Throughout this book, the concept of framing is used to look at art, photography, scientific drawings and cinema as visually constituted, spatially bounded productions. The way these genres relate to that which exists beyond the frame, by means of plastic, chemically transposed, pencil-sketched or moving images allows us to decipher the particular language of the visual and at the same time circumscribe the dialectic between presence and absence that is proper to all visual media. Yet, these kinds of re-framing owe their existence to the ruptures and upheavals that marked the demise of certain discursive systems in the past, announcing the emergence of others that were in turn overturned.
Jean Rouch made important, innovative ethnographic films in West Africa from the late 1940s to the 1970s. There is an evident contrast – in subject and style – between his films about young Africans in the years prior to national independences and the more traditional ethnographic films, in the wake of Griaule, largely focused on the "primitive" and on the "profound Truth" assumed to reside in the Dogon cosmogony. This dualism, which reflects the evolution underway in French ethnography, is a source of tension in Rouch's corpus of film. In the footsteps of Leiris and Balandier, post-War French ethnography was, at that time, apprehending the rapid changes that Africa was experiencing and was attempting to reconfigure its own theoretical foundations. Rouch may have seemed to be at odds with this new paradigm when filming the Dogon, but at the same time he made films which gave voice and personal identity to their protagonists, foreseeing novel forms of intercultural reflections, akin to the concept of "regards croisés" that certain post-Modern analysts would later prone. In the films about societal shifts in Africa, Rouch mixed as it suited him fiction with the most vital subjects: de-colonialization, modernization, politics, the sociology of population migrations from rural to urban. The watershed work of Balandier, his Sociologie des Brazzavilles noires in particular, and those of Rouch, with les Maîtres fous, Moi, un noir and Jaguar, echoed each other, offering a dynamic approach to African culture. However, the tangible dichotomy in Rouch's work, with respect to subjects traditional or modern, is not a quirk but rather a trademark reflecting Rouch's unique itinerary, woven through a transformational period in French ethnology, representing a source of tension within his works, begging to be further explored and contextualized.
Jean Rouch made important, innovative ethnographic films in West Africa from the late 1940s to the 1970s. There is an evident contrast – in subject and style – between his films about young Africans in the years prior to national independences and the more traditional ethnographic films, in the wake of Griaule, largely focused on the "primitive" and on the "profound Truth" assumed to reside in the Dogon cosmogony. This dualism, which reflects the evolution underway in French ethnography, is a source of tension in Rouch's corpus of film. In the footsteps of Leiris and Balandier, post-War French ethnography was, at that time, apprehending the rapid changes that Africa was experiencing and was attempting to reconfigure its own theoretical foundations. Rouch may have seemed to be at odds with this new paradigm when filming the Dogon, but at the same time he made films which gave voice and personal identity to their protagonists, foreseeing novel forms of intercultural reflections, akin to the concept of "regards croisés" that certain post-Modern analysts would later prone. In the films about societal shifts in Africa, Rouch mixed as it suited him fiction with the most vital subjects: de-colonialization, modernization, politics, the sociology of population migrations from rural to urban. The watershed work of Balandier, his Sociologie des Brazzavilles noires in particular, and those of Rouch, with les Maîtres fous, Moi, un noir and Jaguar, echoed each other, offering a dynamic approach to African culture. However, the tangible dichotomy in Rouch's work, with respect to subjects traditional or modern, is not a quirk but rather a trademark reflecting Rouch's unique itinerary, woven through a transformational period in French ethnology, representing a source of tension within his works, begging to be further explored and contextualized.
"Colorblindness, A Life: Race, Film, and the Articulation of an Ideology," offers a political and cultural biography of the racial ideology of colorblindness from its emergence as a coherent racial ideology in the years after the civil rights movement to its dominant influence in social policy in the 1990s. Most importantly, the project reveals the manner in which colorblindness became the racial project of neoliberalism. This elaboration of colorblindness as an ideology and cultural form is best understood through an examination of film during the period of my study. Beginning in the second-half of the 1970s, Hollywood developed its own set of filmic aesthetics, narratives, and tropes that advocated colorblindness. Moreover, Hollywood was not only central to the articulation of the ideology, it also depended upon colorblindness in the New Hollywood era. In the post-civil rights era, then, colorblindness, neoliberalism, and film are constitutive of and inextricable from one another.The project illustrates three key themes. First, colorblindness is the racial project of neoliberalism. The 1970s were characterized by an anti-government ethos that extended across racial and political lines that neoconservatives used in the 1970s to attack issues like affirmative action and busing as part of a movement intent on dismantling of the welfare state. Out of these struggles emerged a neoliberal notion of "individual" colorblind freedom that neoconservatives, beginning in the mid-seventies, successfully sold as the antidote to the "reverse discrimination" of government mandated "group" rights. The growing popularity of neoliberal economics in the seventies was not merely the result of the seeming failures of Keynesianism to cure stagflation. Instead, the mounting opposition to the "overreach" of the federal government in busing and affirmative action was fundamental in building the appeal of a return to uncompromising laissez faire economics.Secondly, colorblindness, although post-racial in theory, has served as a tool for whites to realign and reconstitute white supremacy within a post-civil rights political correctness. Beginning in the late seventies, white Republicans and moderate Democrats alike used colorblindness to eliminate race-conscious programs intended to promote racial equality. These efforts have only exacerbated racial inequality.Lastly, my dissertation asserts that film served as a key battleground for the culture wars out of which the ideology of colorblindness formed. Yet just as colorblindness needed film to form its cultural cohesion, film needed colorblindness to reinvent itself in the desperate economic times of the post-Classical era. Beginning in the 1970s, movies capitalized upon the volatile racial, social, and economic struggles in the decades after the civil rights movement that shaped colorblindness and have continued to appeal to colorblind sentiments for profit. By the end of the 1980s, Hollywood was increasingly turning to historical dramas that imagined colorblind white heroes at the center of black freedom struggles--emancipation and the civil rights movement, specifically. And by the 1990s, entirely new colorblind film genres, most notably in what I term the "Teacher Film," had emerged.
1. Beyond the Mad Men: Consumer Engineering and the Rise of Marketing Management, 1920s–1970s: An Introduction -- I. Twentieth-Century Marketing: Aspirations and Limits, Costs, and Benefits -- 2. Marketing as "Consumer Engineering"? A Concept in Transatlantic Perspective, 1930s–1960s -- 3. What Does "Fast Capitalism" Mean for Consumers? Examples of Consumer Engineering in the United States -- 4. A Theoretical Exploration of Consumer Engineering: Implicit Contracts and Market Making -- II. Consumer Engineers and Transatlantic Exchanges at Mid-Century -- 5. Shopping Malls and Social Democracy: Victor Gruen's Postwar Campaign for Conscientious Consumption in American Suburbia -- 6. Consumer-Based Research: Walter Landor and the Value of Packaging Design in Marketing -- 7. German-Style Consumer Engineering: Victor Vogt's Verkaufspraxis, 1925–1950 -- III. Consumer Engineering Practices in Postwar Europe -- 8. Consumer Credit as a Marketing Tool: The French Experience in European and Transatlantic Comparison, 1950s–1960s -- 9. Adidas and the Creation of a Transnational Market for German Athletic Shoes, 1948–1978 -- 10. Imagined Images, Surveyed Consumers: Market Research as a Means of Consumer Engineering, 1950s–1980s -- IV. Consumer Engineering and Consumer Movements -- 11. Marketing a New Society or Engineering Kitchens? IKEA and the Swedish Consumer Agency -- 12. "The Consumer Crusader": Hugo Schui and the German Consumers Association -- 13. Consumer Engineering by Belgian Consumer Movements: From Modern Marketing with a Transnational Touch to Late-Modern Insecurities, 1957–2000
A dialogue with Linda Nochlin, the Maverick She -- 1970s : Why have there been no great women artists? -- Miriam Schapiro: recent work -- Some women realists -- Women artists after the French Revolution -- 1980s : Florine Stettheimer: rococo subversive -- Nancy Graves: the subversiveness of sculpture -- Morisot's Wet nurse: the construction of work and leisure in impressionist painting -- Zuka's French Revolution: a woman's place is public space -- 1990s : Pornography as a decorative art: Joyce Kozloff's patterns of desire -- Starting from scratch: the beginnings of feminist art history -- Mary Cassatt's modernity -- Sylvia Sleigh: portraits of women artists and writers -- Deborah Kass: portrait of the artist as an appropriator -- 2000s : Jenny Saville: floating in gender nirvana -- Mary Frank: encounters -- Seeing beneath the surface (Kathleen Gilje) -- A rage to paint: Joan Mitchell and the issue of femininity -- Sam Taylor-Wood: when the stars weep -- Alice Neel -- Unholy postures: Kiki Smith and the body -- Sarah Lucas: God is Dad -- "Why have there been no great women artists?" thirty years after -- Women artists then and now: painting, sculpture, and the image of the self -- Cecily Brown: the erotics of touch -- Existence and beading: the work of Liza Lou -- Black, white, and uncanny: Miwa Yanagi's Fairy tale -- Old-age style: late Louise Bourgeois -- 2010s : Sophie Calle: word, image and the end of ekphrasis -- Ellen Altfest: a new, new realism -- Natalie Frank: the dark side of the fairy tale
Anachronism Effects: Ventriloquism and Popular Media, argues that the seemingly outmoded cultural phenomenon of ventriloquism is a key site for understanding Western anxieties about media and mediation at the turn of the twenty-first century. Ventriloquism achieved mainstream popularity in the Vaudevillian era through its comedic dramatizations of the foibles of everyday communication. Subsequently translated into the audiovisual contexts of phonography, film, and television, the art boasts a growing plethora of media afterlives, while also serving as political shorthand for the mechanical reproduction of another's speech. Anachronism Effects insists that ventriloquism's circulation as a popular metaphor, and continued prevalence as a form of contemporary entertainment, offers a unique template for tracing the transmissions of power and knowledge through diverse media platforms, as well as through racialized, gendered, and queer bodies, in the information age—even as the practice continues to evoke the cultural detritus of a prior historical moment.Anachronism Effects thus attends to the myriad ways in which ventriloquism has evolved as a distinct cultural object, as the art of "saying what people want to say but can't say" by displacing this unspeakable or unsavory speech onto a dummy. From the radically race-critical 1970s vinyl record albums of the African-American ventriloquist duo Richard and Willie; to the late 1980s-early 1990s lip-synch scandal wrought by the "ventriloquism" of the Afro-German pop group Milli Vanilli; to the contemporary televisual, cinematic, and multimedia performances of the self-deprecating British ventriloquist Nina Conti and her jingoistic American counterparts Terry Fator and Jeff Dunham, the project's case studies illuminate what it means to "vent" in both senses of the term, particularly in the context of the perceived dynamics of silencing or "correctness" that often accompanies contemporary political discourse. The dissertation's initial case studies notably coalesce around highly politicized celebrations of national history (the mid-1970s U.S. Bicentennial, the early 1990s "reunification" of Germany), while its later chapters take up post-9/11 U.S. fantasies of a return to a folkloric national past. In each instance, ventriloquism's play with the alignments and disconnections between body and voice enacts a material working-through of the temporal contradictions elided by national historical discourses.
from 2009, French intellectuals Alain Badiou and Alain Finkielkraut meet in various public scenes. This article is intended to show that, in view of the inclusion of this debate in these cultural bodies, the meeting between Badiou and Finkielkraut was unlikely. By providing a sociological explanation of the (sub) text of the explanation, the aim was to understand, from a comparative perspective, the structural, longitudinal and design dimensions underlying the manufacture of this co-product. The first part of that article sought, first of all, to establish, on the basis of a sociography of the respective routes of Badiou and Finkielkraut, that they share heterodox intellectual profiles associated with those same external careers of the cultural celebration. Secondly, we sought to show that the confrontatio set up following a radical ideological opposition offers them, above all, the opportunity to strengthen the prevalence within these channels of the intellectual reputation of this academic and mondal style, in a highly sophisticated way of combining those of anti-school with the effects of schools. This meeting between Badiou and Finkielkraut therefore condense on its own all the changes in the intellectual field since the late 1970s as a result of the emergence of these visibility circuits. First, it confirms the monopoly exercised by those cultural celebration networks in access to the public knowledge of intellectuals and, therefore, the bottom-up of the resources of the relational network over the autonomous species of cultural capital. On the other hand, editorial arrangements such as the explanation, by seeking to overcome ideological divisions, remain an example of the intellectual world's compliance with the journalistic methods of mediation and consensus. ; International audience Since 2009, the French intellectuals Alain Badiou and Alain Finkielkraut have been meeting on various public stages. This article proposes to show that, given the inclusion of this debate in these instances of cultural ...
Als Konzept ist die "historische Stadt" relativ neu. Entwickelt wurde sie während der 1970er und 1980er Jahre aus den Grundideen der städtebaulichen Moderne. Das lässt sich besonders gut am Beispiel Ost-Berlin belegen. In dieser Zeit setzte sich hier eine heterogene Allianz von Führungskadern, Architekten und Intellektuellen für ein städtisches Umfeld ein, das die individuelle Erfahrung von Geschichtlichkeit vermittelt. Diese Ideen schlugen sich in den 1980er Jahren in einer Reihe von Prestigeprojekten nieder. In der Vorbereitung auf die 750-Jahrfeier von Berlin 1987 ließ die DDR-Führung einige der jahrzehntelang geschmähten Mietshausviertel renovieren und mit Insignien historischen Alltagslebens ausschmücken. Gleichzeitig wurden eine Reihe repräsentativer Bauprojekte geplant und teilweise realisiert, die sich stark an historische Bauformen anlehnen. Die historische Stadt vermengte Elemente verschiedener vergangener Epochen zu einer undifferenzierten Vorstellung von "der Vergangenheit." Diese Entwicklung beruhte auf einer Elastizität der sprachlichen Äußerungen von Städtebauern und Theoretikern. Im Laufe der 1970er und 1980er Jahre behielten Begriff wie "Wohnraumerhaltung" oder "Rekonstruktion" einerseits ihren positiven Klang bei, veränderten andererseits aber radikal ihre Bedeutung. In ähnlicher Weise wurde die quasi-biologische Konzeption der Stadt als Organismus, aus dem "überaltete" Wohnviertel nach Beendigung ihrer "Lebensdauer" entfernt werden müssen, Schritt für Schritt außer Kraft gesetzt. Durch Renovierungs- und Neubauprojekte initiierte die Ost-Berliner Führungsspitze und ihre ausführenden Organe eine Renaissance zahlreicher, lange vernachlässigter Stadtteile, die nach der Wiedervereinigung zu gehobenen Wohn- und Geschäftsvierteln wurden. Trotz der umfassenden personellen Neuordnung nach dem Ende der DDR muss die Ost-Berliner Städtebaupolitik vor und nach der Wiedervereinigung als Kontinuität und nicht als Bruch verstanden werden. Ungeachtet der politischen und wirtschaftlichen Unterschiede weist die städtebauliche Entwicklung in Ost-Berlin in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren starke Parallelen zu der im Westen auf. Sowohl in der DDR als auch in zahlreichen westlichen Ländern wurde mit der Erfindung der historischen Stadt reale und imaginäre Stadtgeschichte zunehmend kommerzialisiert und an lokale Eliten und Touristen vermarktet. Die historische Stadt wurde auch zum konzeptuellen Hintergrund für die zunehmend verbreitete Inszenierung und Deutung historischer Spuren im Stadtbild, mit der die neuen Mittelschichten politische und soziale Legitimation beanspruchten. ; The idea of a "historic city" is a rather recent phenomenon. As a conceptual framework, it evolved over the course of the 1970s and 1980s from the intellectual foundations of modernist urban design. This is especially well illustrated in East Berlin, where a heterogeneous group of politicians, architects, and scholars called for an urban environment that provides the individual experience of historicity. Their ideas were most prominently infused in a series of showcase projects built during the 1980s. For the celebration of Berlin's 750th anniversary in 1987, some of the long-despised late-19th-century tenement neighborhoods were remodeled and fitted out with the insignia of historic every-day life. In addition, a number of representative architectural ensembles were built that made use of different historic styles. The invention of the historic city collapsed the memories of different historic periods into a generic notion of "the past." This process relied on a specific elasticity of the language employed by designers and theorists. Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, terms such as preservation or reconstruction retained a positive connotation while simultaneously time undergoing a radical change in meaning. In the same way, the quasi-biological conception of the city as a body with a life cycle, where "obsolete" neighborhoods had to be regularly demolished, was gradually suspended. Through both remodeling and new construction, the East German leaders and their collaborators initiated a renaissance of once neglected neighborhoods, which after the German reunification became prime locations for upscale housing and retail. Construction policy before and after the German reunification therefore has to be seen as a continuous development rather than a break. Despite the different political and economic system in the German Democratic Republic, East Berlin design politics during the 1970s and 1980s paralleled the approaches in Western countries, where real and imagined urban history was increasingly commodified and marketed to local elites and tourists. The historic city also became the conceptual background for a widely practiced exegesis of historic residues, through which Berlin's middle classes claimed social and political legitimacy.
