asu.edu by May 14.

Please submit COMPLETE contact info:
Paper title:
Paper abstract:
Last Name:
First Name:
Primary Institutional Affiliation:
Address
City:
State/Province:
Zip/Postal Code:
Country:
Phone:
Email:

For more information on the convention visit: http://www.isanet.org/newyork2009/

CFP: The World Bank and Poverty Reduction

We would like to invite contributions to a series of linked panels on “The World Bank and Poverty Reduction” for the International Studies Association (ISA) annual convention, taking place in New York City from the 15th until the 18th of February 2009.

The central task of the panels will be to interrogate the World Bank’s move towards the Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF), and its most visible policy tool, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), and to evaluate the success of poverty reduction strategies a decade into their existence. The return of poverty reduction as the guiding principle of all World Bank operations raises a number of interrelated questions:

To what extent do poverty reduction strategies represent a rupture with the Washington-Consensus based neoliberal paradigm? Does the post-Washington Consensus simply ideologically legitimate neoliberal practices, or are there substantial differences in policy content between Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). What explains the move towards poverty reduction? What have been the positive (or negative) impacts of PRSP on poor people on the ground? What are the gender implications of the Bank’s policy transformations? And how successful have PRSPs been in addressing poverty and exclusion?

We are particularly interested in country case studies that look at the impact of PRSPs on the ground in African and Asian countries.

We are also planning to turn the conference papers into an edited collection on the World Bank and Poverty Reduction, and are currently approaching a number of publishers.

Please, contact us as soon as possible at aruckert@connect.carleton.ca, if you are interested in participating in this panel (and the associated book project). The deadline for a short abstract (250 words) is May 20th. Confirmed participants thus far include Robert Wade, Heloise Weber, Marcus Taylor, and Manfred Bienefeld.

Best regards,

Manfred Bienefeld (Professor, Carleton University)
Arne Ruckert (PhD Candidate, Carleton University)