And with that Intro to World Politics is done and we’re getting ready for finals and winter break! The semester flew by ridiculously quick, and I just wanted to say that I’m really happy to have had the opportunity to have class with all of you GloSchos, Preston, and Professor PTJ. This class was really interesting and exposed me to new ways of thinking about and discussing politics, through lenses I’d never considered or had words to express before. For me, personal identity has always been something I’ve questioned and had a deep interest in and was how I got involved in international politics. As an adoptee and product of China’s One Child Policy, since I was little I’ve always been aware of the deep effects public policy can have on individual lives, and international policy is then a way for me make changes in both the countries I call home: the US and China. Being stuck in an in-between place gives me a very “in-between perspective” when looking at politics. At the same time however, I never considered how personal identity construction could affect entire systems and policies, such as inspiring nationalism and nationalist tendencies. I never considered identity politics as leading to “a real job”, and yet here I am preparing to take the Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture thematic area gateway next semester. . .all because I found constructivism as we discussed it to be such a fascinating idea.
Regarding our final paper, I haven’t completely hammered out what my thesis is going to be, but I would like to incorporate constructivism, potentially through the “us versus them” mentality, competition and who’s allowed into the “liberal world order”, and how perceived exclusion leads to increased nationalism (as in the case of China) and extremism. Or I’ll talk about nationalism and extremism in general (such as the rise of populism, terrorism, and hate crimes). This semester has definitely been a period of huge personal growth and self-reflection for myself. I think through the college experience here at American, even though I was already very confident in knowing myself, I’ve become even more aware of what I feel like defines me and what my goals are in life. I am an overthinker. I am someone who made a whole five-year plan when I graduated high school and someone who was excited to retire by age twelve. Throughout high school I was very much what many would describe as “a wonk” and I was very fastidious about doing all the right things to “prepare for the next step” and all that. . .but this semester I’ve found myself to really be over that whole culture. There’s so much more to life than classes and good grades, and I say that as someone who has absolutely loved the classes at AU and the passion from both professors and students. I want to do work that impacts individuals and communities; I want to work in or with Asians; I want to meet people and go places. Maybe that’s really through a double major in stats or econ and an accelerated program, or maybe it’s through research projects in constructivism and gap years in China, or maybe it’s through a combination of those things and other ventures. I really don’t know what I’m doing, where I’m going, or how I’m going to get there, but I hope that I can always keep a feeling of “meaningfulness” and “passion” along the way. I really do want to sincerely thank everyone who has been a part of my life this semester, including everyone involved in our World Politics class. Everyone’s intelligence, supportiveness, and unwavering curiosity has been truly inspirational. I hope everyone has a good finals week, a great break (safe travels!), and I look forward to seeing everyone next year!
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2018 has been a wonderful year for Asian representation (2018 Winter Olympics, BTS, Crazy Rich Asians, etc.) and I was looking forward to what perspectives this book had to offer. Rosenblum very clearly tries to integrate characters of color, as seen through naming practices (Huang, Koi, etc.) and geographic references- New Taipei, Guangzhou, etc.- but I continually found myself asking: for what purpose? Now, I agree that there doesn’t always need to be a strict purpose for diversity- this risks limiting stories of color (and people of color) to be strictly defined by their race and its accompanying struggles (see: caricatures of “black pain” and characters that aren’t “Asian enough”) - but as an Asian American a lot of these attempts at inclusiveness felt added in without any real meaning or logic.
Representation is about being able to see yourself in media; because of all the cliches and inaccuracies I don’t see any semblance of myself in this work, even though I, like Ahni, am “an unselected mix of Taiwan aboriginal, Han Chinese” (3). As the book went on I became so distracted by the Asian misconceptions that I couldn’t even focus on the plot or the blog post and was reading just to find the next gem of ignorance, including:
Rosenblum’s lack of awareness regarding how people of color really feel is also apparent in the quote “Casually, race no longer mattered. Deep down, it did” (159). Mary Rosenblum is a white author; as us people of color know, if race matters “deep down” (ie systematically [which is the definition of racism]) then race matters casually too. To believe that race would not matter casually in an otherwise inherently racist society is wishful thinking by someone who has not personally experienced racism. It also makes it even more difficult to buy into Rosenbaum's central argument of genetics being a deciding factor in identity. So why did Rosenblum as a white author take it upon herself to write a novel in which race relations, ethnic construction, and identity politics ae such integral themes? Other lingering questions that I have:
On p. 245 of the novel Horizons, Ahni Huang declares: "The only way to keep them safe is to be separate. A nation with the power to protect its own." Do you agree with her?