As a Caribbean institution of Higher Learning, the University of the West Indies is seen as a major contributor to integration efforts in the Region very often mandated by CARICOM to carry out educational missions to that effect. Working in a geographically fragmented and multilingual space, foreign language education is a major preoccupation for academic departments or sections in the respective campuses. The Mona Campus, based in Jamaica, was very one of the earliest to recognize the need to add LSP courses in its curriculum as electives (Business) or as 'service courses' for other programmes (Tourism and Hospitality Management). To these existing LSP courses, the French Section at the Mona Campus added in 2003 a new LSP course geared toward International Relation students. The originality of the course lays its chosen method of delivery by total simulation. The course was offered twice since its approval and under two different schedules (two-week intensive and semester-long). This chapter discusses the impact of these two schedules on the course delivery and learning process. The comparison shows the importance of student's motivation and learning autonomy. The study also comments on the use of blended learning (on-line module complementing face-to-face delivery) and suggests that virtual reality may offer a new addition to Total Simulation for LSP. ; To cite the digital version, add its Reference URL (found by following the link in the header above the digital file). ; TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 73 French for International Conference at The University of the West Indies, Mona: Total Simulation in the Teaching of Languages for Specific Purposes Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo The University of The West Indies, Mona Gilles Lubeth The University of The West Indies, Mona Abstract: As a Caribbean institution of Higher Learning, the University of the West Indies is seen as a major contributor to integration efforts in the Region very often mandated by CARICOM to carry out educational missions to that effect. Working in a geographically fragmented and multilingual space, foreign language education is a major preoccupation for academic departments or sections in the respective campuses. The Mona Campus, based in Jamaica, was very one of the earliest to recognize the need to add LSP courses in its curriculum as electives (Business) or as 'service courses' for other programmes (Tourism and Hospitality Management). To these existing LSP courses, the French Section at the Mona Campus added in 2003 a new LSP course geared toward International Relation students. The originality of the course lays its chosen method of delivery by total simulation. The course was offered twice since its approval and under two different schedules (two-week intensive and semester-long). This chapter discusses the impact of these two schedules on the course delivery and learning process. The comparison shows the importance of student's motivation and learning autonomy. The study also comments on the use of blended learning (on-line module complementing face-to-face delivery) and suggests that virtual reality may offer a new addition to Total Simulation for LSP. Keywords: CARICOM, French for international trade, international conferences, Language for Specific Purposes (LSP), methodology Introduction Language for Specific Purpose (LSP) has developed with the expansion of international trade and the development of multilingual and multicultural working teams. Short language courses are designed at the request of enterprises or institutions in order to meet the specific demands related to the work environment. Though LSP courses have been in existence for more than three decades, their introduction in the academic programs of language majors is quite recent and has been a hot debate for several years at MLA and ADFL meetings. In the Caribbean, with the development of integration, the need for LSP has been felt as the CARICOM (Caribbean Community) started to look beyond the English-speaking Caribbean and opened itself to non-English-speaking territories (Surinam and Haiti joined the organization in 1995 and 2002 respectively while Cuba and the Dominican Republic have observer status). These political trends impacted on our foreign language offerings, stressing the need to open our curriculum to professionally oriented courses. The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the language sections of the two other campuses TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 74 had various responses: at the St. Augustine Campus (Trinidad and Tobago), a Latin American Studies program was developed; at Cave Hill (Barbados), a cross-faculty program in Management Studies with a minor in a foreign language was approved; at Mona, LSP courses were developed and students from other faculties were allowed to declare minors in French or Spanish. In this article, we present the circumstances surrounding the design of the latest addition to French for Specific Purpose courses offered at the University of The West Indies, Mona (UWI, Mona), the methodological choices made and their implication for assessment. Because the course has been offered twice since its approval by the University Academic Quality Assurance Committee and with two different schedules, we will compare and discuss these two delivery modes. Language for Specific Purpose at the UWI, Mona At the UWI, Mona, the introduction of French for Special Purpose came out of a pragmatic approach at a time when high schools were experiencing a high turnover of French teachers and a reduction of schools offering A-level French (equivalent to the Baccalauréat). Noting that our graduates were being hired in the insurance and tourism industries, it was thought that equipping them with professional language skills would give a 'practical' touch to our program. The recruitment of a colleague with professional experience in translation led to discussions about a more professionally oriented program. "French for Business" was the first LSP course to be designed in 1991–1992 with the creation of a level III course of French for business or "Business French." The course was developed as an elective in response to a situation in which French graduates were moving toward the business sector instead of education. In the subsequent years, other LSP courses were introduced: "French for Hospitality" in 1998–1999 and "French for International Conferences" in 2003. The introduction of this last course coincided with a drastic overhaul of the French curriculum. The offering of "French for International Conferences" came at a time when the French section of the Department was repositioning itself and revising its offerings. The course was designed with a view to attracting International Relations (IR) students while capitalizing on the latest trend in French foreign language teaching methods. The decision was based on the fact that IR majors and French majors minoring in IR outnumbered students majoring in French only. It was taken at a time when the section was going into a survival mode, taking drastic measures and moving away from the traditional language curriculum (36 credits equally divided between language and literature). The section opted for a mix of language, literature, film and culture, and French for specific purpose courses. It was a drastic choice since the section was moving away of the traditional literary offerings. Though the section has not fully recovered, it has increased its numbers and the majority of students pursuing French are double majors (French and Spanish) with a professional objective of becoming translators or interpreters, followed by IR and Linguistics majors. Total Simulation in French Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Even though Total Simulation in French Foreign Language Education was initiated in the 1970s at the BELC (Bureau d'Enseignement de la Langue et de la Civilisation Françaises à l'Étranger / Office for the Teaching of French Language and Civilization TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 75 Abroad) it did not really become mainstream until the late eighties. This approach to language teaching evolved from role playing and the need to expand role playing over a longer period of time with a view to involving diverse aspects of communication (Yaiche, 1996). Total Simulation was borrowed from continuous professional education where staff received specific training to deal with job-related situations. Total Simulation for French Foreign Language Teaching was first conceptualized by Francis Debyser, a professor at the CIEP (Centre International d'Études Pédagogiques / International Center for Peda-gogical Studies). In the 1980s, Total Simulation became more broadly accepted and moved from experimental to established status. Publishers become interested and several textbooks were published by Hachette between 1980 and 1990 (Yaiche, 1996). By the 1990s, Total Simulation was redirected toward the teaching of French for Specific Purpose (Business French, French for International Relations, Hospitality French). Total Simulation benefits today from IT and its use in the classroom. It is still at the experimental stage as is the case of 'Virtual Cabinet' for the teaching of English, which has been developed by Masters' students at University of Lyon II (http://sites.univ-lyon2.fr/vcab/demo/) or 'L'auberge' developed by University Lille III for incoming French Foreign Language Students (http://auberge.int.univ-lille3.fr/). Characteristics of a Total Simulation Course in Foreign Language Learning Total Simulation in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning could be considered revolutionary in its approach and methodology. First, the role of the teacher is transformed as he or she becomes a facilitator and a participant in the simulation instead of an instructor. For instance, in the International Conference Simulation, the teacher plays the part of the Secretariat. He or she compiles and archives the material needed for the progress of the conference. He or she also provides documents and the linguistic tools needed for the project. Secondly, simulation follows a set pattern of five stages (See Bourdeau, Bouygue, & Gatein, 1992; Yaiche, 1996). The first stage is the creation of the setting. In the case of the International Conference, it means, choosing the theme and the place of the conference. The second stage is to identify the participants. At this point, the role playing starts as the learners have to choose an identity and the country that they will represent. Learners will have to play several roles: delegates from their chosen countries (Minister of Foreign Affairs or High Ranking Civil Servant or Ambassador). At one point, they also play the part of journalists. The countries are fictitious but based on the characteristics of real countries. During this stage, learners choose their identity and civil status; they invent a short biography indicating two physical, moral, psychological, intellectual characteristics, two distinctive objects, (Yaiche, 1996). The third and fourth stages consist in conducting the simulation: the official opening ceremony and the working sessions. At this point, learners are to present their country's respective position paper. Interaction takes place as well as negotiations for a common position and action plan. During this stage, the facilitator plays an important part in ensuring the archiving of all productions and the elaboration of a data bank for the progress of the conference. Students are provided with documents and assisted in acquiring the mastery of the linguistic tools needed for the exercise (e.g., mastery of high language register for official speeches; mastery of diplomatic lexicon for the phrasing of the final resolution and the press release, TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 76 ability to write an abstract or a synthetic report from a news article, etc.). The final stage is geared toward ending the simulation. In the case of the International Conference, it is marked by the writing of the final resolution and a press conference. Since IR students are to be prepared to face and manage diplomatic incidents/crisis during negotiations, elements that could lead to such incident are introduced between the fourth and fifth stage of the simulation when students are drafting the final resolution of the conference. Students are expected to draw on their negotiating skills in order to solve the problem or assuage the potential conflict and bring the conference to a positive closing ceremony. Assessment is blended in the simulation: oral expression is assessed during the opening ceremony (a five-minute presentation) and during the press conference. Students are video recorded and marking takes place afterwards. (See evaluation sheet in appendix B). Both examiners are present to abide by University Examination Regulations. Writing proficiency is assessed through a press release and the conference final resolution, which is done individually during a traditional in-class test. It is also assessed 'outside' of the simulation through the submission of a take-home assignment, the format of which is either a précis writing or a critical review of a newspaper article related to the theme of the conference. Students are provided with a choice of articles from Le Monde Diplomatique, a well-established and recognized reference journal from which they will select an article for review or summary. LSP and Total Simulation in Jamaica and at the UWI, Mona French teachers in Jamaica were introduced to Total Simulation in 1993 thanks to a new French Linguistics Attaché who was also appointed at The University of the West Indies from 1992–1997. A specialist in Total Simulation, she organized two workshops for the Jamaica Association of French Teachers and one for the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo), a Jamaican state agency responsible for the training of the workforce in the tourism sector. The co-authors received additional training at the annual training seminar organized by the Centre International d'Études Pédagogiques (CIEP) held in Caen in July 1996 (Nzengou-Tayo) and July 2009 (Lubeth) respectively. The first total simulation course at the UWI was developed in 2003. Two factors contributed to the choice of this methodology. One was the renewed interest in LSP with the review of the French program. After a quality assurance review in 2003, the French section, threatened by low numbers in registration, revised its program with a stronger professional component (introduction of an additional LSP course and translation modules). The second was the institutionalization of summer courses, which offered the possibility of using an intensive format. The idea was to design a course that could imitate a real life situation: an international conference taking into account that such an event is usually limited over a period of time (1–2 weeks) and requires a full work day. The course was submitted to the University Quality Assurance Committee for approval (See course proposal in Appendix A). In the initial submission, evaluation was by 50% coursework and 50% final examination (Appendix A). However, when the course was first taught in 2006, we requested a change of the evaluation scheme to 100% coursework (50% oral presentation and 50% written assignment). The reason for this change was directly related to the philosophy behind total simulation, which required a formative form of assessment that would blend seamlessly in the simulation. TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 77 Case Study: The 2006 and 2009 Experiences Since its creation, French for International Conferences (FREN 3118) has been offered twice: first, in 2006 as an intensive summer course over two weeks, and secondly, in 2009 as a regular semester course over thirteen weeks. These two modes of delivery will be compared and discussed in this section. Course delivery schedule. In 2005–2006, during the two-week period during which the course was offered, the timetable averaged 25 hours per week with 5 daily contact hours. FREN 3118 was the only course attended by the students. Students were put in an immersion situation as they interacted with a native speaker of French during the week. During the second week, ten hours were set aside for independent research in an attempt to give students an opportunity to develop learning autonomy. In 2009–2010, the course was taught during the first semester according to the regular schedule. The timetable featured 3 one-hour sessions per week. In addition to FREN 3118, students were simultaneously registered for four other courses whose demands were competing with the French course. The fast pace of the semester (13 weeks) did not allow for a scheduled independent research. Students had to use their free time for independent research to develop their learning autonomy. The difference between the schedules of the 2006 and 2009 course delivery had an impact on the course management as well as the students' learning experience. It is evident that 2009 students did not have the same learning stimulus as the 2006 ones. They had the pressure of their other courses in term of time and workload. In addition, regular attendance was an issue since students sometimes missed classes either due to timetable clashes or assignment deadlines to meet in other courses. The running of the course was affected as each student had a part to play in the progress of the simulation and absence from class meetings affected the proceedings of the conference. Student profile and number. The course targets third-year students and requires a general language module at level III as a co-requisite. However, the co-requisite can be waived depending on the level of the students. For instance, when the course was offered during the summer 2006, it was waived for second-year students who had received a B+ in the two modules of the level II language courses. In 2009, a third-year International Relations student who had completed level I of the French language courses with A and was reading the level II language course was allowed to register. The waiver was granted based on his outstanding results at level I and also after an interview in which he demonstrated a high level of motivation and learning autonomy. In 2006, the course was offered with 9 students and in 2009 there were 14 registered students. Numbers can be an issue for conducting a total simulation course. For instance, our experience taught us that, even though Cali, Cheval, & Zabardi (1992) suggest a number of 20 participants divided according to a ratio by type of countries1 in La Conférence Internationale et ses Variantes, country-ratio balance can still be observed TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 78 with lesser numbers. Based on our 2006 experience, we recommend a minimum of 8 students. Indeed, a lesser number would not allow their distribution according to the recommended country ratio. In addition, work in commissions, which is part of the simulation process, would be less productive. Similarly, 20 is the maximum manageable number of students during total simulation. The attention to be devoted to students' progress and the group dynamics become a challenge with larger numbers. Therefore, beyond 20, the group would be divided and two concurrent simulations conducted, provided that staffing is not an issue for the institution. Topics and scenarios. On both occasions, the theme of the conference was inspired by current affairs relevant to the Caribbean region. In 2006, the conference was titled "Libre circulation des travailleurs à l'échelle mondiale: Faisabilité et conditions" (Feasibility and Conditions for a Global Free Movement of Labour). The theme was inspired by discussions taking place in the media about the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) put in place by CARICOM countries that year. The scenario was developed to involve a group of 9 countries, members of a regional organization seeking to achieve integration through free movement of workers. The 2009 edition of the conference, "Réchauffement climatique: Stratégies et équité" (Global Warming: Strategies and Equity) was inspired by the then ongoing international negotiations on global warming. The course started in September, just three months before the Copenhagen Summit. The scenario was based on the creation of an international organization, the Group of 14 (G14) specially dedicated to addressing the issue of global warming, and therefore holding its first conference accordingly. The choice of topics related to current international or regional issues stimulates the students' interest as they can have access to current reference material. They develop their critical thinking as they are exposed to various diverging opinions and asked to present their country's position at the start of the conference. For example, at the 2009 conference, the delegate of "Bonangue" expressed the country's position as follows: Conscient des graves effets [du réchauffement climatique] sur l'environnement, nous tenons à prendre action immédiatement parce que les effets poseront un problème pour le pays. Par le passé, la Bonangue a donné priorité aux revenus, dans certains cas, au détriment de l'environnement. Le pays est disposé à porter [sic] les changements nécessaires. The delegate of "Kalasie," on the contrary, indicated, "La Kalasie est favorable au recours aux crédits d'émission de gaz utilisables par les investisseurs." Another delegate from "Lisérbie" chose to stress the social impact and the importance to reach a consensus on the matter. The multiple and sometimes diverging country positions will contribute to the life of the conference as the objective is to find a common ground and sign a final resolution, which would bring the conference to a close. TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 79 Resources and methods. The course outline was developed in accordance with the prescribed textbook La Conférence Internationale et ses Variantes (Cali et al., 1992). The authors' recom-mendations were followed with some adjustments, which will be presented below. Since countries have to be fictitious to respect the principle of Total Simulation, two websites, CIA: The World Factbook, and Quid were used to establish the profile of these invented countries.2 Using the principle of 'mots-valises' students invented the name of the countries they were representing. For instance, "Lisérbie," "Kalasie" or "Dukenyah" were obviously created in reference to existing countries or regions. Other names were arbitrary and left to the students' imagination as "Cadeaux d'Ouest," "Amapour" or "Kadia." Other web resources were used in accordance with the theme of the conference and a companion website was developed on the University Virtual Learning Environment (OurVLE) (UWI, Mona "Virtual Learning Environment") to take advantage of information technology at our disposal at the Mona Campus. The 2006 intensive format. We introduced some slight variations from the standard format of the simulation. First, the course started with a screening of the French movie Saint-Germain ou la Négociation (2003) with Jean Rochefort. The objective was to highlight the objectives, modalities of diplomatic negotiations as well as to insist on the high-language register used during negotiations, which the students would have to use. Despite the historical context (the 16th century), the film was particularly suitable as it showed protocol and behind-the-scene events taking place during political negotiations. Secondly, students were given an introductory lecture on the processes of international conferences coupled with a tour of the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston. This was facilitated by a colleague and professional translator who worked at international conferences and was familiar with the facility. Various documents were made available online on a range of topics: international organizations pursuing regional integration through implementation of free movement of labor (the European Union, CARICOM) and a compilation of documents on immigration and globalization. In 2006, the course page on OurVLE was used only for archival purposes. The instructor, playing the part of the conference Secretary, uploaded for future reference documents that had been identified as relevant to the conference. Since the students' time were dedicated to the course, it was easy to simulate the rhythm of a conference with meetings in commission and plenary sessions. The course outline was design to be the "agenda" of the conference. The intensive format helped to develop a group dynamic based on solidarity and conviviality, which stimulated weaker students to make efforts to improve their proficiency. The 2009 semester-long format. The semester-long delivery of FREN 3118 differed from the intensive summer course on some points. The presentation by the guest lecturer and the film screening were maintained, but, due to timetable constraints, the tour of the Conference Centre did not take place. The main innovation was in the extensive use of the online module and the exploration of the functionalities offered by the Moodle platform supporting OurVLE TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 80 where all the material necessary for the presentation of the theme and the conduct of the activities of the conference were uploaded. All documents were made available online via OurVLE, expanding from print and website links to audio and video. Students' productions were added to the resources identified by the instructor. The instructor/facilitator provided the following resources: explanatory documents on global warming (its geopolitical implications and the negotiation process); documents