Here is the latest from William Cronon on how the University of Wisconsin-Madison has responded to Republican party requests for access to his e-mails, as well as plenty of links to how this issue has galvanized widespread attention.
Category Archives: Politics
Bernard-Henri Lévy and Libya
Here is a wonderfully self-aggrandizing interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy, taking credit for getting France to take the lead in intervening in Libya. Interesting for lots of reasons, no doubt, not least because this turns out to prove that ‘left-wing humanitarian interventionists’ have had too much influence on French foreign policy, according to David Frum at least. Always good to remind oneself of what the outside world thinks count as ‘left-intellectuals’.
New online journal: The Art of Theory
Via Political Theory, a new online journal called The Art of Theory (great name), first issue includes an interview with Michael Sandel, and an essay by Sharon Krause on moral sentiment and human rights. It promises to be “a journal of essential political questions and candid interviews with leading scholars”, and is run by doctoral students from polisci and political theory.
More on the AHRC
AHRC and ‘Big Society’: What’s the story?
There has been lots of comment about the story in yesterday’s Observer suggesting that the AHRC had been ‘ordered’ by the government to fund research on the Big Society in order to secure it’s funding settlement. Lots of complaints, lots of gnashing of teeth about infringements of academic freedom, the erosion of the Haldane Principle, and the like. But something about this story doesn’t quite ring true. Firstly, there is an odd delay involved – the Research Councils received their settlements before Christmas, when they published their Delivery Plans. So why it took humanities scholars so long to notice the substance of the AHRC’s delivery plan is a little unclear. Second, the agendas around community, cohesion, fairness, and the like are not new, post-election issues, and nor is the impact agenda – again, it seems like some people haven’t noticed the general drift of funding policy which has been going on for a while.
But the main thing lacking from the discussion I’ve seen so far is any acknowledgement that the ESRC’s delivery plan hardly mentions the Big Society at all – one mention, in passing. The relevant ‘priority’ area is dubbed ‘A Vibrant and Fair Society’. Now one might suppose that the social sciences would be more likely to be targetted to deliver research knowledge on the Big Society if there was such a coordinated intent by ‘government’ – the difference between the two Research Councils in this respect seems to suggest that this might be about the internal decisions at the AHRC, who reject any suggestion of undue influence. One might still bemoan the fairly brazen aim of the AHRC to ‘contribute’ to ‘government’s Big Society initiatives’, without having to buy into the idea that this reflects an inappropriate meddling by politicians. The credulity invested in The Observer story seems to indicate a naivety on the behalf of some academics about how research funding does work, and specifically a lack of awareness amongst people in the humanities about just how proactive the arts and humanities bodies have been with ‘instrumental’ agendas of public engagement and impact for some time now.
A couple of final thoughts. First, isn’t this a story about the way in which University issues are reported, which might be a matter worth discussing in more detail. And second, what would be so bad with funding research on ‘the Big Society’ – wouldn’t that be an opportunity to do lots of research on Alinski, the histories of mutalism and co-operatives, the relevance of inequality to civic participation, and the like?
Oh, and where I live, of course, the Research Councils are one of the major public sector employers in town, after the Borough Council and the NHS, suffering like the rest of us from funding cuts and efficiency savings.
William Cronon on intimidation and academic freedom
Via Anne Mosher on twitter, news of a new blog by historian/geographer Bill Cronon at the University of Wisconisn-Madison, called Scholar as Citizen, which seeks “to reflect on ways that scholarly methods and habits of mind can help us ask better questions and thereby offer constructive approaches for better understanding why current events unfold as they do.” Cronon’s first post earlier this month put recent political events in Wisconsin in the wider historical context of conservative ascendancy in US politics over the last 30 years or so, including a ‘how to’ guide for anyone interested in researching this process of right-wing assertion further. He has a new post discussing the political reaction to this first one, from the state Republican party, who have used freedom of information legislation to request his emails since the start of the year. All sounds very nasty, a clear attempt to intimidate him and seek to chill public criticism. And it does remind me, this week when UK-based academics have been involved in strike action, with all its inconveniences and interruptions, that we should be aware that these sorts of rights for academic and other public sector employees are the target of very explicit political assault in the USA at the moment.
Walzer on intervention in Libya
Here is Michael Walzer at Dissent rather succinctly outlining some of the reasons why the current intervention in Libya seems not to reach the standards required for ‘humanitarian intervention’. On a different line, here is Immanuel Wallerstein at Africa is a Country on Libya and the divided left.
David Held on engagement with Libya
Lots has been written about the involvement of the LSE with Gaddafi’s Libya, and especially about Saif Gaddafi’s connections with academics such as David Held. Held himself now has an essay at openDemocracy defending his own engagement, as neither naive nor complicitous.
Sloterdijk, Honneth, and the politics of ‘provocation’
One of the theorists who is all the rage in spatial-theory-land at the moment, subject of a veritable ‘second coming’, is German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. Society and Space had a special issue on his work a year or so ago, and Stuart Elden has edited a collection of essays on his work which is forthcoming. It’s interesting to watch this process, in particular the finessing of Sloterdijk’s political interventions. Sloterdijk is a professional provocateur, and amongst the various ‘controversies’ he has triggered in the world of German letters revolves around a Ayn Rand-like assault on the welfare state in 2009. I’m a bit slow, so am only now catching up on this, because I’m trying to write something about Honneth. You can read a summary of Sloterdijk’s position in English here in Forbes magazine or here in City Journal, both resolutely proud free-market publications. You can read Axel Honneth’s substantive response to Sloterdijk in translation here. Apart from the obvious politics to this (see the commendation of Sloterdijk by the National Review) there is also a dispute about how to interpret the role of various emotional dynamics in political life – a central theme of Honneth’s reconstruction of critical theory, and a feature of Sloterdijk’s work too since his ‘first coming’, in his analysis of cynicism. Rage makes the world go round for Sloterdijk, whereas disrespect and dignity are key dynamics for Honneth. Might sound similar, but quite different really. I’m not inclined to get too excited about Sloterdijk’s spatial metaphysics, which is what does excite geographers and others who like all things ontological; I actually think the reactionary inflection he gives to an analytics of resentment is helpful in reminding us that simply asserting the importance of ‘the emotional’ or ‘affect’ in life has no necessary political meaning per se – everything depends on how this affirmation is worked through. The Sloterdijk/Honneth to-do is interesting for drawing out the significance of this issue, and also helps to clarify an issue at stake in suggestions that Honneth’s ethics of recognition has some affinities with the work of Rancière – an affinity rooted in a particular sort of commitment to avoid a scholastic disdain for ordinary people (the case is made by Jean-Philippe Deranty).
Oecumene: Citizenship after Orientalism
The website for the Oecumene research project based at The Open University, led by Engin Isin, is now up and running. The project has its own blog, and you can sign up as an ‘Oecumene Affiliate’ to keep up to date and become involved.
This is how the project is described:
“Oecumene: Citizenship after Orientalism focuses on the tension between two different institutions: citizenship, the process by which belonging is recognised and enacted, and orientalism, the process by which European political institutions are considered originary and primary. What connects citizenship to orientalism is that citizenship has been historically seen as a Judeo-Christian institution contrasted against Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, and Hinduism. The project revisits questions of citizenship as political subjectivity in ‘orientalized worlds’ through genealogical investigations without orientalist assumptions. The aim is not only to uncover citizenship practices that remained either invisible or inaudible in other worlds but also to explore the possibilities of a renewed and expanded understanding of European citizenship.”
Pop Theory 