Upon reading the quote “The only way to keep them safe is to be separate. A nation with the power to protect its own” (245), I immediately thought of Week 10’s theme on “us”, “them”, and “national security”. First, it is necessary to define “us” and “them”. With the way that this quote is written, the “them” is ambiguous; it is not immediately apparent whether the goals of the “them” align, conflict, or even are related to the goals of the “self”. To keep “them” safe, do we need to separate “them”, or do we need to separate ourselves? In the US under Jim Crow laws, in order to protect white people from “dangerous” and “morally corrupt” black people, laws were created which made separate (better) facilities for white people to keep “them” (white people) away from black people. On the flip side, now in order to protect “American” interests, US policymakers are busy thinking of ways to close the Mexican border and keep “them” (rapists, criminals, and drug dealers) away from “Americans”. According to conservative rhetoric, this keeps Americans safe and keeps the US “a nation with the power to protect its own” (245). These racial precedents are important in the “us” and “them” because Mary Rosenblum’s discussion of “us” and “them” in the above quote is also based on a divide between the human race and a similar-yet-different biologically-advanced version of the human race. Rosenblum then discusses “tribe/not tribe hardwiring” (158), raising the question of whether differences between “us” and “them” are human constructions or natural occurrences? Race (which is mentioned so often in Horizons) is a man-made construction based on biological factors that we’ve assigned arbitrary value to, and stemming from a system which profits off of subjugations of the other (see: phrenology and the American race-based slave system). Similarly, the biological differences which supposedly define the human/non-human races in Horizons are also only looked at through the dominant group (human’s) lense of what “humanity” is. This then only serves to reaffirm the dominant group’s position as the dominant group. Regarding race relations, Rosenblum writes “If anything , the vanishing barriers or distance and physical isolation had increased the racial divides rather than healing them” (159); besides in Horizons this can be seen in the growing populism movement in Europe, or in The Conquest of the Americas when Spanish-Native proximinity is what gave rise to constructivism and justified vilifications (and extermination) of the “other”. In the quote on 245, Ahni is talking about creating a state by the humanoid species for the humanoid species. However as we discussed in class going back to ideas of the “double consciousness”, creating separation does not fix the issue, it just erases it. I think the risk would be that you create these separate states without actually addressing the root problem, and that allows the hate of the other to grow and continue to fester independently. For example, North Korea and South Korea are separate states divided by a communist/capitalist ideology, yet despite having their own separate states from which they can protect their own interests, their relationship hasn’t really improved. Given these purposeful parallels to current and historical race relations, and the obvious negative consequences our past racial hierarchies have created, I don’t think it is possible to say that separation can mean safety, when those ideas of safety and separation are so steeped in racist ideology. Separation does not fix the root causes of hatred or danger, and instead reaffirms the “other”. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, welcome back from break and welcome to finals! I had a good Thanksgiving; it was definitely really nice to be back home and have food that wasn’t TDR, and I look forward to going back in another twelve days.
Truthfully, I was really nervous about my group’s presentation in terms of time management and working around the break, but I’m really happy with how everything turned out. I also found this simulation to be a lot more engaging the last one, and I enjoyed researching Disney’s corporate responsibility. As the Disney Company, our focus was mainly on focusing on continuing the Disney brand of promoting culture and innovation, and inspiring individual innovation. As a large, profitable corporation engaged in multiple forms of philanthropy and charity work, I think Disney is in a good position to work with whatever resolution is decided. Our philosophy is based on supporting individual ingenuity in order to create better infrastructure and stronger communities, and given that Disney has the large profit margins to back up its plans, I don’t see any outcome where Disney is excluded from the resolution. Furthermore, Disney as both a charity and a hugely profitable company is able to appeal to a wide demographic, from Emma Watson the individual to the US Chamber of Commerce. As a whole however, I am curious to see how the class is able to come to a resolution. As PTJ mentioned in class, it’s typical for these types of intergovernmental meetings to be a mix of discussing the issues at hand and discussing the credibility and politics of various organizations. Our class discussion has stayed true to this pattern, but I can’t help but wonder why; for what purpose? While I acknowledge that the world is not ideal, and that my thoughts might come across as overly naive, I simply don’t understand why there has to be so much interorganizational politicking. Regarding sustainable development, I don’t understand why organizations feel the need to tear each other apart instead of working collaboratively for the goals that we, on paper, seem to share. Of course each organization has their own ideals and goals which are at times contradictory to other organizations, but can’t those be put aside in favor of common goals and actual resolutions? Does criticizing other organizations actually amount to anything productive? It’s interesting that within our Global Scholars group there was a lot of discussion about forming a complete coalition and creating a shared proposal even before class on Thursday. However, as soon as question time came for each group, we seemed to turn against one another and resort to petty discussion of the credibility of other organizations. Is this type of result inevitable even across common goals? Is there a way for this division and hostility to be prevented? Or if it can’t be prevented, how can we overcome it? As it is, Shell seems to be the main aggressor in criticizing other organizations (instead of the issue of sustainable development), and I haven’t yet figured out why. Would it not be easier to work with the other organizations and join the nascent coalition of everyone but Shell? What does Shell have to gain from directly criticizing other organizations and distancing itself? Or, while I can understand Shell’s hesitance with organizations like Oxfam, I don’t understand why Shell is so antagonistic towards Disney Company, even though we are not direct competitors. I’ll be interested to see what the last two groups have to say tomorrow, and I look forward to working on a joint resolution. Hello friends, I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving break and is feeling ready for all the finals and projects coming up as we enter the home stretch for first semester. I took the weekend off to enjoy time home with family (it was so nice being back home in Wisconsin) but now have to prepare for two presentations this week. I’m pretty nervous, so hoping things go well.