with terminology used in diplomatic language; and audiovisual documents from France2, France3, and YouTube. A link to Yann Arthus-Bertrand's documentary Home (2009) was also put on the course portal. As Secretariat, the instructor/facilitator uploaded reports of sessions held during the preparatory phase (the preconference meetings). These reports gave students a regularly updated overview of progress made, a review of notions covered as well as the calendar of events (the schedule of meetings). Using the functionalities offered by Moodle, students were able to contribute to the development of the course portal. Using the 'upload a single file' and the forum features, they uploaded their own production, including country and delegate profiles, reports resulting from the sessions in commission and plenary sessions, and draft resolutions. The course portal was useful for archiving the various activities conducted during the course. Students were able to refer to a central repository outside of the contact hours. This tool also had financial and ecological benefits as it reduced the cost of photocopying. Indeed, whereas all documents had to be printed in 2006, only documents produced during the conference (student-generated commission and plenary reports, agenda and list of speakers) were printed for circulation in 2009. Because of the discontinuity of the timetable (3 hours spread over 13 weeks), the 2009 conference did not flow as harmoniously as the 2006 one. With competing interests, students found it difficult to dedicate themselves to the conference. Running from one class to another, they sometimes lost track of the conference objectives, which in turn had an impact on the group dynamics and progress as indicated by the results of the continuous assessment (i.e., the coursework). Evaluation and students' results. As mentioned earlier, the course assessment was done by 100% coursework. The percentage was equally divided between oral and writing proficiency (50% each). Oral proficiency was assessed as follows: delegate's address at the opening ceremony weighting 25%; delegate's interview at the press conference (15%); and one intervention as a journalist interviewing the delegates at the press conference (10%). Writing proficiency was assessed through a press release (10%), an individual proposal for the final resolution (15%), and one précis writing/critical review of document(s) (25%). Students' oral and written productions were graded using a criterion-referenced assessment grid (See Appendix B for details). In 2006, we got a 100% pass rate with results ranging from A+ to C. In 2009, the pass rate was 71.42%. With the intensive format, students demonstrated their mastery of high-level register. Students who were considered 'weak' based on their low grade in the general language courses, managed to improve their proficiency level and achieve acceptable performances in oral presentations. In 2009, there was a large gap between the TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 81 best and the weakest students (2 students got As, 4 students failed, and 8 students' grades ranged from B+ to D). Group average was 49.79%. When comparing the two groups' results, we have to admit that we had some doubts initially about the intensive format because of the limited time given to students to properly absorb the notions and the various tasks required in the course. Yet, it appears that stretching the process over a semester is not a decisive factor for improved performance. The role of group dynamics in total simulation is yet to be measured though it is generally recognized in class interaction and learning. During the regular semester, the group dynamics did not play a cohesive role as it did in the summer course where more proficient students helped to strengthen the weaker ones. Competing academic interests and irregular attendance during the regular semester also had an impact on students' low performance. Conclusion At the UWI, Mona, we introduced LSP courses in our academic programs as part of our major from a pragmatic standpoint in reviewing our curriculum. Though we are aware that LSP courses generally target professionals already in the field, as a result, the design and offering of such courses is usually preceded by a need analysis and the identification of the language processes (i.e., register, lexicon, syntax, speech acts) needed to achieve the requested proficiency (Mangiante & Parpette, 2004). Both "Business French" and "French for International Conferences" count toward the major, though only one can be taken as a core course, the other being an elective. Because LSP courses have a professional orientation, they give undergraduates the impression of being prepared for the world of work. The use of total simulation comforts this impression because of its task-based approach and the fact that it recreates a work environment with its idiosyncrasies. Combined with information technology (OurVLE), it becomes an original and valuable method. The dual-mode adds flexibility to the course and expands access to authentic material. However, success depends heavily on students' learning autonomy, which is enhanced by a tool like OurVLE. Motivation and participation are essential for the success of students as evidenced by the results of the third-year student who was accepted while doing the first module of level II French and was one of the top two students in the course. Our experience suggests that the intensive format yields better results because it reinforces student concentration, dedication, and performance, which also benefit from the positive impact of the group dynamics. Recent development in the field shows an orientation toward multimedia and information technology to create virtual worlds where Total Simulation is made possible on a large scale. The combination of the two is very promising for language learning and teaching but presents new challenges to foreign language teachers and course developers. Notes 1Cali, Cheval, & Debardi (1992) identify the following categories: developing countries, developed countries, least developed countries, and Central or Eastern European countries in transition towards market economy. The latter category being now obsolete, the decision was made to replace it with countries in the same geographical region. TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 82 2See https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ and http://www.quid.fr. References Arthus-Bertrand, Y. (2009). Home. Home Project. Retrieved (September–November 2009) from http://www.youtube.com/homeprojectFR L'auberge. Retrieved February 21, 2010 from http://auberge.int.univ-lille3.fr/ Bourdeau, M., Bouygue, & M., Gatein, J. J. (1992). Le congrès médical: Simulation globale sur objectifs spécifiques. Ministère des affaires étrangères, sous direction de la coopération linguistique et éducative, CIEP-BELC, 1991/92. Sèvres: CIEP. Cali, C., Cheval, M., & Zabardi, A. (1992). La conférence internationale et ses variantes. Paris: Hachette, Français langue étrangère. Mangiante, J. M., & Parpette, C. (2004). Le français sur objectifs spécifiques: De l'analyse des besoins à l'élaboration d'un cours. Paris: Hachette. Le Monde Diplomatique. 2009. Paris: Editions "Le Monde." Retrieved from http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/ Virtual Cabinet. Retrieved February 21, 2010 from http://sites.univ-lyon2.fr/vcab/demo/ Yaiche, F. (1996). Les simulations globales: Mode d'emploi. Paris: Hachette, Français langue étrangère. TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 83 APPENDICES Appendix A Original submission to the Academic Quality Assurance Committee of the UWI, Mona Campus in 2003–2004. The assessment was subsequently modified to 100 percent coursework in 2005–2006. DEPARTMENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES & LITERATURES COURSE PROPOSAL Course Title: French for International Conferences Course Code: FREN 3118 Level: 3 Semester: 1 Credits: 3 Prerequisite: A Pass in F24A (FREN 2001) Co-requisite: F34A (FREN 3001) Contact hours: 4 hours per weeks (1 lecture, 1 writing tutorial, 1 oral expression, 1 listening comprehension) Rationale: French is one of the major languages of the United Nations and other inter-national institutions. In response to increased demand for specialized foreign language courses, this course will introduce students to the technical French of international relations and negotiations Course description: This course is designed to reproduce an international conference setting during which various aspects of diplomatic negotiations will be envisaged with a view to using French at the formal/foreign affairs level. Objectives: At the end of the course students should be able to Demonstrate understanding of French spoken in a formal/diplomatic setting Read articles in French on international issues. Write press reviews, press releases in French about an international issue. Express a personal view about a topical International issue in French Express a simulated official view about a topical International issue in French Simulate an official address in French Simulate a press conference in French TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 84 ASSESSMENT 50% in-course: 3 one-hour in-class tests: Reading comprehension (15%); Writing (20%); Listening comprehension (15%) 50% Final Examination: Oral presentation (25%) and 2-hour written examination (25%) TEXTS La Conférence Internationale et ses Variantes. Chantal Cali, Mireille Cheval and Antoinette Zabardi. Paris: Hachette Livre, Français Langue Étrangère, 1995. Audio-visual material from TV5 (such as Kiosque, Une fois par mois, Le dessous des cartes). Articles from journals such as Le monde diplomatique. REFERENCES Plaisant, François. (2000). Le ministère des affaires étrangères. Toulouse: Editions Milan, Les Essentiels Milan, 2000. Kessler, Marie-Christine. (1998). La politique étrangère de la France. Paris: Presses de Sciences-Po. http://www.france.diplomatie.gouv.fr Appendix 2. Assessment grid for oral presentation Official Address: (5-minute presentation at the Opening Ceremony). Press Conference Part 1 and 2: Presentation of Country Position followed by Questions and Answer session). Students plays the country official and then the journalist parts. FREN 3118: Oral Presentation Assessment Grid NAME: Grade Comments Relevance of Arguments /5 Fluency /5 Consistent use of high-language register /3 Communicative skills /2 Accuracy and richness of vocabulary /5 Accuracy and use of complex syntactic structures /5 Accurate pronunciation /5 FINAL GRADE (25%) /25 TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 85 FREN 3118: Press Conference Assessment Grid—Presenter NAME: Grade Comments Relevance of Arguments (5 pts. x 3 = 15) Presentation Answer (1) Answer (2) Fluency (5 pts. x 3 = 15) Presentation Answer (1) Answer (2) Consistent Use of High Language Register (3 pts. x 3 = 9) Presentation Answer (1) Answer (2) Communicative skills (2 pts. x 3 = 6) Presentation Answer (1) Answer (2) Accuracy and Richness of Vocabulary (5 pts. x 3 = 15) Presentation Answer (1) Answer (2) Accuracy and Use of Complex Syntactic Structures (5 pts. x 3 = 15) Presentation Answer (1) Answer (2) Accurate Pronunciation /5 marks x 3 = 15 Presentation Answer (1) Answer (2) Unconverted Total (90 pts.) / FINAL GRADE (15%) TOTAL SIMULATION IN TEACHING LSP Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 86 FREN 3118: Press Conference Assessment Grid—Journalist NAME: Grade Comments Relevance of question (5 pts. x 4 = 20) Question 1 (Name) Question 2 (Name) Question 3 (Name) Question 4 (Name) Fluency (5 pts. x 4 = 20) Question 1 (Name) Question 2 (Name) Question 3 (Name) Question 4 (Name) Consistent use of high-language register (3 pts. x 4 = 12) Question 1 (Name) Question 2 (Name) Question 3 (Name) Question 4 (Name) Accuracy and richness of vocabulary (5 pts. x 4 = 20) Question 1 (Name) Question 2 (Name) Question 3 (Name) Question 4 (Name) Accuracy and use of complex syntactic structures (5 pts. x 4 = 20) Question 1 (Name) Question 2 (Name) Question 3 (Name) Question 4 (Name) Accurate pronunciation (5 marks x 4 = 20) Question 1 (Name) Question 2 (Name) Question 3 (Name) Question 4 (Name) Unconverted Total (112 pts.) FINAL GRADE (10%)
Elba Rosario Sánchez was born 1949 in Atemajac, Mexico, a small town near Guadalajara. She is the oldest of three girls. Her father worked in the cotton mill until an accident injured one of his eyes. The accident sent him to the United States in search of work, first to Chicago, where the family had relatives, and then to San Francisco, where he worked as a bus boy at the Fairmount Hotel. After about eighteen months, he brought his family to San Francisco in 1960, where they lived at Divisidero and Pine, in a Black neighborhood. At the neighborhood elementary school, Elba was one of very few non-Black children; ironically, even as she struggled to adapt to a white-dominated country, in the racial definitions of that time she was considered white. She learned English quickly, and soon became the translator for her family. Within a few years of her arrival, the social movements of the 1960s altered the national landscape. Witnessing the brutal repression of Black civil rights protestors on television was formative for Sánchez's growing political consciousness and her eventual activism as a young supporter of the United Farm Workers movement. Her early activism with the United Farm Workers boycott on grapes was impressive, particularly since her family did not approve of her protest. This activism grew intertwined with her passion for writing and for language. In the oral history, Elba vividly recalls that her first pieces of poetry were written on small pieces of paper that she then crumpled up and hid in a drawer. Her first poem, "The Price of Color," was published in her parochial high school's yearbook. After graduation, Sánchez attended San Francisco City College. There she was inspired by the Chicano activist spirit of several classmates who had been taking courses at San Francisco State College, where the student protests had shut the campus down. But after a semester and a half she dropped out of college to marry and have a child. In the late 1970s, Sánchez and her husband relocated to Santa Cruz so that her husband could attend UC Santa Cruz. Sánchez became a bilingual counseling aide at Santa Cruz High School. In search of UCSC students who could serve as English tutors at Santa Cruz High, Sánchez met Paco Ramirez, a lecturer in Spanish who coordinated the tutorial program at Stevenson College and Paul Lubeck, a professor in sociology. Both encouraged her to return to college and finish her B.A., which she did, graduating in Latin American studies from Merrill College. At UCSC, Sánchez was a nontraditional student who lived off campus with her husband and her three-year-old child. This experience, plus the class and cultural differences between her and the mostly white middle-class student body of UCSC at that time, led to feelings of alienation and isolation. Professor Roberto Crespi, Sánchez's advisor in Latin American studies, encouraged her to go on to graduate school in literature at UCSC, which she did, earning her MA from UCSC. Crespi was one of very few Latino professors at UCSC in the early years of the campus. He was also one of the founders, with J. Herman Blake, of Oakes College. In 1979, Crespi also hired Sánchez as a tutor in the Spanish for Spanish Speakers Program (SPSS), which he had founded, and which was then only in its second year. Sánchez spent the next fifteen years teaching in, coordinating, and directing the multidisciplinary Spanish for Speakers Program. This pioneering, cutting-edge program, incorporated poetry readings, theatrical performances, cultural nights, political discussions, visual arts exhibitions, and small press publishing into its curriculum. Students studied Latin American history and literature in SPSS courses, and honed critical thinking, speaking, translation, and writing skills. Sánchez credits SPSS for higher levels of retention of Latino students at UCSC, and also for the successful careers of many of those students after graduation. Also while at UCSC, Sánchez was one of the founding and primary editors of REVISTA MUJERES, a bilingual literary and visual arts journal published at UC Santa Cruz from January 1984 to 1993. According to their mission statement, "REVISTA MUJERES: In Our Words and Work, Our Vision," REVISTA was dedicated to interviews, poetry, essays, as well as visual art work and set a page in the history, struggles, and contributions of Chicana and Latina undergraduate and graduate students, staff, and faculty members…REVISTA was also envisioned and produced as a response to the lack of access in mainstream publications for Chicana/Latina bilingual, budding as well as experienced writers, whose work was unpublished. Its aim was to promote and encourage a community of writers and artists, to plant a seed of reality and creativity. Sánchez's commitment to honor the Spanish language, teach Latin American history, and to offer a keen critique of colonization is part of her legacy on the UC Santa Cruz campus. This commitment was particularly evident in her fervent dedication to SSSP and the co-production of Revista Mujeres. In her oral history, Sánchez describes the organizational work that went into funding, editing, producing, and distributing this groundbreaking journal, which was distributed far beyond UCSC and was the first of its kind published in the state of California. Sánchez locates REVISTA in a cultural effervescence of Chicano-Latino writing and publishing in the 1980s and 1990s. Sánchez recalls that at the time of her earliest publications, there were very few Chicana and Chicano writers who were published. Sánchez's own development as a writer flourished during that cultural flowering. She participated in a bilingual writer's workshop in San Francisco with several other key Chicana and Chicano writers. She is the author or coauthor of several books of poetry including Tallos de luna /Moon Shots (Moving Parts Press, 1992), From Silence to Howl (Moving Parts Press, 1993) and is a contributor to many anthologies, including Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader (Duke University Press, 2003), Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (Aunt Lute Books, 1990). She continues to write and is currently working on flash fiction and children's books. Elba Sánchez was interviewed in three sessions by Susy Zepeda in several locations in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. The interviews took place on February 8, 2013, March 1, 2013, and April 5, 2013. The interviews were transcribed by Irene Reti and a transcript was returned both to Zepeda, who audited it for accuracy of transcription, and Sánchez, who edited it for flow and accuracy, corrected the Spanish. Both Zepeda and Sánchez added some footnotes. We chose not to italicize the Spanish in the transcript, a political decision that recognizes that italics can "other" Spanish words as "foreign," or non-normative. This is a style preferred by many Latino/a writers today. It was an honor and a pleasure to interview Elba Sánchez. Her storytelling was full of heart, joy, and animation. Her oral history offers a sense of her strength, vision, and dedication to forms of resistance.
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Gabrielle Hecht on Nuclear Ontologies, De-provincializing the Cold War, and Postcolonial Technopolitics
This is the fourth in a series of Talks dedicated to the technopolitics of International Relations, linked to the forthcoming double volume 'The Global Politics of Science and Technology' edited by Maximilian Mayer, Mariana Carpes, and Ruth Knoblich
Nuclear power has formed a centerpiece of Cold-War IR theorizing. Yet besides the ways in which its destructive capacity invalidates or alters the way we should understand questions of war and peace, there are different powers at play in the roles the nuclear assumes in global politics. Through careful investigations of alternative sites and spaces of nuclear politics, Gabrielle Hecht has uncovered some of the unexpected ways in which what one can call the 'nuclear condition' affects politics across the globe. In this Talk, Hecht, amongst others, explores what it means to 'be nuclear'; explains how we need to deprovincialize the Cold War to fully grasp its significance in global politics; and challenges us to explore technopolitics outside of the comfortable context of OECD-countries.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is according to your view the most important challenge facing global politics and what is/should be the central debate in the discipline of International Relations (IR)?
I think one of the most important challenges in global politics is the question of planetary boundaries. In the 1970s the Club of Rome published the report 'the Limits to Growth' (read PDF here), which addressed the finite quality of the planet's resources. It exposed the problems that the ideology (and practice) of endless economic growth posed for these limits. The question of climate change today really is all about planetary boundaries. We have already exceeded the CO2 level that is safe for the planet to sustain human life: We have just passed 400 parts per million; the desirable level is rated at 350 parts per million; the pre-industrial level of CO2 was 270 parts per million. So we have already produced more CO2 than is sustainable. And that is just one indicator. There are all kinds of other planetary boundaries at play—energy supply being the most salient one in terms of climate change. How can we even produce enough energy to maintain the lifestyles of the industrialized north? What about the requirements of the so-called 'rest'?
Obviously this is a huge issue and there are many parts to it. One part of this—the piece that I have studied the most—is nuclear power. Many people are enthusiastic about nuclear power as a solution to climate change. Some prominent environmentalists have been converted, because they believe nuclear power offers a way to produce a large amount of energy with a very small amount of matter, and because they see it as carbon free. (That's pretty clearly not the case, by the way, though nuclear power certainly produces less carbon than fossil fuels.) But are the human health and environmental costs worth the savings in carbon? Do the resources poured into nuclear power—some are predicting a thousand new reactors in the next few decades—take away resources from other forms of energy production, forms that could potentially address the emissions problems more rapidly and with lower costs for the environment and for human health? Moreover, nuclear power in any one location ends up becoming a global issue. So in that sense nuclear power in China, in India or in Japan is inherently a global problem. And the industry everywhere certainly needs global regulation—at the moment, there is none. The International Atomic Energy Agency is not a regulator. These are serious questions for international relations, and should be fodder for analysis.
One can obviously put this into perspective by comparing the death toll from nuclear power with that related to coal—would one then actually have to be against the use of coal? The numbers of coal-related deaths are astonishing. But the first, most obvious point to make is that being against coal doesn't require being in favor of nuclear power! It's also extremely important to realize that death and morbidity figures for nuclear power are highly contested. Take the figures concerning Chernobyl. The IAEA and WHO put Chernobyl deaths at 4,000. A study published by National Cancer Institute in the United States puts the deaths at something like 43,000. A meta-analysis of 5,000 Slavic language scientific studies estimates the total number of Chernobyl deaths (some of which are yet to come) at 900,000. These discrepancies have a lot to do with controversies over the biological effects of low-level radiation, and also with the technopolitics of measurement and counting. Comparing the two energy technologies is much more complicated than merely counting coal deaths vs. nuclear power deaths.
How did arrive where you currently are in your thinking about these issues?
Actually, the real question is how I came to study politics. I got my bachelor's degree in physics from MIT in the 1980s. The two biggest political issues on campus at that time were Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative and Apartheid in South Africa (specifically, a move to divest American corporate interests in South Africa, the very corporations that were funding MIT research and for which MIT students would work when they graduated). I got interested in both, and along the way I came to realize that I was much more interested in the politics of science and technology than I was in actually doing physics. So I took some courses in the field of science and technology studies (STS), and decided to attend graduate school in the history and sociology of science and technology.
I had also always had a morbid fascination with nuclear weapons. I'd read a lot of post-apocalyptic science fiction when I was a teenager. All of these things came together for me in graduate school. I first hoped to study the history of Soviet nuclear weapons but quickly realized that would be impossible for all kinds of reasons. I ended up studying French nuclear power after I realized that nobody had researched it in the ways that interested me. I had lived in France in the 1970s, when the nuclear power program was undergoing rapid expansion. So it was a good fit. After I was done with that project, I became interested in rethinking the so-called nuclear age from a colonial and post-colonial perspective.
What would a student need to become a specialist in global studies or understand the world in a global way?
Travel, learn languages. Remain attentive to—and critical of—the political work done by claims to 'global' purview. Learn history—you won't understand international relations in any depth at all if you remain rooted in the present.
Then, for those want to start exploring the global politics of science and technology, two books come immediately to mind. Timothy Mitchell's (Theory Talk #59) Carbon Democracy, on the global technopolitics of fossil fuels. And Paul Edwards's A Vast Machine, on the relationship between data and models in the production of knowledge about climate change. Both are must-reads.
The world is permeated with technological artifacts and systems—in what ways is this relevant for approaches to global politics? Where is the conceptual place for technologies within IR?
First, I should make clear that I am not an IR specialist.
That said, I think it does not make sense to think about international relations (lower case) without thinking about the technologies, systems, and infrastructures that make any kind of global movement possible. The flows of people, of products, of culture, political exchanges—these are all mediated through and practiced in the technological systems that permeate our globe. So are the interruptions and absences in such 'flows'. I draw attention to the specific political practices that are enacted through technological systems with the notion of technopolitics. I initially used this concept in my work on nuclear power in France to capture the ways in which hybrid forms of power are enacted in technological artifacts, systems and practices. There I used the term in a rather narrow sense to talk about the strategic practices of designing technologies to enact political goals. My paramount example was that of the French atomic weapons program. In the early 1950s, France's political leaders insisted that France would never build atomic weapons. But engineers and other leaders in the nascent nuclear program were designing reactors in a way that optimized the production of weapons-grade plutonium rather than electricity. When politicians finally signed on, the technology was ready to go. This example problematizes the very notion of a 'political decision'. Instead of a single, discursive decision, we see a complex process whereby political choices are inscribed into technologies, which subsequently favor certain political outcomes over others.
In this example, both engineers and politicians consciously engaged in technopolitics. By contrast, Timothy Mitchell has used the hyphenated term 'techno-politics' to emphasize the unpredictable and unintended effects of technological assemblages. Over the last fifteen years, I have also developed a broader notion of the term, particularly in its adjectival form, 'technopolitical'. I find this to be a useful shorthand for describing both how politics can be strategically enacted through technological systems, and also how technological systems can be re-appropriated for political ends in ways that were unintended by their designers. The point, really, is to highlight the myriad politics of materiality.
Do the particular characteristics of nuclear technologies and related research programs make it impossible to apply the lenses of 'high politics'?
I think a high-politics approach to understanding nuclear weapons decision-making is extremely impoverished. It's not that there aren't high politics, of course there are. But they cannot offer a sufficient or straightforward explanation for how or why any one particular country develops a nuclear program. A focus on high politics implies a focus decision makers and moments. But that's really misleading. In pretty much every case, the apparent 'moment' of decision is in fact a long process involving a tremendous amount of technopolitical, cultural, and institutional work, rife with conflicts and contingencies of all kinds. I think a more productive approach is to try to understand nuclear capacity-building.
Itty Abraham has done some fantastic work on India's nuclear program, which helps us think about other cases as well. For example, he analyzes the symbolic importance of the nuclear test, noting that IR uses 'the test' as kind of 'aha!' moment, the moment in which one knows that a country has nuclear weapons. Instead, Abraham sees the test as a process for the cultural production of meaning: a process in which certain meanings get fixed, but by no means the most important moment for understanding the actual technology and politics behind the production of nuclear weapons.
Your book Entangled Geographies (2011) explores a plethora of places, people, and technical networks that sustained the US and Soviet empires. Here, as in Being Nuclear (2012), you insist on investigating the Cold War as transnational history. What difference does this move make?
In Entangled Geographies, my colleagues and I build on the work of Odd Arne Westad, whose book The Global Cold War was an argument for understanding the non-superpower, non-European dimensions of the Cold War. We give that a technopolitical spin, which offers a de-provincializing of the Cold War that's complementary to Westad's. By focusing on places like Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe, or Brazil, or South Africa, we show how even the central struggles of the Cold War were intimately bound up in 'northern' relationships to colonial and post-colonial worlds, and in the imaginaries that characterized those relationships.
In Being Nuclear I focus on uranium from Africa—more specifically South Africa, Namibia, Gabon, Madagascar, and Niger. Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for nuclear power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but it has been almost completely absent from accounts of the nuclear age, whether scholarly or popular. This changed in 2002, when the US and British governments claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein 'sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' (later specified as the infamous 'yellowcake from Niger'). Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium. But that did not admit Niger, or any of Africa's other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of nuclear states. Nor did it mean that uranium itself counted as a nuclear thing. My book explores what it means for something—a state, an object, an industry, a workplace—to be 'nuclear'. I show that such questions lie at the heart of today's global order and the relationships between 'developing nations' and 'nuclear powers'.
Being Nuclear argues that 'nuclearity' is not a straightforward scientific classification but a contested technopolitical one. In the first part of the book, I follow uranium's path out of Africa and analyze the invention of the global uranium market. In the second part, I enter African nuclear worlds, focusing on miners and the occupational hazard of radiation exposure. In both parts, I show that nuclearity requires instruments and data, technological systems and infrastructures, national agencies and international organizations, experts and conferences, and journals and media exposure. When (and where) nuclearity is densely distributed among these elements, it can offer a means of claiming expertise, compensation, or citizenship. It can serve as a framework for making sense of history, experience, and memory. When (and where) network elements are absent, weak, or poorly connected, nuclearity falters, fades, or disappears altogether, failing to provide a resource for people claiming remediation or treatment. Nuclearity in one register doesn't easily transpose to another: geopolitical nuclearity doesn't automatically translate into occupational nuclearity. Yet these domains remain connected. African uranium miners depend on the transnational movement of nuclear things, but that movement also depends on African miners. Ultimately, I conclude, nuclear security must be considered in tandem with other forms of human security—food and health and environmental and political security. By placing Africa in the nuclear world, and the nuclear world in Africa, the book seeks to remake our understanding of the nuclear age.
I should note that it's not only uranium production that connects the colonial and postcolonial spaces with nuclear things. (Also: African countries weren't the only such places where uranium was produced. Much of the rest of the world's uranium came from the Navajo nation in the United States, Aboriginal territories in Australia, First Nation territories in Canada, colonized spaces in the Soviet Empire, etc.) French nuclear weapons were tested in the Algerian desert and French Polynesia; the United States tested its weapons on the Bikini Islands; Britain tested its weapons in Maralinga, in Aboriginal Australia; the Soviet Union tested its weapons on the planes of Kazakhstan. And so on.
So, understanding the history of the Cold War—even its most iconic technology, nuclear weapons—as a form of transnational history really calls attention to spaces that have previously been considered marginal, even perhaps not fully nuclear. Ultimately, it should provoke us to problematize 'the Cold War' as a frame for global or transnational history (and social science).
Looking at those colonized and semi-colonized spaces of mining, testing and monitoring infrastructures gives us not necessarily an answer to the question of why the Cold War ended, but it does enable you to ask different and possibly more interesting questions. It can lead you, for example, to place the Cold War within the framework of imperialism (rather than the other way around). A longer historical view questions whether the Cold War really represents historical rupture. What political work is done by such claims to rupture? How does that work differ in different places? What are its material consequences?
Why are science and technology hardly ever studied in the postcolonial world from a STS perspective?
I think there are a number of reasons why STS has paid relatively little attention to the postcolonial world. One is that in STS—like many disciplines—the prestige of the subject matter maps onto the prestige of the researcher. So STS researchers who study cutting-edge science or large-scale technological systems seem somehow to be getting at 'harder' topics, ones that that focus on active creation. Engineering and other acts of creation appear more prestigious than acts of maintenance, or acts of dismantling. Even studying small-scale creation seems to confer more prestige than studying mundane practices. This brings us back to the theme of rupture vs. continuity: studying or proclaiming rupture seems somehow sexier—and certainly more radical—than studying continuity.
Another, more trivial answer is just that most STS researchers so far have come from Europe and North America, and they tend not to be trained in area studies.
Does the constant ontological insecurity of nuclear things mean that the 'nuclear' is purely a matter of social and political construction?
No, definitely not. But I think to explain what I mean by all this we should take a few steps back and start with what I like to call nuclear exceptionalism. This is a technopolitical claim—emerging immediately after the end of World War II—that there was something radically unique about nuclear things. From 1945 onward, both cold warriors and their activist opponents cultivated this nuclear exceptionalism. Atomic weapons were portrayed as fundamentally different from any other human creation. The bomb was the ultimate geopolitical trump card, and it was imagined as replacing empire in one fell swoop. You see nuclear scientists and engineers gaining prestige, power, and funding far beyond their colleagues in conventional research. In the meantime, anti-nuclear groups make their own claims to exceptionalism by talking about the unprecedented dangers posed by nuclear things. Everywhere you see nuclearity and morality intertwined. Nuclear things either represent salvation or moral depravity… or the apocalyptic end of mankind. But regardless of where you stood politically, this notion of nuclear exceptionalism rested on the sense that the difference between nuclear and non-nuclear things was transparent---ultimately a clear-cut, physical matter of radioactivity.
The nuclear thus emerges not just as a category, but also as a universal and universalizing ontology, one that seems to apply in the same way all over the globe. And frankly, historians, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists have reproduced that nuclear exceptionalism. (I did it myself in my first book, The Radiance of France.)
All of which has made it hard to see that what I call nuclearity—the process by which something comes to count as a "nuclear" thing – has a history, a politics, and a geography. Things that count as nuclear in one time and place might not count as nuclear at another. Rendering something as nuclear and exceptional is a form of technopolitical claims-making. It follows that insisting that certain things are not especially nuclear, or that they are banal, is also a form of technopolitical claims-making.
You can see this in the response of the nuclear industry to activist opponents. In the late 1960s and over the course of the 1970s, the nuclear industry began to represent nuclear power not as a life-saving technology for the human race, but as simply another way to boil water. Radiation was just another industrial risk. Such representations seek to banalize nuclear things.
Nuclearity could thus get made, unmade and remade. My favorite example comes from a 1995 US government report on nuclear proliferation. The appendix has a table that summarizes the nuclear activities of 172 nations. Neither Gabon, nor Niger, nor Namibia are listed as having any nuclear activities, despite the fact that those nations together, during that very year, produced something like 25% of the world's uranium. So when does uranium count as a nuclear thing? When does it lose its nuclearity? And what does Africa have to do with it?
The argument is not that radioactivity doesn't have to do anything with nuclearity, or that nuclearity has nothing to do with the technologies and physical processes we typically associate with the word. Rather, I argue that nuclearity is one thing, and radioactivity and fission are another; sometimes they are co-terminus, but not always and not necessarily. Understanding where (and why) they don't map onto each other is politically revealing.
Which kind of interdisciplinary exchanges do we need between your discipline and IR to deepen our understanding of global technopolitics?
Science and technology studies (STS) is really good at exploring practice, and especially at calling attention to the differences between principles and practice—for example, between regulation on the one hand, and the actual practices that regulations are meant to control (without ever entirely succeeding). STS can bring to IR an understanding of how the intimate details of practice matter politically—of how everyday technopolitical and techno-scientific exchanges can be more important loci for politics than treaties, diplomacy, and other forms of what you called high politics.
I can also answer this question wearing my historian's hat. The IR scholarship on nuclear weapons that I'm familiar with (and again, I'm not an expert!) seems to be quite focused on producing models—on using history to produce predictive models that will in turn serve to shape international policy on nuclear weapons regulation. But if history tells us one thing, it is that models are basically useless for understanding how countries develop nuclear weapons. Instead, history and STS both teach us about which questions to ask (in this instance, about nuclear development). Identifying the important questions—rather than prescribing the applicable model—leaves open the list of possible answers. It also leaves open solutions and policies, letting us be more attentive to the specificities and uniqueness of individual cases.
Final question. Let's take the example of Iran's nuclear program. What alternative question about the issue would lenses of nuclear exceptionalism bring us?
Nuclear technology has played an important role in shaping modern Iranian national identity. This began in the 1970s under the Shah, who – with the support of the US – developed a grandiose plan to build a fleet of nuclear reactors. It took a different turn after the 1979 Iranian revolution. For a while, the new regime sidelined the nuclear program as an unwelcome manifestation of western corruption. But after a few years leaders reappropriated nuclear development and sought to invest it with Iranian-ness. The dynamics of nuclear exceptionalism have operated in Iran much the same way they did in France and in South Africa. Nuclear exceptionalism has served to give material form to national identity. And materialized national identity is most emphatically not something that you can negotiate away in the P5+1 talks.
Gabrielle Hecht is Professor of History at the University of Michigan, where she also directs the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and serves as associate director of the African Studies Center. She recently published Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (MIT Press and Wits University Press, 2012), which has received awards from the American Historical Association and the American Sociological Association, as well as the 2013 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize and Honorable Mention for the African Studies Association's 2013 Herskovits Award. She is also the author of The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (MIT Press 1998 & 2009) and editor of Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War, editor (MIT Press, 2011). Hecht is embarking on a new book project on technology and power in Africa, as well as new research on transnational toxic trash. She has held visiting positions at universities in Australia, France, Norway, South Africa, and Sweden.