Regarding The Conquest of America, I feel like of the three theories we’ve discussed so far (realism, liberalism, constructivism), I most understand and relate to constructivism, however I also feel like I understand absolutely nothing. For me, given my experiences as a woman of color, understanding constructivism in terms of personal identity is very intuitive and relates to other classes I’ve taken and readings I’ve done. However “constructivism” as it informs international policy and systems is a lot more nebulous to me. I think a good distinction between the three is that while realism and liberalism are very concrete in principle and has specific actions associated with it, constructivism can be seen more as a mode of thinking in and of itself, rather than a prescribed set of policies and beliefs. Constructivism is a way of thinking and critically questioning systems and policies, but perhaps is not itself a system of policies. Regarding this, I have some questions that I posed to PTJ that others might also have their own opinions on:
In summary, I’ve got lots of questions and no answers, but I’m hoping to discuss these points with anyone that’s up for it! Week 12 is over and Thanksgiving Break is quickly upon us, after which we only have 16 days until Winter Break. I look forward to being home, but cannot believe how quickly the semester has gone by. One eighth of college almost over already. . .
This week we focused on Todorov’s book The Conquest of America; thus far I’ve found it an interesting book, although difficult to get through. I understand the concepts and points being made, but find it difficult to read about the graphic dehumanization of the Native Americans because of how true it is, and how much certain stereotypes and caricatures continue to affect current American society, how much certain groups continue to be dehumanized. All of these acts of violence and discrimination and brutality should be inconceivable, except they’re not; they’re so real even now, and I find that sickening. This week I also read a book called When They Call You a Terrorist which is a memoir about the Black Lives Matter Movement. It’s a fantastic book and I highly recommend it, however it also stirred up a similar despondent response in me. Perhaps my feelings are colored by (no pun intended) my experiences as a woman of color in America, but sometimes the police brutality, the rape culture, the acquittals, the wage gap, the coded (or outright) statements by politicians, etc. just feel completely overwhelming and insurmountable and I don’t know what to do. I think it’s important to read these kinds of books and be cognizant of the historic oppression and violence which informs current society, but it’s definitely not “light reading”, and after finishing I’m still left asking myself “What should I do?” Something Corwin and I discussed in our small group was the significance of Spain on the Aztecs. Were the Aztecs going to fall anyway, and did the Spaniards just happen to come in at the right time? Could any other group have come in and been as successful as the Conquistadors? We also questioned why the Aztecs didn’t do more to fight off the Spaniards. In the present, knowing that the Spaniards won and saddled with the lens of “the Native Americans are perpetual victims to history”, I often felt frustrated reading the second part of The Conquest. It seems so obvious now that the Aztecs should consider the Spanish as enemies, and Todorov’s consistent characterization of the Aztecs as a passive group made it even more difficult to understand their reasoning, especially Montezuma's. One theory Corwin and I found particularly attractive was the idea of “cycles” (58), that the Aztecs were a group of conquerors and the conquered, and that the Spanish were just another part of this cycle, and were perhaps the lesser of two evils when compared to the Aztecs. Todorov uses “signs” to introduce ideas of actions beyond human control, however this brings into question questions of “fate” and “human choice”. Jeremy brought up a really interesting point regarding “environmental determinism”; that is the geographic formations of certain areas better lending themselves to empire and allowing certain groups to flourish while others do not. Is there a greater force, or multiple greater forces that control human outcomes? Are those forces spiritual or terrestrial in nature? And how much do those forces, and human will, impact the course of events? I certainly don’t have an answer to any of those questions, but Todorov’s book has definitely gotten me to think more about these questions. Anyway, happy Thanksgiving all, wishing everyone safe travels and a nice break! Week Eleven is drawing to a close, and what a week it was! Wednesday night I attended the International Dinner which was a really nice experience. It was much more laid-back than I expected it to be, but I enjoyed getting to chat with PTJ and other students over really delicious food. It was catered by a non-profit called “Foodhini” which works to provide DC refugees with jobs making food from their home cultures. The food was really good- I’d never had Iranian or Eritrean food before- and they also deliver, so it felt like a win all around. I would definitely recommend them! Of course, the big event of the week was the Midterm Elections. This was just the second election I’ve voted in (and my first time voting absentee), and I think I went into it much more informed than I’d ever been in the past. Since last week when we talked about “self” and “other” I can’t stop thinking about a statement my 21st Century Silk Road professor made: “There’s no such thing as domestic policy in an international world”. On Monday I actually participated in the webinar with Senator Russ Feingold (full transcript at bottom; go Wisconsin!) and was able to ask him his opinion on this statement, as well as its implications