Related links
Hecht's faculty profile at the University of Michigan Read Hecht's Introduction to Entangled Geographies (MIT Press 2011) here (pdf) Read Hecht's The Power of Nuclear Things (Technology & Culture 2010) here (pdf) Read Hecht's Nuclear Ontologies (Constellations 2006) here (pdf) Read Hecht's Rupture-Talk in the Nuclear Age (Social Studies of Science 2002) here (pdf)
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
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The Modern Language Association (MLA) report "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) recommended that the language disciplines decenter off literature and design programs that are more directly related to "real world" contexts. This recommendation has awoken renewed discussion about how best to promote and develop multilingualism and intercultural competence in the United States. In order to change undergraduate offerings, it would be necessary to change the focus of graduate programs. Changing the focus of graduate programs is a delicate and high stakes task, which can influence both the nature of intellectual production in the United States as well as impact the employability of thousands of new PhDs. Will the MLA 2007 report stimulate any lasting change? Will the number of jobs which deviate from the traditional literature, linguistics and second language acquisition fields merit redesign of graduate programs to train future professors to meet this demand? The MLA Foreign Language Job Information List contains a plethora of data that can provide answers for some of these questions. This article seeks to create insights into a significant subcategory of the Foreign Language profession by presenting an analysis of job announcements for Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). ; To cite the digital version, add its Reference URL (found by following the link in the header above the digital file). ; LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 15 Language for Specific Purposes Job Announcements from the Modern Language Association Job Lists: A Multiyear Analysis Mary K. Long University of Colorado at Boulder Abstract: The Modern Language Association (MLA) report "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) recommended that the language disciplines decenter off literature and design programs that are more directly related to "real world" contexts. This recommendation has awoken renewed discussion about how best to promote and develop multilingualism and intercultural competence in the United States. In order to change undergraduate offerings, it would be necessary to change the focus of graduate programs. Changing the focus of graduate programs is a delicate and high stakes task, which can influence both the nature of intellectual production in the United States as well as impact the employability of thousands of new PhDs. Will the MLA 2007 report stimulate any lasting change? Will the number of jobs which deviate from the traditional literature, linguistics and second language acquisition fields merit redesign of graduate programs to train future professors to meet this demand? The MLA Foreign Language Job Information List contains a plethora of data that can provide answers for some of these questions. This article seeks to create insights into a significant subcategory of the Foreign Language profession by presenting an analysis of job announcements for Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). Keywords: jobs, job announcements, Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), Modern Language Association (MLA), non-tenure track (NTT), tenured/tenure track (TTT) Introduction Since its release five years ago, the Modern Language Association (MLA) report "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) has awoken renewed discussion in the profession about how best to promote and develop multilingualism and intercultural competence in the United States. The suggestion that the language disciplines should decenter off literature and design programs that are more directly related to "real world" contexts has caused both consternation and excitement as well as much discussion about what steps would be necessary to redesign both undergraduate and graduate programs in order to train future faculty to teach within the proposed new scenarios (e.g., Porter, 2009; Rifkin, 2012). Changing the focus of graduate programs is a delicate and high stakes task that can influence both the nature of intellectual production and international understanding in the United States as well as impact the employability of thousands of new PhDs. Thus, those in the profession are wise to move deliberately and to consider the multiple angles. From the point of view of preparing future professors, some very pragmatic issues of job market demand must be considered. For example, will the MLA 2007 report stimulate any lasting change? Are departments truly moving to transform their undergraduate offerings away from literature? If so, in what ways are they redefining their programs and who will teach these courses? What is the balance between tenured/tenure track (TTT) and non-tenure track (NTT) jobs LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 16 in these areas? Will there be steady demand for future faculty trained to meet the new scenarios? Are new research fields emerging? If so, what do they look like? Will the number of jobs that deviate from the traditional literature, linguistics and second language acquisition fields merit redesign of graduate programs to train future professors to meet this demand? Or, is it more a question of helping future professors to enhance the traditional fields of specialization with new pedagogical approaches and secondary content expertise? The MLA Foreign Language Job Information List contains a plethora of data that can provide answers for some of these questions and be used to gauge the direction of the Foreign Language professions. In fact, the MLA itself releases yearly summaries of many of the overarching themes, such as number of jobs overall, changes in demand between languages, and so forth, but the potential exists to provide much more detailed analysis, which will be useful—and even crucial—to shaping the future of Foreign Language education in the United States. Along those lines, this article seeks to create insights into a significant subcategory of the Foreign Language profession by presenting an analysis of MLA Job List announcements with a focus on Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP). Since the late 1940s, the LSP field has been meeting the 2007 MLA report's stated goals of increasing the number of "educated speakers who have deep translingual and transcultural compentence" as well as the ability to carry that competence beyond the classroom into the world (MLA, 2007, p. 3). The LSP field continues to represent a significant area of Foreign Language Education in the United States. The national survey "Evolution of Language for Specific Purposes programs in the United States: 1990–2011" conducted by Long and Uscinski (2012), shows that, since the early 1990s, overall offerings of LSP have remained stable at 62% while at the same time the sophistication and variety of offerings have become deeper and more focused in response to the nuanced needs within different multilingual settings. The LSP faculty profile created as part of this survey indicates a more or less even split between TTT faculty and NTT faculty. In addition, while 20% of faculty listed LSP as their primary field of academic preparation, a dramatic 80% indicated another field as their primary field of academic preparation. Of these, the majority listed Literature as their primary focus, with Linguistics and Cultural Studies running a distant second and third (Long & Uscinski, 2012, p. 183). In part, this mix of primary fields has a very pragmatic explanation since as new fields develop, there will necessarily be a large number of "ground breakers" who are willing and able to expand their research and pedagogical skills beyond their original areas of content expertise. But, in addition, and more importantly, this mix of expertise is by definition one of the advantages and challenges for any interdisciplinary field. Recent volumes focused on LSP (e.g., Gueldry, 2010a, Gueldry 2010b; Lafford, 2012; Pérez-Llantada & Watson, 2011) showcase the rich research potential of the LSP focus for a variety of fields and point to the advantages of interdisciplinary research for addressing many of the complex intercultural issues faced in today's "global setting." These publications also provide significant insights into the history, current state and future potential for the LSP field. One of the difficulties highlighted in this body of work is that interdisciplinary work often blocks the professional progress of faculty since tenure and promotion structures are more suited to single focus research fields. Against this backdrop of past practices, the following analysis of LSP job announcements will shed light on how the profession envisions the future of the LSP field as well as offer insight LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 17 into what provisions (if any) are being made in the design of new positions to support and promote the professional success of faculty who possess highly needed interdisciplinary expertise. Methodology The job announcements have been analyzed for two "snap shot" moments: the online MLA Foreign Language Job Information list September 2008–January 2009 and the online MLA Foreign Language Job Information list from September 2011–June 2012 (and, one chart shares additional data on Spanish for Business from September 2007–January 2008). It should be noted that in 2008–2009 there was an historic decline in job announcements that continued into 2009–2010. Since 2010–2011, there has been a "tentative climb upwards" (Lusin, 2012, p. 95). Because of the unique moment represented by the job market during these years, and because only two years of data are presented, there has been no analysis performed to determine if changes in raw numbers or percentages represent statistically significant changes overtime. Rather than attempting to track statistical changes, the goal of this current project has been to have a more clear understanding of the quantity and specific profiles of jobs in the LSP field both in relation to the overall job market, and within the LSP profession itself. The data was collected as follows: the search function included in the electronic posting of the job list was used to first search each language for the total number of jobs for all ranks and regions in each language (both expired and current listings). The categories offered on the MLA job list that were searched are: Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Scandinavian, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Slavic, Spanish, Other languages, Linguistics and ESL, Generalist, and Other. After establishing the total number of jobs for each language, several new searches were conducted per language using the keyword function to limit results. For the 2008–2009 list, the search was repeated for each language using the keyword 'business,' and this keyword brought up announcements that also contained other LSP terms such as 'professions,' 'translation,' 'medical,' etc. For the search of the 2011–2012 MLA list, a more expanded set of keywords was used. Each language was searched separately for the following keywords: business, translation, medicine, medical, professions, professional and specific/special purposes. To avoid double counting of announcements that included several of the search words and to eliminate "false positives" when the keywords were used in non-LSP contexts, once they were identified, the LSP announcements were read individually and hand-sorted. After extracting the number of LSP jobs in relation to the overall number of jobs for each language, further analysis was conducted on the specific nature of the LSP jobs, whether the LSP field was listed as primary or secondary, the split between TTT and NTT positions within these categories, and in the case of jobs that list LSP as a secondary field, what primary fields are most often combined with LSP. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 18 Results Search terms. For the 2008–2009 search, even though additional search terms emerged through the key word 'business,' the majority of jobs were for 'language for business' with 'translation' coming in second. In 2011–2012, the highest results were for business, translation, professions, medical and specific/special purposes in descending order. 'Medicine' and 'professional' did not achieve any results in any language. This process revealed that when the keywords 'specific/special purposes' and 'professions' are used they are frequently followed by a parenthetical list of examples that duplicated other keywords (most often 'business' and 'translation') along with words not used in the search function. For example, for Spanish, other parenthetical examples included 'legal,' while for German, 'engineering' is a significant 'specific purpose.' 'Medical' only appeared in Spanish LSP job announcements, occasionally as a stand-alone term, but most often as one possible professional use. 'Translation,' on the other hand, was a stand-alone term that rivaled 'business' in Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. (In these cases, only non-literary translation positions were counted since there is a clear distinction in announcements between literary translation theory and applied professional translation.) Categories with LSP announcements. Categories that included jobs with an LSP focus in both 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 are Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Scandinavian, Japanese and Spanish. Categories that had no LSP jobs linked to the keywords in either sample are Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Slavic, Other languages, and Generalist. The Linguistics and ESL heading had no LSP jobs in the 2008–2009 list, but in the 2011–2012 had 10 LSP jobs out of 120 total (8.3%), 2 in ESL and 8 in Spanish. However, since the focus of this article is not on ESL and the Spanish linguistics/LSP jobs have also been counted in Spanish and will be analyzed there, the Linguistics and ESL category will not be analyzed further in this article. In each of the years, the category 'other' has a few interdisciplinary opportunities with a professional focus that breaks away from categorization by language. Overall numbers. Table 1 shows the total number of jobs compared to total LSP jobs and percentages for all languages from the 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 samples. Overall, the LSP job offerings fluctuate between 2 and 9% of all jobs, depending on specific language and year. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 19 Table 1 Total jobs vs. total LSP jobs and percentages by language 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 Language 2008–2009 Total of all jobs in sample of MLA job list 2008–2009 Number of jobs with LSP element in sample 2008–2009 % of jobs with LSP element out of all jobs in sample 2011–2012 Total of all jobs in sample of MLA job list 2011–2012 Number of jobs with LSP element in sample 2011–2012 % of jobs with LSP element out of all jobs in sample Arabic 46 2 4.3% 46 1 2.1% Chinese 64 6 9.3% 79 4 5% French 150 6 4% 177 9 5% German and Scandinavian 90 4 4% 120 9 7.5% Italian - - - 59 0 0 Japanese ? 2 38 2 5% Portuguese - - - 39 0 0 Russian and Slavic - - - 34 0 0 Spanish 377 13 3% 365 29 7.9% Other languages - - - 64 0 0 Linguistics and ESL - - - 120 2 ESL and counted in Spanish 8 linguistics (5 required and 3 possible field) 8.3% Generalist - - - 34 0 0 Other ? 3 137 1 NA LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 20 Table 2 breaks down the total number of LSP jobs for both sample years into categories of LSP as a primary or secondary field of interest and also indicates whether the jobs are TTT or NTT. Table 2 Total number of LSP jobs compared to primary or secondary field and Tenured/Tenure Track (TTT) or Non-Tenure Track (NTT) by language for 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 Language 2008–2009 Total number LSP in sample 2008–2009 LSP as Primary field and TTT or NTT 2008–2009 LSP as secondary field and TTT or NTT 2011–2012 Total number LSP in sample 2011–2012 LSP as Primary field and TTT or NTT 2011–2012 LSP as secondary field and TTT or NTT Arabic 2 1 (NTT) 1 (TT) 1 0 1 (NTT) Chinese 6 2 (NTT) 4 (TTT) 4 1 (TT) 3 (2 TT/1 NTT) French 6 3 (2 TTT/1NTT) 3 (TTT) 9 2 (1 TT/1 NTT) 7 (3 TT/ 4 NTT) German and Scandinavian 4 4 (2TTT/2NTT) 0 9 1 (TT) 8 (4TT/3 NTT) Japanese 2 1 (NTT) 1 (TTT) 2 2 (1 TT/1 NTT) Spanish 13 6 (NTT) 7 (TTT) 29 13 (9 TT/ 4 NTT) 16 (11 TT/ 5 NTT) Other 3 1 (TT) Primarily business, PhD in applied linguistics or other fields of linguistics and MA in one of the World Languages) 2 post docs language open PhD field open; work on creating connection between the arts and the sciences and business 1 1 (TT) Director of a center for International Understanding Total 36 18 (5 TTT/13 NTT) 18 (16 TTT/2 post docs) 53 20 (14TTT/6NTT) 34 (21 TTT/ 13 NTT) LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 21 Table 3 transforms the raw numbers from Table 2 into percentages from the 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 samples of TTT LSP positions overall, and the split for jobs with LSP as the primary field or secondary field. In order to provide context, the percentages of TTT jobs by language for the overall profession from the 2011–2012 job list is also provided in this table. Table 3 2011–2012 percent of tenured/tenure track (TTT) for all jobs vs. 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 percent of TTT in LSP total and percentages of TTT with LSP as primary or secondary field Language 2011–2012 % TTT of total jobs in MLA sample 2008–2009 % TTT of total LSP in sample 2008–2009 % TTT LSP as primary within total LSP sample 2008–2009 % TTT LSP as secondary within total LSP sample 2011–2012 % TTT of total LSP sample 2011–2012 % TTT LSP as primary within total LSP sample 2011–2012 % TTT LSP as Secondary within total LSP sample Arabic 43% 50% 0% 50% 0% 0% 0% Chinese 47.5% 66% 0% 66% 75 % 25% 50% French 47.9 % 83% 33% 50% 44% 11% 33% German and Scandinavian 38% 50% 50% 0% 55 % 11% 44% Japanese 48% 50% 0% 50% 50 % 50% 0% Spanish 53% 53% 0% 53% 68% 31% 37% Overall 49% 58% 50% 8% 64% 25% 39% The percentages of TTT positions for the overall profession by language range from 38% (in German) to 53% (in Spanish). For 2008–2009 the percentages of TTT positions out of the body of LSP jobs ranged between 50% and 83% while in 2011–2012 the percentages ranges from 0% to 75%. When the LSP jobs are analyzed for TTT positions with LSP as a primary field or as a secondary field, the TTT positions with LSP as a secondary field are slightly more than LSP as a primary field for both samples. From 2008–2009 to 2011–2012 there would seem to be a decrease in the overall number of TTT primary LSP positions, but these numbers are misleading, since in 2008–2009 only two languages (French and German) had TTT primary LSP positions, while in 2011–2012 all languages except for Arabic have at least one TTT primary LSP position. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 22 Discussion of overall numbers. At first the overall percentages of LSP positions to total jobs may seem low, but it helps to contextualize them by briefly comparing with the percentages of other more traditional specializations within the language professions. So for example, from the 2011–2012 list, a search in late July for Spanish with keyword 'Mexico' reveals 18 out of 359 or 5% of jobs focused on this specialization, while the keywords 'Golden Age' yield 12 out of 359 or 3% of jobs, 'Modern Peninsular' appears in 16 out of 359 or 4.4%, 'Applied Linguistics' in 41 out of 359 or 11% of announcements, and 'Cultural Studies' tallies a dramatic 82 out of 359 or 22% of all jobs in Spanish. For French, the keywords '18th century' exist in only 5 out 175 or 2% of jobs, while '20th century' yields 12 out of 175 for 6%, 'Francophone' 54 out of 175 for 30%, 'Applied Linguistics' 11 out of 175 for 6%, and 'Cultural Studies' 57 out of 175 for 32%. In contrast, the 'Generalist' category defines 34 out of 359 or 9% of jobs for Spanish but for French only 6 out of 175 or 3%. One could continue to generate multiple different combinations of keywords. For the purposes of this article the point meant to be illustrated by this quick comparison of some literary and linguistic categories is to show that the percentages for job offerings requiring some LSP content, while not in the double digits, are as significant as many other smaller fields of specialization within the profession, and thus, LSP is a viable career enhancing area of expertise for those who have an interest or previous experience in an LSP area or who have access to LSP content and/or teaching experience through their graduate institution. In regards to the percentage of TTT positions, it appears that the ratio of TTT to NTT within the LSP profession is slightly better than in the overall job market. But, as stated earlier, no analysis has been done to determine statistical significance. What is clear, however, is that the ration of TTT to NTT for LSP is at least the same as for the overall market. However, the most important element in the analysis of TTT vs. NTT positions is the split between primary and secondary fields. In this case, the numbers do not seem to justify advising graduate students to focus exclusively on an LSP field. Rather, they should pursue LSP as a strong secondary field and be prepared in the case of primary LSP positions to expand on their LSP expertise further. This leads to the question of which primary fields are most often combined with a secondary interest in LSP in the job announcements. It is not possible to make overall generalizations about this, since the primary/secondary field combinations are quite specific to each language. So, in what follows, the results for each language will be presented and discussed individually. Arabic In 2008–2009, there were 2 LSP jobs out of a total of 46 announcements or 4.3% of jobs had an LSP element. One of these jobs was a tenure track position with a primary field listed as expertise in language, culture and civilization with business and comparative literature as desirable secondary fields. The other was a non-tenure track position with primarily a focus on Arabic for business and additional duties as administrator of the Arabic minor. In 2011–2012, the sample also revealed 46 jobs but just one (or 2.1%) had an LSP focus. This non-tenure track position offered a 3 year renewable contract but had a hefty list of requirements: LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 23 Required: Experience with the proficiency communicative approach; ability to teach at least one colloquial dialect in addition to Modern Standard and Classical Arabic at all levels, and content courses such as Newspaper/Media Arabic and Business Arabic; experience in curriculum development and supervision, along with full competency to teach language and content courses at all levels; completed doctoral degree by time of appointment. Chinese In the 2008–2009 sample, there were 6 LSP jobs out of a total of 64 for Chinese, which represented 9.3% of all jobs in this language. For the 2011–2012 sample, the percentage is lower at 5%, while the total number of jobs is higher at 79 only 4 positions mention LSP. In 2008–2009, there was one tenure track assistant level position and 3 tenured at the level of Associate or Full. All of these positions were at the City University of Hong Kong and listed cultural management communication as the primary field with business as a secondary area. The jobs that listed business as a primary field were both non-tenure track: one visiting professorship focused on policy and business and one non-tenure track full-time position, which also included administration of the minor. In 2011–2012, there were 3 TTT positions: two had a primary focus on LSP, one focused especially on "courses related to Chinese Business Language and Culture" the other specified that "research should focus on the knowledge and behavioral demands confronting nonnative speakers seeking professional level competencies in contemporary China, issues of cross-cultural communication between Americans and Chinese, and the development of pedagogical instruments for training in these areas." The other TTT position and the NTT position listed the interest in and ability to teach Chinese for business as a plus, while leaving the actual specialty open. French In the 2008–2009 sample, there were 6 LSP jobs out of a total of 150 for 4% and in 2011–2012, 9 out of 177 for 5%. The 2008–2009 positions were split equally between primary and secondary with a majority of the jobs (5) as TTT, and the only NTT was in the primary LSP category. The field combinations during this year were quite interesting with the primary fields being defined as "Business French and also Italian with a PhD in French from any field" and "open area able to teach Business French and Francophone cultural studies" for the TTT positions, and "French and Spanish able to interact with regional business" for the NTT position. When LSP was listed as a secondary field the primary fields were: 1) French literature and/or Francophone studies, in a program that had an Undergraduate major in Global studies, 2) 19th-and 20th-century literature or Francophone studies or linguistics, and 3) Post-1600 French studies and an "active participation in Language and Cultures for Professions and ability to create internships/study abroad." In 2011–2012 the French LSP positions were split 2/7 with a distribution of 1 TTT and 1 NTT in primary LSP and 3 TTT to 4 NTT in the category of secondary field. For the TTT primary LSP position, the description specified a Generalist, with preference being LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 24 given to specialists in Cultural Studies and Business French. The NTT position required a PhD or equivalent in French or related field but stated that the successful candidate: must be familiar with current business and economic issues in Francophone countries and the EU and be able to develop and maintain links to the Francophone business and cultural community in the Greater Atlanta area and also serve as academic advisor for students in the Language and Business concentrations and interest/experience with Study Abroad programs is a plus. For the jobs that specified interest in LSP as a secondary field, the specified primary fields were: 1) pre-20th-century French literature and culture and the LSP field was translation, 2) Linguistics and pedagogy, and 3) PhD in Spanish, French or Romance Languages, with preference for those who can teach both French and Spanish though candidates who can "teach only French will be considered." The NTT positions in the secondary LSP category listed language teaching, pedagogy and phonetics as primary interests and the LSP fields were translation and business. It is important to note that in the French announcements, when LSP capabilities are listed as secondary interest they are most often included in a list of possible secondary fields like phonetics, phonology and stylistics. Keywords 'business' and 'translation' predominate. It is also important to note the frequent combination of Francophone studies with LSP fields. German and Scandinavian In this category, all the LSP jobs were for German with 4 out of 90 or 4% from the 2008–2009 sample and 8 out of 120 or 6% for the 2011–2012 sample. In 2008–2009, all the jobs were for primary LSP field with 2 TTT and 2 NTT. The TTT positions listed the PhD field as open and emphasized the "ability to develop Professions Focus" for the first and phonetics and business for the second. For the NTT positions one had an open PhD field, and also asked for English in addition to German for Business, and the other NTT position, which was renewable, included the administrative task of directing the Business German PhD and required a PhD in Applied Linguistics with a focus on language and identity. In 2011–2012, the sample yielded one primary LSP job seeking a colleague with PhD in any area to contribute to a "new beginning in the German studies program." The primary interest was in "practical experiences" for the student such as "cultural studies (politics, society, business, media, film) literature and second language acquisition." The TTT LSP secondary jobs had primary fields of: 1) 19th- through 21st-century German Studies, the LSP fields of interest were film, professions (engineering and business) and language-across-the-curriculum, 2) German literature with an LSP field in translation, 3) German or German studies, and 4) German and German Cultural Studies. The NTT positions did not specify the PhD field and were primarily focused on general language teaching and some advising and administrative tasks. Of particular note in these announcements is the predominance of German studies or German Cultural studies over literature. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 25 Japanese In the 2008–2009 list sample, there were two LSP jobs (the overall number of Japanese positions is unclear). They are: one NTT primary LSP position to administer the Japanese for business minor and one TTT secondary LSP position which called for the ability to teach all levels of language, civilization, history, business, contemporary culture and literature. In 2011–2012, there were 2 jobs out of 38 or 5%. Both were primary LSP positions. The TTT position was for the University of Hong Kong and stated, "Those specializing in literature, film, translation, linguistics, business culture, anthropology, and/or religion are especially encouraged to apply." The NTT position clarified that the candidate is expected to work with faculty to design and develop content-based/thematic-based courses and/or Japanese language for special purposes. Spanish The data for Spanish LSP is more extensive since the majority of LSP jobs are in this language. Also, the data is drawn from three sample moments since in addition to the 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 sample used for the other languages, data was also collected for Spanish from the September 2007–January 2008 portion of the MLA list, which can be seen in Table 4. Table 4 Breakout of data for Spanish job listings for 2007–2008, 2008–2009, and 2011–2012 Spanish Total jobs 2007–2008 LSP jobs 2007–2008 Total jobs 2008–2009 (Sep–Jan 23) LSP jobs 2008–2009 Total jobs 2011–2012 LSP Totals 514 40 377 13 365 29 (5 specifically call for linguist) Primary LSP Focus 0 6 (NTT) 13 ( 9 TTT/ 4 NTT) Secondary LSP focus 40 7 (TTT) 16 (11 TTT/ 5 NTT) In the 2007–2008 sample (which was the year before the dramatic drop in job offerings), there were 40 LSP jobs out of a total of 514 Spanish positions, which equaled 9% of jobs. In the 2008–2009 sample, there were 13 LSP jobs out of 377 for 3% and in 2011–2012, 29 LSP jobs out of 365 for 7.9%. In 2007–2008, data was not collected for TTT vs. NTT positions, but all the LSP designations were listed as a preferred secondary field, 26 in the area of business, 15 for professional (non-literary) translation/interpretation, and 9 for medical. Typical announce-ments were "Assistant Professor of Spanish (Golden Age). . . . [S]trong preparation in LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 26 Golden Age literature. . . . [W]illingness to teach Business Spanish. . ." and "Tenure-track position. . . . [F]ield of specialization open, but generalist with Latin American studies preferred. Must be prepared to teach all levels of language (including business Spanish) as well as Hispanic Americana and Peninsular literatures and cultures." In the 2008–2009 list, though the overall numbers had dropped, the number of primary LSP positions had increased dramatically to 6, although all were NTT positions some requiring only a MA. The 7 secondary LSP positions were all TTT. The designated primary fields followed the standard areas of specializations of the Spanish profession with a predominance of literature positions and the announcements were characterized by the "laundry list" nature shown in the examples above. In the 2011–2012 sample, of the 29 positions 13 were for primary LSP positions and 9 of these were TTT. Of the 16 secondary LSP positions, 11 were TTT. There are some dramatic changes in the nature of the job announcements in this sample. For example, where as in previous job list samples 'business' was the primary word, and most often was a stand-alone term, this time none of the job announcements called only for 'business,' rather 'business' was always included in a list of options (e.g., medical, legal, interpretation, etc.) most often under the heading 'Spanish for the Professions.' 'Spanish for Health Professions' or 'Medical Spanish' seemed to gain ground, with 3 TTT positions (two primary LSP and 1 secondary LSP). Translation and interpreting studies showed a marked increase with 8 TTT positions of which 5 were primary LSP and 3 secondary LSP positions. Translation also appeared in 4 NTT secondary LSP positions. In addition, whereas earlier lists had predominantly shown literary fields combined with LSP, in this sample, applied linguistics showed significant gains with 4 jobs specifically designating a combination of applied linguistics and an LSP field (translation, interpretation, or medical) and 3 listing linguistics in general as one of the possible primary fields. Some of the announcements still combined seemingly disparate primary and secondary fields. For example "Contemporary Peninsular Literature with emphasis on theatres and /or poetry. . . . [E]xperience teaching Spanish for the Professions a plus" or "Preferred specialization Peninsular and Cultural studies; ability to contribute to Spanish for health professions (interest in interdisciplinary research/program development)." The mention of interdisciplinary research marks an opening up that is observable in many of the Spanish announcements. Yet, in spite of the mention of interdisciplinary research being a valued interest, in this sort of advertisement, there is really no clear vision of what that interdisciplinary research might look like. While it is true that this kind of open-endedness can be exhilarating and freeing for a creative professional, it can also be somewhat problematic at the time of tenure and promotion review. In contrast to this sort of announcement that has previously characterized LSP job descriptions, there were a number that had very specific and extensive LSP designations. Consider for example this announcement for an Assistant Professor in Spanish Applied Linguistics: The Department of Modern Languages and Literature at the University of [X] is seeking an innovator in Spanish applied linguistics or Latin American or Latina/o cultural studies research and pedagogy with interdisciplinary skills to engage the complex socio-cultural dimensions of health-related issues in South Texas. This position requires a willingness to develop a research plan and engage in cross-LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 27 disciplinary research in healthcare issues of particular importance to the region of South Texas, such as health literacy, diabetes, obesity, or health issues surrounding poverty, race, gender, class, immigration, or legality. The successful candidate will participate in teaching and mentoring in the Department's unique program in Medical Spanish for Heritage Learners, will collaborate with faculty from other departments in advancing research in healthcare, and will teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of specialization. A PhD in Spanish is required prior to start date in Fall, 2012. The successful candidate will have native or near native fluency in Spanish. The candidate must demonstrate potential for teaching excellence, research and publication, and grantsmanship. Or another from a criminal justice program "[X University] seeks an Assistant Professor of Spanish/Specialist in Translation and Interpreting (Foreign Languages), PhD in Spanish Translation, interpreting or related field." The specificity and focus of these job announcements mark a significant change in the envisioning of Spanish LSP fields and seem to create clear direction for the expected research agenda, which would allow the faculty member to develop a unified body of research and facilitate the path to tenure/promotion. One question that comes to mind when reading these more detailed job descriptions is how many candidates there might be for such jobs given the very specific qualifications (especially in the Applied linguistics ad for the medical field). Also, one is lead to ponder what the doctoral programs that are producing such specialists might look like. There are a few doctoral programs around the nation that are already preparing candidates for such positions and a description and analysis of these programs is material for another article. For our purposes here, these job announcements lead us to return to the questions posed at the beginning of the article. Conclusions Are departments truly moving to transform their undergraduate offerings away from literature? Are new research fields emerging? If so, what do they look like? What is the balance between TTT and non-tenure track NTT jobs in these areas? Will there be steady demand for future faculty trained to meet the new scenarios? Based on the information presented here, there does not seem to be a dramatic increase in the quantity of LSP positions, but rather a steady demand at a level that is similar to other less common research fields. However, there are indications that the LSP positions are becoming better defined as announcements move away from the "laundry-list" format to specific visions for new programs. Also, there is a slight increase in TTT primary LSP positions and these positions are also slowly becoming more focused on specific regional and/or discipline needs (i.e. health issues in South Texas, Francophone outreach in the Atlanta metropolitan area, translation and interpretation programs). The emergence of the phrase 'cultural studies' or 'specific area studies' (i.e., German, Francophone) in many of these LSP announcement and the large number of jobs in Spanish and French that come up with a keyword search for 'cultural studies' does suggest a shift away from literature. It seems that perhaps the cultural studies field might ultimately provide an umbrella for LSP programs that could afford LSP faculty a more LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 28 central institutional position. This data seems to echo Doyle's (2012) extensive and convincing argument in favor of a nomenclature change in the Language for Business field to Business Language studies. But, ultimately, will the number of jobs, which deviate from the traditional literature, linguistics and second language acquisition fields, merit redesign of graduate programs across the board to train future professors to meet this demand? Or, is it more a question of helping future professors enhance the traditional fields of specialization with new pedagogical approaches and secondary content expertise? In spite of the examples of very specific jobs given here, the number of these is still so low, that it would not seem feasible to suggest that all doctoral programs be transformed away from literature at this time, though certainly the PhD and Master's programs that have already developed these sorts of focus will become an ever more vital part of the foreign language education mission. What seems to be a more feasible approach for doctoral programs with a strong literature tradition is to begin a more gradual expansion into complementary areas. This can be accomplished by providing opportunities to doctoral candidates to develop secondary expertise in LSP content areas and to develop frameworks of practice that allow them to move between the theories of scholarly analysis to the practicalities of application to real world scenarios. The forum for such training can be graduate seminars and/or certificate programs through language resource centers. References Doyle, M. (2012). Business language studies in the United States: On nomenclature, context, theory and method [Special Issue]. The Modern Language Journal, 96, 105–121. Gueldry, M. (Ed.). (2010a). Consistent incorporation of professional terminologies into the world's languages: The linguistic engine of a global culture. Lewiston, ME: The Edwin Mellen Press. Gueldry, M. (Ed.). (2010b). How globalizing professions deal with national languages studies: Cultural conflict and cooperation. Lewiston, ME: The Edwin Mellen Press. Lafford, B. (Ed.). (2012). Languages for specific purposes in the United States [Special Issue]. The Modern Language Journal, 96. Long, M., & Uscinski, I. (2012). Evolution of languages for specific purposes programs in the United States: 1990–2011 [Special Issue]. The Modern Language Journal, 96, 173–189. Lusin, N. (2012). Trends in the foreign language Job Information List. ADFL Bulletin, 42, 195–197. Retrieved from http://www.adfl.org/bulletin/ Modern Language Association (MLA). (2007). Foreign languages and higher education: New structures for a changed world. Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/pdf/forlang_newspdf.pdf Modern Language Association (MLA). (2008). Foreign language Job Information List. September 2007–January 2008. Retrieved from http://www.adfl.org/jil/index.htm Modern Language Association (MLA). (2009). Foreign language Job Information List. September 2008–January 2009. Retrieved from http://www.adfl.org/jil/index.htm Modern Language Association (MLA). (2012). Foreign language Job Information List. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 29 September 2011–July 2012. Retrieved from http://www.adfl.org/jil/index.htm Pérez-Llantada, C., & Watson, M. (Eds.). (2011). Specialized languages in the global village: A Multi-perspective approach. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Porter, C. (2009). The MLA recommendations: Can we get there from here? ADFL Bulletin, 41(1), 16–23. Retrieved from http://www.adfl.org/bulletin/ Rifkin, B. (2012). "Learners' goals and curricular designs: The field's response to the 2007 MLA report on foreign language education" ADFL Bulletin, 42(1), 68–75. Retrieved from http://www.adfl.org/bulletin/
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Mary Elizabeth King on Civil Action for Social Change, the Transnational Women's Movement, and the Arab Awakening
Nonviolent resistance remains by and large a marginal topic to IR. Yet it constitutes an influential idea among idealist social movements and non-Western populations alike, one that has moved to the center stage in recent events in the Middle East. In this Talk, Mary King—who has spent over 40 years promoting nonviolence—elaborates on, amongst others, the women's movement, nonviolence, and civil action more broadly.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is, according to you, the central challenge or principal debate in International Relations? And what is your position regarding this challenge/in this debate?
The field of International Relations is different from Peace and Conflict Studies; it has essentially to do with relationships between states and developed after World War I. In the 1920s, the big debates concerned whether international cooperation was possible, and the diplomatic elite were very different from diplomats today. The roots of Peace and Conflict Studies go back much further. By the late 1800s peace studies already existed in the Scandinavian countries. Studies of industrial strikes in the United States were added by the 1930s, and the field had spread to Europe by the 1940s. Peace and Conflict Studies had firmly cohered by the 1980s, and soon encircled the globe. Broad in spectrum and inherently multi-disciplinary, it is not possible to walk through one portal to enter the field.
To me it is also important that Peace and Conflict studies is not wary of asking the bigger hypothetical questions such as 'Can we built a better world?' 'How do we do a better job at resolving conflicts before they become destructive?' 'How do we create more peaceable societies?' If we do not pose these questions, we are unlikely to find the answers. Some political scientists say that they do not wish to privilege either violence or nonviolent action. I am not in that category, trying not to privilege violence or nonviolent action. The field of peace and conflict studies is value-laden in its pursuit of more peaceable societies. We need more knowledge and study of how conflicts can be addressed without violence, including to the eventual benefit of all the parties and the larger society. When in 1964 Martin Luther King Jr received the Nobel Peace Prize, his remarks in Oslo that December tied the nonviolent struggle in the United States to the whole planet's need for disarmament. He said that the most exceptional characteristic of the civil rights movement was the direct participation of masses of people in it. King's remarks in Oslo were also his toughest call for the use of nonviolent resistance on issues other than racial injustice. International nonviolent action, he said, could be utilized to let global leaders know that beyond racial and economic justice, individuals across the world were concerned about world peace:
I venture to suggest [above all] . . . that . . . nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding relations between nations . . . which [ultimately] make war. . . .
In the half century since King made his address in Oslo, nonviolent civil resistance has not been allocated even a tiny fraction of the resources for study that have been dedicated to the fields of democratization, development, the environment, human rights, and aspects of national security. Many, many questions beg for research, including intensive interrogation of failures. Among the new global developments with which to be reckoned is the enlarging role of non-state, non-governmental organizations as intermediaries, leading dialogue groups comprised of adversaries discussing disputatious issues and working 'hands-on' to intervene directly in local disputes. The role of the churches and laity in ending Mozambique's civil war comes to mind. One challenge within IR is how to become more flexible in viewing the world, in which the nation state cannot control social change, and with the widening of civil space.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about IR?
I came from a family that was deeply engaged with social issues. My father was the eighth Methodist minister in six generations from North Carolina and Virginia. The Methodist church in both Britain and the United States has a history of concern for social responsibility ― a topic of constant discussion in my home as a child and young adult. When four African American students began the southern student sit-in movement in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, by sitting-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter, I was still in college. Although I am white, I began to think about how to join the young black people who were intentionally violating the laws of racial segregation by conducting sit-ins at lunch counters across the South. Soon more white people, very like me, were joining them, and the sweep of student sit-ins had become truly inter-racial. The sit-in movement is what provided the regional base for what would become a mass U.S. civil rights movement, with tens of thousands of participants, defined by the necessity for fierce nonviolent discipline. So, coming from a home where social issues were regularly discussed it was almost natural for me to become engaged in the civil rights movement. And I have remained engaged with such issues for the rest of my life, while widening my aperture. Today I work on a host of questions related to conflict, building peace, gender, the combined field of gender and peace-building, and nonviolent or civil resistance. At a very young age, I had started thinking as a citizen of the world and watching what was happening worldwide, rather than merely in the United States.
Martin Luther King (to whom I am not related) would become one of history's most influential agents for propagating knowledge of the potential for constructive social change without resorting to violence. He was the most significant exemplar for what we simply called The Movement. Yet the movement had two southern organizations: in 1957 after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, he created, along with others, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The other organization was the one for which I worked for four years: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pron. snick), which initially came into being literally to coordinate among the leaders of the student sit-in campaigns. As the sit-ins spread across the South, 70,000 black, and, increasingly, white, students participated. By the end of 1960, 3,600 would have been jailed.
SCLC and SNCC worked together but had different emphases: one of our emphases in SNCC was on eliciting leadership representing the voices of those who had been ignored in the past. We identified many women with remarkable leadership skills and sought to strengthen them. We wanted to build institutions that would make it easier for poor black southern communities to become independent and move out of the 'serfdom' in which they lived. Thus we put less prominence on large demonstrations, which SCLC often emphasized. Rather, we stressed the building of alternative (or parallel) institutions, including voter registration, alternative political parties, cooperatives, and credit unions.
What would a student need (dispositions, skills) to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?
One requirement is a subject that has virtually disappeared from the schools in the United States: the field of geography. It used to be taught on every level starting in kindergarten, but has now been melded into a mélange called 'social sciences'. You would be surprised at how much ignorance exists and how it affects effectiveness. I served for years on the board of directors of an esteemed international non-profit private voluntary organization and recall a secretary who thought that Africa was a country. This is not simplistic — if you don't know the names of continents, countries, regions, and the basic political and economic history, it's much harder to think critically about the world. Secondly, students need to possess an attitude of reciprocity and mutuality. No perfect country exists; there is no nirvana without intractable problems in our world. No society, for example, has solved the serious problems of gender inequity that impede all spheres of life. Every society has predicaments and problems that need to be addressed, necessitating a constant process. So we each need to stand on a platform in which every nation can improve the preservation of the natural environment, the way it monitors and protects human rights, transitions to democratic systems, the priority it places on the empowerment of women, and so on. On this platform, concepts of inferior and superior are of little value.
You also co-authored an article in 1965 about the role of women and how working in a political movement for equality (the civil rights movement) has affected your perceptions of the relationship between men and women. Do you believe that the involvement of women in the Civil Rights Movement brought more gender equality in the USA and do you think involvement in Nonviolent Resistance movements in other places in the world could start such a process?
From within the heart of the civil rights movement I wrote an article with Casey Hayden, with whom I worked in Atlanta in the main office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. Casey (Sandra Cason) and I were deeply engaged in a series of conversations involving other women in SNCC about what we had been learning, the lessons from our work aiding poor black people to organize, and asking ourselves whether our insights from being part of SNCC could be applied to other forms of injustice, such as inequality for women. The document reflected our growth and enlarging understanding of how to mobilize communities, how to strategize, how to achieve lasting change, and was a manifestation of this expanding awareness. The title was Sex and Caste – A Kind of Memo. Caste is an ancient Hindu demarcation that not only determines an individual's social standing on the basis of the group into which one is born, but also differentiates and assigns occupational and economic roles. It cannot be changed. Casey and I thought of caste as comparable to the sex of one's birth. Women endure many forms of prejudice, bias, discrimination, and cruelty merely because they are female. For these reasons we chose the term caste. We sent our memorandum to forty women working in local peace and civil rights movements of the United States. The anecdotal evidence is strong that it inspired other women, who started coming together collectively to work on their own self-emancipation in 'consciousness raising groups.' It had appeared in Liberation magazine of the War Resisters League in April 1966 and was a catalyst in spurring the U.S. women's movement; indeed, the consciousness-raising groups fuelled the women's movement in the United States during the 1970s. Historians reflect that the article provided tinder for what is now called 'second-wave feminism', and the 1965 original is anthologized as one of the generative documents of twentieth-century gender studies.
We have to remember that women's organizations are nothing new, but have been poorly documented in history and that much information has been lost. Women have been prime actors for nonviolent social change in many parts of the world for a long time. New Zealand was the first country to grant women the vote, in 1893, after decades of organizing. Other countries followed: China, Iran, later the United States and the United Kingdom. Women in Japan would not vote until 1946. IR expert Fred Halliday contends that one of the most remarkable transnational movements of the modern age was the women's suffrage movement. The movement to enfranchise women may have been the biggest transnational nonviolent movement of human history. It was a significant historical phenomenon that throws light on how it is sometimes easier to bring about social and political change now than in the past.
Nonviolent movements seem to be growing around the world, and not only in dictatorships but also in democracies in Europe and the USA. How do you explain this?