for US national sovereignty. He said: “The fact that he [Trump] keeps pushing all of these buttons on foreign policy at the same time he does the domestic makes us realize that the two really go hand in hand” (13:27:08). Senator Feingold, similar to what we discussed last Thursday in class, discussed how this issue is exemplified by the raging immigration debate. Immigration is a major domestic policy issue for the US, but it’s also a cause and effect of our international relations and actions in Mexico and Central America. Moving forward I think it will be really interesting to see what these midterm elections mean for the US (especially the Democratic Party’s) sense of self, and core values, and how those things will materialize in political discourse and policy. As we learn more about political theory I look forward to using those lenses to understand and analyze different politicians and how they apply those theories in real life. Slightly off-topic, but I really must say that it was so, so satisfying to participate in the 2011 Wisconsin Protests back in the fifth grade and now, almost eight years later as an adult, be able to vote Scott Walker out of office. Wisconsinites worked so hard for so long to make this happen, and to have it finally pay off is so exhilarating. While I’m not too optimistic about major reversals with the Foxconn deal, I do look forward to what Evers will do regarding Wisconsin’s education system, both at the primary/secondary and collegiate level. Wisconsin, and my hometown Madison in particular, have some of the worst racial achievement gaps in the country, and I’m hoping that Evers with his background in education will be able to put in place remediary policies. Lastly, I would like to extend my deepest condolences to all those affected by the California wildfires. That situation is truly horrific, and not due to a horribly mismanaged forest service, and I only hope that a resolution can be found as soon as possible. Until next week~~~
Continuing our "continuity and change" topic from last week, but this time in the sphere of political economy. The question is: have recent changes in the organization of the global political economy meant the end of the postwar "embedded liberal" order, or are they an example of "norm-governed change"?
When thinking about “embedded liberal” and how it’s changed over time, we must first consider what exactly “liberal” means. “Liberal” in the way we understand and use it now can be used to describe the embedded moral economy as discussed in the reading, or it can be used as a shorthand for freedom and democracy, which are in turn coded as “American values”. “Liberal” then becomes part of the American sense of “self” and excludes “others”. In contrast, communism is made to be the enemy of a global moral economy, and this is extrapolated to mean that communism is inherently dictatorial, undemocratic, repressive, and un-American (see: McCarthyism). This was the result of calculated propaganda by the US to support US business practices, and was originally used to dissuade the American labor movements. Given this then, when we lament the loss of the liberal world order now, are we upset by perceived changes in the economic systems of the world (the “cool kids table” as Blake put it), or are we upset by who those perceived changes are implemented by? Or put in real-world terms, does China as a major economic power fundamentally challenge the “liberal world order” by virtue of being an undemocratic, communist country? One glaring omission in “International Regimes” was silence regarding the Soviet Union, a country which in 1982 was considered the US’s biggest competitor on the world stage. Without these clear definitions of what constitutes a “liberal” world order, it is difficult to say whether the US has truly shifted away from it. If liberal is inherently a US quality, then the rise of China in recent years and the relative wane of the US and Europe would indicate yes, norm-governed change has prevailed. However if we use a broader definition of embedded liberal order, then I think arguments could be made that recent changes in the global political economy are simply an evolved continuation of post-war practices. In China there is the concept of tianxia, which stems from traditional Confucian ideology and is similar to the theory of “dependency states”; under tianxia all countries in the world operate as a large family unit with similar goals and are all led by a single dominant country. China’s new Belt Road Initiative (BRI) supports leadership in the economies of other countries as a form of aid, and is similar to the Marshall Plan in building up foreign economies in order to create stable consumer bases who can later become consumers/supporters of your own economy. Furthermore, the responsibility of the government to be involved in the economy as a way of protecting and ensuring the economic security of the people sounds very similar to a lot of the rhetoric surrounding China’s “communism with Chinese characteristics” which is often lambasted by the West. Regarding the Marshall plan however, as Katie brought up, much of the rebuilding was about rebuilding the world in the US’s own image in order to secure US economic interests; this would again then directly tie “world order” and “what the world order should be” to sustaining pre-existing (Western/”American”) ideals. In conclusion, I feel like I don’t really have an answer to this week’s blog question, other than it really depends on what we define as “liberal” and for what purpose. I look forward to hearing from others either in the comments or in class. This week was really good. Besides class I also had a Chinese speech competition on Sunday and I ended up taking silver, so next fall I’ll be studying abroad at Nanjing University in China. I haven’t been back to China in a while, so I’m really happy about this opportunity.