I think that the sharing of knowledge is the answer to this question. Study in the field of nonviolent action has accelerated since the 1970s, often done by people who are both practitioners and scholars, as am I. Organizing nonviolently for social justice is not new, but the knowledge that has consolidated during the last 40 years has been major. The works of Gene Sharp have been significant, widely translated, and are accessible through the Albert EinsteinInstitution. His first major work, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, in three volumes, came out in 1973 (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers). It marked the development of a new understanding of how this form of cooperative action works, the conditions under which it can be optimized, and the ways in which one can improve effectiveness. Sharp's works have since been translated into more than 40 languages. Also valuable are the works and translations of dozens of other scholars, who often stand on his shoulders. Today there may be 200 scholar-activists in this field worldwide, with a great deal of work now underway in related fields. Knowledge is being shared not only through translated works, but also through organizations and their training programs, such as the War Resisters League International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, each of which came into existence in Britain around World War I. Both are still running seminars, training programs, and distributing books. George Lakey's Training for Change and a new database at Swarthmore College that he has developed are sharing knowledge. So is the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, which has built a dramatic record in a short time, having run more than 400 seminars and workshops in more than 139 countries. The three major films that ICNC has produced (for example, 'Bringing Down a Dictator'), have been translated into 20 languages and been publicly broadcast to more than 20 million viewers.
After its success, leaders from the Serbian youth movement Otpor! (Resistance) that in 2000 disintegrated the Slobodan Milošević dictatorship formed a network of activists, including experienced veterans from civil-resistance struggles in South Africa, the Philippines, Lebanon, Georgia, and Ukraine to share their experiences with other movements. People can now more easily find knowledge on the World Wide Web, often in their original language or a second language, and they can find networks that share information about their experiences, including their successes and failures.
I reject the Twitter explanation for the increased use of nonviolent action or civil resistance, because all nonviolent movements appropriate the most advanced technologies available. This pattern is related to the importance of communications for their basic success. Nonviolent mobilizations must be very shrewd in putting across their purpose, their goals and objectives, preparing slogans, and conveying information on how people can become involved. In order for people to join—bearing in mind that numbers are important for success—it is critically important to make clear what goal(s) you are seeking and why you have elected to work with civil resistance. This decision is sometimes hard to understand for people who have suffered great cruelty from their opponent, and who maintain 'but we are the victims', making the sharing of the logic of the technique of civil resistance vital.
What would you say is the importance of Nonviolent Resistance Studies in the field of International Relations and Political Science? And how do you counter those who argue that some forms of structural domination are only ended through violence?
In this case we can look at the evidence and stay away from arguing beliefs or ideology. Thanks to political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, who have produced a discerning work, Why Civil Resistance Works (2011), we now have empirical evidence that removes this question from mystery. They studied 323 violent and nonviolent movements that occurred between 1900 and 2006 and found that the nonviolent campaigns were twice as effective as violent struggles in achieving their goals, while incurring fewer costly fatalities and producing much greater prospects for democratic outcomes after the end of the campaign. They found only one area in which violent movements have been more successful, and that is in secessions. So, we don't need to dwell in the realm of opinion, but can read their findings. Other scholars have written about the same issues using qualitative data ― by doing interviews, developing case studies, and analytical descriptions ― but the work of Chenoweth and Stephan is quantitative, putting it in a different category due to its research methods.
Reading 'Why Civil Resistance Works' it caught my eye that nonviolent campaigns seem less successful in the Middle East and Asia than in other regions. Did you see that also in your own work? And if so, do you have an explanation for it? In addition, do you believe that the 'Arab Awakening' is a significant turn in history, or did the name arise too quickly and will it remain a temporary popular phrase?
What I encountered in working in the Middle East was an expectation, notion, or hope among people that a great leader would save them and bring them out of darkness. This belief seems often to have kept the populace in a state of passivity. Sometimes such pervasive theories of leadership are deeply elitist: one must be well educated to be a leader, one must be born into that role, one must be male, or the first son, etc. Such concepts of leadership discourage the taking of independent civil action.
I think that the Arab Awakening has been significant for a number of reasons. As one example, there had been a widespread (and patronizing) assumption in the United States and the West that the Arabs were not interested in democracy. We have heard from various sources including Israel for decades that Arabs are not attracted to democracy. As a matter of fact, I think that all people want a voice. All human beings wish to be listened to and to be able to express their hopes and aspirations. This is a fundamental basis of democracy and widely applicable, although democracy may take different forms. The Arab Awakening rebutted this arrogant assumption. This does not mean that the course will be easy. One of my Egyptian colleagues said to me, 'We have had dictatorship since 1952, but after Tahir Square you expect us to build a perfect democracy in 52 weeks! It cannot happen!'
Among the first concessions sought by the 2011 Arab revolts was rejection of the right of a dictator's sons to succeed him. The passing of power from father to son has been a characteristic of patriarchal societies, in the Arab world and elsewhere. Anthropologist John Borneman notes, 'The public renunciation of the son's claim to inherit the father's power definitively ends the specific Arab model of succession that has been incorporated into state dictatorships among tribal authorities'. In Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen (not all of which are successes), such movements have sought to end the presumption of father-son inheritance of rule.
I believe that we are seeing the start of a broad democratization process in the Middle East, not its end. The learning and preparation that had been occurring in Egypt prior to Tahrir Square was extensive. Workshops had been underway for 10 to 15 years before people filled Tahrir Square. Women bloggers had for years been monitoring torture and sharing news from outside. One woman blogger translated a comic book into Arabic about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, from the 1960s, and had it distributed all over Cairo. Labor unions had been very active. According to historian Joel Beinin, from 1998 to 2010 some 3 million laborers took part in 3,500 to 4,000 strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations, and other actions, realizing more than 600 collective labor actions per year in 2007 and 2008. In the years immediately before the revolution, these actions became more coherent. Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive, set up a Facebook page and used Google technologies to share ideas and knowledge about what ordinary people can do. The April 6 Youth Movement, set up in 2008, three years before Tahrir, sent one of its members to Belgrade in 2009, to learn how Otpor! had galvanized the bringing down of Milošević. He returned to Cairo with materials and films, lessons from other nonviolent movements, and workshop materials. This all goes back to the sharing of knowledge. Yet the Egyptians have now come to the point where they must assume responsibility and accountability for the whole and make difficult decisions for their society. It will be a long and difficult process. And it raises the question of what kind of help from outside is essential.
Why do you raise this point; do you think outside help is essential?
I know from having studied a large number of nonviolent movements in different parts of the globe that the sharing of lessons laterally among mobilizations and nonviolent struggles is highly effective. African American leaders were traveling by steamer ship from 1919 until the outbreak of World War II to the Indian subcontinent, to learn from Gandhi and the Indian independence struggles. This great interchange between black leaders in the United States and the Gandhian activists, as the historian Sudarshan Kapur shows in Raising Up A Prophet (1992), was critically significant in the solidification of consensus in the U.S. black community on nonviolent means. I have written about how the knowledge moved from East to West in my book Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Scholarly exchanges and interchanges among activists from other struggles are both potentiating and illuminating. Most observers fail to see that nonviolent mobilizations often have very deep roots involving the lateral sharing of experience and know-how.
You have written a book about the first uprising, or 'intifada', in the Occupied Palestinian Territories between 1987 and 1993. The second Palestinian uprising did not contain much nonviolent tactics though. Do you foresee another uprising soon? If not, why? If yes, do you think that Nonviolent Actions will play again an important role in that uprising, or is it more likely to turn violent?
Intifada is linguistically a nonviolent word: It means shaking off and has no violent implication whatsoever. (This word is utterly inappropriate for what happened in the so-called Second Intifada, although it started out as a nonviolent endeavor.) In the 1987 intifada, virtually the entire Palestinian society living under Israel's military occupation unified itself with remarkable cohesion on the use of nonviolent tools. The first intifada (1987-1993, especially 1987-1990) benefited from several forces at work in the 1970s and 1980s, about which I write in A Quiet Revolution (2007), one of which came from Palestinian activist intellectuals working with Israeli groups, who wanted to end occupation for their own reasons. These Israeli peace activists thought the occupation degraded them, made them less than human, in addition to oppressing Palestinians. The second so-called intifada was not a 'shaking off'. For the first time, it bade attacks against the Israeli settlements, which had not occurred before.
Let me put it this way: in virtually every situation, there is some potential for human beings to take upon themselves their own liberation through nonviolent action. We may expect that such potential is dormant and waiting for enactment. Disciplined nonviolent action is underway in a number of village-based struggles against the separation barrier in the West Bank right now, in which Israeli allies are among the action takers. As another example, the Freedom Theatre in Jenin is using Freedom Rides, a concept adopted from the U.S. southern Civil Rights Movement, riding buses to the South Hebron Hills villages and along the way using drama, music, and giant puppets as a way of stimulating debate about Israeli occupation. Bloggers and writers share their experiences (see e.g. this post by Nathan Schneider). For the first time, as we speak, the Freedom Bus will travel from the West Bank to make two performances in historic pre-1948 Palestine (Israel), in Haifa and the Golan, in June 2013. A Palestinian 'Empty Stomach' campaign, led by Palestinian political prisoners in Israel, has had some success in using hunger strikes to press Israeli officials for certain demands. With the purpose of prevailing upon Israel to conform to international resolutions pertaining to the Palestinians and to end its military occupation, Palestinian civic organizations in 2005 launched a Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign, drawing upon the notable example of third-party sanctions applied in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The Palestinian Authority has called for non-state observer status at the United Nations and supports the boycotting of products from Israeli settlements resistance.
More and more Palestinians are now saying, 'We must fight for our rights with nonviolent resistance'. Many Israelis are also deeply concerned about the future of their country. I recently got an email from an Israeli who was deeply affected by reading Quiet Revolution and has started to reach out to Palestinians and take actions to bring to light the injustices that he perceives. Tremendous debate is underway about new techniques, novel processes, and how to shift gears to more effective mutual action. The United States government and its people continue to pay for Israel's occupation and militarization, which has abetted the continuation of conflict, although it is often done in the name of peace! The United States has not incentivized the building of peace. It has done almost nothing to help the construction of institutions that could assist coexistence.
Also, it is very important for the entire world, including Israelis, to recognize intentional nonviolent action when they see it. The Israeli government persisted in denying that the 1987 Intifada was nonviolent, when the Palestinian populace had been maintaining extraordinary nonviolent discipline for nearly three years, despite harsh reprisals. Israeli officials continued to call it 'unending war' and 'the seventh war'. Indeed, it was not perfect nonviolent discipline, but enough that was indicative of a change in political thinking among the people in the Palestinian areas that could have been built upon. Although some Israeli social scientists accurately perceived the sea change in Palestinian political thought about what methods to use in seeking statehood and the lifting of the military occupation, the government of Israel generally did not seize upon such popularly enacted nonviolent discipline to push for progress. My sources for Quiet Revolution include interviews with Israelis, such as the former Chief Psychologist of the Israel Defense Force and IDF spokesperson.
Your latest book is about the transitions of the Eastern European countries from being under Soviet rule to independent democracies. You chose to illustrate these transitions with New York Times articles. Why did you chose this approach; do you think the NY Times was important as a media agency in any way or is there another reason?
There is another reason: The New York Times and CQ Press approached me and asked if I would write a reference book on the nonviolent revolutions of the Eastern bloc, using articles from the Times that I would choose upon which to hang the garments of the story. The point of the work is to help particularly young people learn that they can study history by studying newspapers. The book gives life to the old adage that newspaper reporters write the first draft of history. In the book's treatment of these nonviolent revolutions, I chose ten Times articles for each of the major ten struggles that are addressed, adding my historical analysis to complete the saga for each country. It had been difficult for Times reporters to get into Poland, for example, in the late 1970s and the crucial year of 1980; they sometimes risked their lives. Yet it's in the nature of journalism that their on-the-spot reportage needed additional analysis; furthermore newspaper accounts often stress description.
After the 1968 Prague Spring, when the Soviet Union sent 750,000 troops and tanks from five Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia, crushing that revolt, across Eastern Europe a tremendous amount of fervent work got underway by small non-official committees, often below the radar of the communist party states. This included samizdat (Russian for 'self published'), works not published by the state publishing machinery, underground publications that were promoting new ways of thinking about how to address their dilemma. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania were the most active in the Eastern bloc with their major but covert samizdat. As it was illegal in Czechoslovakia for a citizen to own a photocopy machine, 'books' were published by using ten pieces of onion-skin paper interspersed with carbon sheets, 'publishing' each page by typing it and its copies on a manual typewriter.
The entire phenomenon of micro-committees, flying universities, samizdat boutiques, seminars, drama with hidden meanings, underground journals, and rock groups transmitting messages eluded outside observers, who were not thinking about what the people could do for themselves. The economists and Kremlinologists who were observing the Eastern bloc did not discern what the playwrights, small committees of activist intellectuals, local movements, labor unions, academicians, and church groups were undertaking. They did not imagine the scope or scale of what the people were doing for themselves with utmost self-reliance. In essence, no one saw these nonviolent revolutions coming, with the exception of the rare onlooker, such as the historian Timothy Garton Ash. Even today the peaceful transitions to democracy of the Eastern bloc are sometimes explained by saying 'Gorby did it', when Gorbachev did not come to power until 1985. Or by attributing the alterations to Reagan's going to Berlin and telling Gorbachov to tear down the Wall.
By December 1981, Poland was under martial law, which unleashed a high degree of underground organizing, countless organizations of self-help, reimagining of the society, and the publishing of samizdat. Still, even so, some people believe that this sweeping political change was top-down. It is indisputably true that nonviolent action usually interacts with other forces and forms of power, but I would say that we need this book for its accessible substantiation of historically significant independent nonviolent citizen action as a critical element in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
You also mention Al Jazeera as an important media agency in your most recent blog post at 'Waging Nonviolence'. You wrote that Al Jazeera has an important role in influencing global affairs. Could you explain why? And more generally, how important is diversification of media for international politics?
Al Jazeera generally has not been taking the point of view of the official organs of governments of Arab countries and has usually not reported news from ministries of information. Additionally, it often carries reports from local correspondents in the country at issue. If you are following a report from Gaza, it is likely to be a Gazan journalist who is transmitting to Al Jazeera. If it is a report from Egypt, it may well be an Egyptian correspondent. Al Jazeera also has made a point of reporting news from Israel, and utilizing reporters in Tel Aviv, which may be a significant development. Certainly in the 2010-2011 Arab Awakening, it made a huge difference that reports were coming directly from the action takers rather than the official news outlets of Arab governments.
President George W. Bush did not want Al Jazeera to come to the United States, because he considered it too anti-American. I remember reading at the time that the first thing that Gen. Colin Powell said to Al Jazeera was 'can you tone it down a little?' when asking why Al Jazeera couldn't be less anti-American in its news. To me, either you support free speech or you do not; it's free or it's not: You can't have a little bit of control and a little bit of freedom.
Until recently, Al Jazeera was not easily available in the United States, except in Brattleboro, Vermont; Washington, DC; and a few other places. It was difficult to get it straight in the United States. I mounted a special satellite so that I could get Al Jazeera more freely. This does not speak well for freedom of the press in the United States. This may change with the advent of Al Jazeera America, although we still do not know to what degree it will represent an editorially free press.
News agencies are important for civil-resistance movements for major reasons. Popular mobilizations need good communications internally and externally! People need to understand clearly what is the purpose and strategy and to be part of the making of decisions. Learning also crucially needs to take place inside the movement: activist intellectuals often act as interpreters, framing issues anew, suggesting that an old grievance is now actionable. No one expects the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker, and everyone else in the movement to read history and theory.
When news media are interested and following a popular movement of civil resistance, they can enhance the spread of knowledge. In the U.S. civil rights movement, the Southern white-owned newspapers considered the deaths of black persons or atrocities against African Americans as not being newsworthy. There was basically a 'black-out', if you want to call it that, with no pun. Yet dreadful things were happening while we were trying to mobilize, organize, and get out the word. So SNCC created its own media, and Julian Bond and others and I set up nationwide alternative outlets. Eventually we had 12 photographers across the South. This is very much like what the people of the Eastern bloc did with samizdat — sharing and disseminating papers, articles, chapters, even whole books. The media can offer a tremendous boost, but sometimes you have to create your own.
Last question. You combine scholarship with activism. How do you reconcile the academic claim for 'neutrality' with the emancipatory goals of activism?
To be frank, I am not searching for neutrality in my research. Rather, I strive for accuracy, careful transcription, and scrupulous gathering of evidence. I believe that this is how we can become more effective in working for justice, environmental protection, sustainable development, pursuing human rights, or seeking gender equity as critical tools to build more peaceable societies. Where possible I search for empirical data. So much has been ignored, for example, with regards to the effects of gendered injustice. I do not seek neutrality on this matter, but strong evidence. For example, since the 1970s, experts have known that the education of women has profoundly beneficial and measurable effects across entire societies, benefiting men, children, and women. Data from Kerala, India; Sri Lanka; and elsewhere has shown that when you educate women the entire society is uplifted and that all indicators shift positively. The problem is that the data have for decades been ignored or trivialized. We need much more than neutrality. We need to interpret evidence and data clearly to make them compelling and harder to ignore. I think that we can do this with methodologies that are uncompromisingly scrupulous.
Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies at the UN-affiliated University for Peace and and is Scholar-in-Residence in the School of International Service, at the American University in Washington, D.C. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Her most recent book is The New York Times on Emerging Democracies in Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Times Reference and CQ Press/Sage, 2009), chronicling the nonviolent transitions that took place in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She is the author of the highly acclaimed A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Nation Books, 2007; London: Perseus Books, 2008), which examines crucial aspects of the 1987 uprising overlooked or misunderstood by the media, government officials, and academicians.
Related links
King's personal page Read the book edited by King on Peace Research for Africa (UNU, 2007) here (pdf) Read the book by King Teaching Model: Nonviolent Transformation of Conflict (UNU, 2006) here (pdf)
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
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Siddharth Mallavarapu on International Asymmetries, Ethnocentrism, and a View on IR from India
How is the rise of the BRICs in the international political and economic system reflected in our understanding of that system? One key insight is that the discipline of International Relations that has emanated from the northern hemisphere is far less 'international' than is widely thought. Scholars from the 'Global South' increasingly raise important challenges to the provincialism of IR theory with a universal pretense. Siddharth Mallavarapu's work has consistently engaged with such questions. In this Talk, Mallavarapu, amongst others, elaborates on IR's ethnocentrism, the multitude of voices in the Global South, and why he rather speaks of a 'voice from India' rather than an 'Indian IR theory'.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is, according to you, the biggest challenge / principal debate in current IR? What is your position or answer to this challenge / in this debate?