I also really enjoyed my office hours meeting with PTJ and found the advice really helpful. One of my biggest challenges in the class has been feeling like there’s a lot that I just don’t know about, or don’t know enough about, and as a result I often feel like I lack the means to contribute to class conversations in a meaningful way. Much of my knowledge is limited to my own interests and personal background, and consequently much of my input is centered around those things. Moving forward I plan on focusing on these three things:
By excluding people from national policy, the implicit meaning is that they are not a part of that national consituency and are thus part of the “other”. This goes back to Tuesday’s discussion of “self” and “other”, as well as Hsia’s article on Taiwan. Miranda in her response to my Week Ten Blog brought up a lot of good points about the formation of national identity and how that has shaped American policy over time. She talked about America’s “defensive policy”, which got me thinking constructively about why, historically, that would be such a popular choice. (My main takeaway was that British colonialism and the victory of the American Revolution endowed in the US a deep reverence for “personal freedoms” which came to be synonymous with “American”; a defensive strategy is necessary to protect “freedom” and therefore protect “America”.) Truthfully, in the past, although I’ve thought race and gender studies are really interesting, I never really considered it as something that people actually do and get practical jobs from. Being in this class however, I find myself readily reaching for the constructivist approach, especially as it relates to some of my other classes and experiences. Moving forward I think it would be interesting to use constructivism to try and understand the formation of other countries, specifically in countries that were imperialized/colonized. On to Week Eleven! Regarding the blog topic for this week, the first thing that really stood out to me was the introduction for Bush’s 2006 National Security Strategy which said:
During Trump’s presidency, “American” has been a designation clearly reserved for American citizens, with even some naturalized citizens not being considered American enough. NSS 2017 supports this with its explicit use of American citizens, as opposed to NSS 2015 which used the vaguer term “American people”. In NSS 2015 this usage was used to further a more humanist and moralist sense of self which aligned American values with the well-being of the world and something that all other countries could benefit from. In this way, as discussed in “Fixing the Meaning of 9/11”, “self” become conflated with ideals of good and virtue, while “other” was used to denote bad. This moralist separation of “other” is consistent, and can be seen in NSC-68’s description of the Soviet Union as a fanatical slave state, as well as NSS 2017’s characterization jihadist terrorists as having “barbaric ideologies” (3). The Wolfers reading says that national security “indicates that the policy is designed to promote demands which are ascribed to the nation rather than individuals, sub-national groups or mankind as a whole” (481). By separating“who” and “what” within the categories of “self” and “other”, the US can get support for current policy by using the definitions most helpful to the present condition. Obama’s use of “American” focused more on general American ideals that other countries could also subscribe to, against globalized concerns like ebola and climate change. This worked to support Obama’s tactic of increased international bilateral cooperation. On the other hand, Trump makes “America” an exclusive ideal and group, which then supports his tactics of America working more by itself for itself. From NSC-68 to NSS 2017, American leadership was used as a strategy for obtaining security, as well as a definition for what security is. As NSS 2015 says, security is protecting “the leadership of United States ensuring the safety of American people in-land and overseas”. Leadership becomes a way of maintaining autonomy, and this is autonomy becomes synonymous with the freedom which America lists as one of its core defining values of self. In conclusion, similar to Elyssa, I think that the general framework for discussing national security has remained the same and is centered around general concepts of “us” and “them”, but that the interpretation of these concepts has changed over time and has been used for the justification of different means. |
KateHi, I'm Kate! I'm from Madison, WI and am planning on majoring in SIS focusing on East-Asia China. I like practicing kung fu, listening to music, and drinking bubble tea. Archives
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