One of the things I constantly contend with in my work is to think of ways of how we can widen our notion of the international. IR has been too closely linked to the fortunes of the major powers, and this has been to our detriment, because it has impoverished our sense of international. I think the spirit of what I contend with is best captured by what Ngugi wa Thiong'o in his book Globalectics: Theory and Politics of Knowing concerns himself with, namely '…the organization of literary space and the politics of knowing'. My interest is to grapple with the manner in which the discipline of International Relations in its dominant mainstream idiom orchestrates and administers intellectual space and the implications this carries for the broader politics of knowledge. Simply put, the principal challenge is to confront various species of ethnocentrism – particularly Anglo-American accents of parochialism in the mainstream account of International Relations.
I am also keenly sensitive to some disciplinary biases and prejudices, which I think sometimes take on tacit forms and sometimes more explicit forms, and in which provincial experiences are passed off as universal experiences. The whole question of 'benchmarking' is problematic, in that a benchmark is set by one, and others are expected to measure up to that benchmark. Then there is the question of certain theories, for example the idea that hegemony is desirable from the perspective of international stability – think of the Hegemonic Stability Theory in the 1970s, or the Democratic Peace Theory that assumes that liberal democracy is an unsurpassed political form from the perspective of peace. Then there is human rights advocacy of a particular kind, and the whole idea of the 'Long Peace' applied to the Cold War years. In reality, this was far from a 'long peace' for many countries in the Third World during the same era.
I am also interested right now in the issue of the evolution of IR theory, and was really intrigued by the September 2013 issue of the EuropeanJournal of International Relations, with its focus on 'the End of International Relations Theory': I find this fascinating, because just at a time when there are new players or re-emerging and re-surfacing players in the international system, there is a move to delegitimize IR Theory itself. So I am curious about the conjuncture and the set of sociologies of knowledge that inform particular terms and turns in the discipline.
My response to this challenge is to consciously work towards inserting other voices, traditions and sensibilities in the discipline to problematize its straightforward and simplistic understanding of large chunks of the world. My work is informed by what international relations praxis looks like in other places and how it is locally interpreted in those contexts. There are gaps in mainstream narratives and I am interested in finding ways to create space for a more substantive engagement with other perspectives by broadening the disciplinary context. This is not merely a matter of inclusive elegance but a matter of life and death because poor knowledge as evident from the historical record generates disastrous political judgments that have already resulted in considerable loss of human life, often worst impacting the former colonies.
The global south holds a particular attraction for me in this context, especially given its often problematic representations in mainstream IR discourse. The underlying premise here is that the discipline of IR will stand to be enriched by drawing on a much wider repertoire of human experiences than it currently does. The normative imperative is to nudge us all in the direction of being more circumspect before we pronounce or pass quick and often harsh political assessments about sights, sounds, smells and political ecologies we are unfamiliar with. IR as a discipline needs to reflect the considerable diversity.
My doctoral research on the role of the International Court of Justice advisory opinion rendered in July 1996 on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons provided an opportunity to probe this diversity further. While advancing a case for categorical illegality of nuclear use under all circumstances, Judge Christopher Gregory Weeramantry discusses at length the multicultural bases of international humanitarian law. In doing so, he combines knowledge of world religions, postcolonial histories and canonical international law to frame his erudite opinion, which displays a thoughtful engagement with often neglected or obscured sensibilities.
These examples can be exponentially multiplied. Such a sentiment is most succinctly captured by Chinua Achebe in Home and Exile where he argues that '…my hope for the twenty-first [century] is that it will see the first fruits of the balance of stories among the world's peoples'. It most critically calls for '…the process of 're-storying' peoples who had been knocked silent by the trauma of all kinds of dispossession'. I would treat this as an important charter or intellectual map for anybody embarking on the study of International Relations today. I would also like to add that this storytelling would inevitably encounter the categories and many avatars of race, class, gender and nationality crisscrossing and intersecting in all sorts of possible combinations generating a whole host of political outcomes as well.
The skewed politics of knowledge is most evident when it comes to theory with a big 'T' in particular. Most theories of International Relations emanate from the Anglo-American metropole and little from elsewhere. This is not because of an absence of theoretical reflection in other milieus but due rather to a not so accidental privileging of some parts of experiential reality over others. IR has been too caught up with the major powers. I could think of conscious efforts to theorize both in the past and in the present elements of reality hidden from conventional vantage points. One recent illustration of social and political theorizing from the context I am more familiar with is an account by Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai titled The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory. There are on-going theoretical engagements in Africa, the Arab world, Asia and South America reflecting an intellectual ferment both within and outside of these societies. International Relations as a discipline has to find ways of explicitly engaging these texts and relating it to prevailing currents in world politics rather than carry on an elaborate pretence of their non-existence. I am more troubled by claims of an 'end of International Relations theory' just at a moment when the world is opening up to new political possibilities stemming from the projected growth in international influence of parts of Asia, Africa, the Arab world and South America. IR has to move beyond its obsession of focusing on the major powers and seriously democratize its content. The terms 'global' or 'international' cannot be a monopoly or even an oligopoly. Such a view has severely impoverished our understanding of the contemporary world.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in IR?
I cannot really claim that this was a neatly planned trajectory. I stumbled upon the discipline by chance not design. My initial curiosity about the world of social cognition emerged from a slice of my medical history. When I was at school in my early teens, I developed a condition referred to as Leucoderma or Vitiligo which involved skin depigmentation. I enjoyed writing from an early stage and recall recording my observations of the world around me in a piece titled Etiology Unknown borrowing language from the doctor's diagnosis. I recall an urgency to comprehend and make sense of what I perceived then as a fast changing world where old certitudes were dissolving on a daily basis. I felt an outsider at some remove from my earlier self and it gave me on retrospect a distinct vantage point to witness the world around me. It was impacting who I thought I was and thereby compelled me to confront issues of identity – individual and social. An extremely supportive family made all the difference during these years.
The turmoil and confusion in those years led me to develop a deeper interest in understanding more loosely why people reacted in particular sorts of ways to what was in medical terms merely a cosmetic change. It also led me to informally forge community whenever I saw anybody else experiencing similar states of being. I also internalized one of the first ingredients of good social science – the capacity to be empathetic and put ourselves in others shoes. I learnt that the discipline of Sociology among the available choices in my milieu came closest to allowing me to pursue these concerns more systematically further. I applied to a Sociology master's programme after my undergraduate years at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, but I had also applied simultaneously to the International Relations programme since in my understanding it after all concerned the wider world – an extension of scale but similar I imagined in terms of the canvas of concerns. The numbers in India are large, the competition is stiff: I made it to the IR programme but did not make it to the Sociology programme.
Having got there, I had some outstanding influences, and I soon realized that one could also think about issues of identity (then cast by me in terms of simple binaries – home and the external world, the relationship of inside and outside, victors and the vanquished) in the discipline of IR. I decided to stick the course and delve into these questions more deeply while keeping up with a broader interest in the social sciences.
I could list a few influences that were critical at various stages of my academic biography: at high school, an economics teacher S. Venkata Lakshmi was very encouraging and positive and confirmed my intuitive sense that I would enjoy the social sciences. Subsequently at college I had in Father Ambrose Pinto a fine teacher of Political Science. He would take us on small field excursions to observe first hand issues such as caste conflicts in a neighbouring village, and all that helped me develop a sharper sense of the political which moved away from the textbook and was strongly anchored in the local context.
At the graduate level of study, Kanti Bajpai who later also became my mentor and advisor in the doctoral programme exercised an enormous influence as a role model. I was convinced that a life of the mind is worth aspiring and working towards once I came into contact with him in the classroom. He also exposed me to all the basic building blocks of an academic life – reading, writing, researching, teaching and publishing, demonstrating at all times both patience and unparalleled generosity. We have collaborated on two edited volumes on International Relations in India and I continue to greatly value an enduring friendship.
For over a decade, I have also had the good fortune of coming into contact with B.S. Chimni who is an exemplary scholar in the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) tradition. It has been a great joy bouncing off ideas and discussing at length various facets of International Relations, International Law and Political Theory together over the years. I have learnt much from this rich and continued association. In 2012 we worked jointly on an edited book titled International Relations: Perspectives for the Global South.
I have also learnt (and continue to do so) from my students both at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and at the South Asian University (SAU). At JNU, I made my beginnings and continue to take some pride in being intellectually home spun at one of the foundational and premier crucibles of International Relations scholarship in India. I have also thoroughly enjoyed my interactions over the years with the students drawn from diverse backgrounds. At SAU, I have in the space of a short period been exposed to some fine students from across the South Asian region. I have often been impressed by their understanding of politics and on occasion have marvelled at their demonstration of a maturity beyond their years. There is much I learn from them particularly from their insider narratives of the unique political experiences and trajectories of their specific countries.
Himadeep Muppidi has also been a remarkable influence in terms of clarifying my thinking about the workings of the global IR episteme. His receptivity to hitherto neglected intellectual inheritances from outside the mainstream and most evidently his capacity to write with soul, passion and character while retaining a deep suspicion of the 'objectivity' fetish in the social sciences has alerted me to a whole new metaphysics and aesthetic of interpreting IR. The thread that runs through all these interests and influences is firstly the issue of context, and secondly the question of agency –what it meant to be marginal in some sense, how could one think about theorizing questions relating to dispossession, relating to a certain degree of marginality– and also the broader issue of the politics of knowledge itself: of how certain attitudes and concepts seem to obscure or deface certain conditions, which seem to be quite prevalent.
I have also found excellent academic conversationalists with sometimes differing perspectives who help sharpen my arguments considerably. I would like to make special mention of Thomas Fues and the fascinating global governance school that he offers intellectual stewardship to in Bonn. In the years to come, I look forward to further intellectual collaborations with scholars from Brazil and South Africa and other parts of South America and Africa as well as the Arab world.
What would a student need to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?
The key without a doubt is curiosity. I do my best to feed that curiosity as a teacher. I also think Gerardo Munck and Richard Snyder's counsel and interviews in their book, Passion, Craft and Method in Comparative Politics are a useful resource for students wanting to study International Relations. I also feel strongly that classics need to be read and engaged with, by bringing them into play in our contemporary dilemmas. I find that many of the questions we ask today are not necessarily entirely new questions: there is a history to them and there has been some careful thought given to them in the past, so it is important to partake of this inheritance.
Then there is language: it is vital for students to break out of one particular region or one particular set of concerns which flow from a limited context, and in this way to become willing to engage with other contexts. In this sense, language learning potentially opens up other worlds. I also believe that some exposure to quantitative methods is important: you need to be able to both contextualize and interpret data with some degree of confidence and not overlook them when approaching texts. Not everybody may choose it but we need to make the distinction between The Signal and the Noise as Nate Silverreminds us. I have found Marc Trachtenberg's The Craft of International History (chapter 1 in PDF here) a very useful text in providing some very practical advice in fine tuning our research designs to weave the past into our present. D.D. Kosambi's essay on 'combining methods' (PDF here) still provides important clues to thinking creatively about method.
I also think it is important for students to avoid the temptations of insularity and also pose questions in a fashion that allows them to explore the workings of these questions in diverse settings. They should be open to a diversity of methods from different disciplines such as ethnography, and develop a deeper historical sensitivity, all these are crucial to shaping up as a good scholar.
In sum, the importance of classics, fieldwork and language acquisition cannot be emphasized sufficiently. Classics bring us back to refined thought concerning enduring questions, language opens up other worlds, and field work compels one to at least temporarily inhabit the trenches, dirty your hands and acquire an earthy sense of the issues at hand.
Given the importance you attach to the learning of language, among other things, and the linguistic diversity that characterises India, do you often perceive language to be a barrier to understanding?
I think language works in two ways. On the one hand, each language has a specific manner of framing issues and a specific set of sensibilities associated with it which in some respects is quite unique. However, languages also lend themselves to different cross-cultural interpretations and adaptations. Kristina S. Ten in an evocative piece titled 'Vehicles for Story: Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o on Defining African Literature,Preserving Culture and Self' maps some key lines of an enduring debate. Thiong'o has a particularly strong position on this question of language: he says he no longer wants to write in the English language, but instead in his native Gikuyu, as well as Swahili. He argues that language has to do with memory, has to do with what he calls a soul, and he maintains that language hierarchies are very real and that we must contribute to enriching our own pools of language to begin with, if we are to contribute to a much wider, global repertoire of languages. In contrast, Chinua Achebe whom I mentioned earlier, very often wrote in English and held the position that it was important to be accessible to more people and to reach diverse audiences who would not necessarily be from his home country. He said it was possible to use a language like English and permeate it with local texture, wisdom and pulse – something he has exemplified in his own work. I consider his writings a testimony to how well that can be done.
So there is a bit of a divide in terms of how one can look at this question of language, but teaching in India I know that there are students who may be very bright but who are constrained by the fact that they have not had the same access to English schools, and therefore are restricted to the vernacular. These students may have some very good ideas, but they feel disadvantaged by the fact that their command of the English language is not sufficient to guarantee close attention to what they wish to say. Some work hard to overcome these challenges and meet with considerable success. While I think it is wonderful to learn another language, it does not need to entail a diffidence or neglect of one's own native language or any other vernacular language. My impression is that if unimaginatively pursued something is lost in the process and students end up feeling diffident and apologetic about their native language which is entirely undesirable. I believe therefore that while one should enthusiastically embrace new languages, the challenge is to accomplish this without unconsciously obscuring one's native tongue. Having said that, all of us in India are keen to go to English language schools. Vernacular languages have often lost out in the process. So there is something to be said about this concern about language. We have to tread carefully and remain attentive to how language hierarchies are positioned and deployed for advancing particular species of knowledge claims.
From the language issues flow conceptual questions: Asia is a Western construct, and South Asia an extension of that. You reluctantly use this term, South Asia, in what you call shorthand, and similarly terms "nation" and "state". How can we break away from these concepts if we don't have a new vocabulary?
This really flows from the fact that IR is still very much an ethnocentric construct. We are also suggesting in the same breath that there is a particular form in which most concepts and categories tend to be employed. I think IR language is imbued at least partly with the vocabulary of the hegemon or of the dominant powers, so that it shares with the area studies' legacy the political connotations that are still very much with us. One way that I try to break away from this when I introduce students to these concepts and categories is by focusing on the lineage and the broader intellectual history and etymology of concepts which come into play in IR. Students are in any case acutely aware of the fact that there is a strong area studies tradition which has mapped the world in a particular way which was not an innocent discursive formation by any stretch of imagination. They also recognize that this is not the only framing possible. The challenge for us is of course to introduce new concepts and categories. I noticed for instance that South Asia has become 'Southern Asia' for some strategic commentators (StevenA. Hoffmann among others) because 'Southern Asia' also includes China. However, when it is done from the perspective of strategy there are other interests intertwined such as specific geopolitical assessments.
What I try to do, rather, is to draw on the deeper histories within the region itself, in order to arrive at concepts and conceptions which are more germane to our context. I don't think I've succeeded in this project as yet, but one of the reasons why I think it's important to historicise these elements and even categories is to open up the possibility of thinking about different imaginaries and along with that different categories. I don't want to call it an alternative vocabulary, because I think that some sensibilities have been given short shrift in history, and some provincial experiences have more successfully masqueraded as universal experiences. Therefore, part of the challenge is to call that bluff, while another part of the challenge is to reconstruct and offer fresh perspectives. These may even be questions about traditional issues such as order or justice, questions of political authority, political rule or legitimacy. These are questions which are of concern to all societies though individual responses may not echo the language and slants of conventional IR theory. However, they may throw up some sophisticated formulations on these very issues. A part of the challenge for the IR scholar, then, is to recover and bring these ideas into the sinews of the mainstream IR academia.
It is equally important to avoid any sort of nativism, or to suggest that this is necessarily 'the best' approach, but to widen the inventory before moving on to stimulating a real conversation between divergent conceptions. We must avoid falling into the trap of what Ulrich Beck among others has referred to as 'methodological nationalism'. I am by no means suggesting that there is 'an Indian theory' of IR, but what I am curious about is how the world is viewed from this particular location. That is quite different from suggesting that there is a national project or a national school of IR. I think that distinction needs to be made more subtly and needs to come through more clearly, but one of the projects I am currently involved in is the chronicling of a disciplinary history of IR in India and what that tells us about Indians and their readings of the world outside their home. In that process, I ask what the key issues that animated particularly an earlier generation of scholars - how did they present these ideas and why did they avoid using certain forms of presentation and framing? What were some of the conspicuous presences and nonappearances in their work? Exploring these sorts of issues will lead us forward by, firstly, bringing to bear all these pieces of work which I feel have been ignored or have not received their due, and secondly, by showing that there is a fair amount of diversity of thinking even in the earlier generations of IR scholarship. The intent is to avoid a monolithic conception of IR that emerges from India. I will have to make this point much more clearly and emphatically in the future, and hope that my focus on disciplinary history will contribute to some critical ground clearing. Similar inventories of IR scholarship need to be assembled in different locations from Africa, South America, other parts of Asia and the Arab world.
Many of these projects then also link up to very practical questions. One of the issues that is of interest to me in this context is that of South-South cooperation, such as for instance the IBSA Dialogue Forum, or the grouping known as BRICS, or the broader forum of the G-20. There is evidence that the traditional structures and ways of doing things are increasingly suspect and being viewed with suspicion by some actors within the international system. It is therefore more important now to reopen some of these questions and to think afresh about such things as institutional design: what does it mean to be talking about "democratising international relations"? How can we think of more inclusive and legitimate institutions? How can we think about ways in which we can cooperate for the provision of global public goods, but in a manner which is historically more legitimate and fair? How can we address previous asymmetries that are not necessarily going to just disappear? How do we deal with old power structures and their residual influences in terms of the Westphalian state system? What legacy has been enshrined for instance in the Bretton Woods institutions and what has that legacy meant? What happened to non-alignment? Vijay Prashad chronicles vividly the promise and unfulfilled promise of the non-aligned movement in his fascinating account titled The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. How the past plays out in terms of contemporary global governance questions and arrangements is fundamental to my research interests. I have recently intervened on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine and its practice. I have been rather critical arguing that it cannot be disassociated from a longer history of interventionism by the major powers in the global south however benign its dressing. A thread that runs through my work is to demonstrate how historical asymmetry continues to manifest in terms of how the contemporary international system is structured. And I ask if we are to arrive at a more legitimate, inclusive and effective international system, then what are the mechanisms and steps which we need to work towards?
What do you imagine that process might look like? Do we need to return to a 'world of villages' (the 1300s) before we can reinvent IR, the national and the global? Do we need micro histories before we can reassemble a bigger history or is a subtle shift possible?
There are two levels on which this can happen: on one level the changes that seem to work are incremental changes and not lock-stock-and-barrel fundamental changes. In terms of scale, different scholars do different things. Some scholars are interested in micro histories, others are interested in macro histories and asking the big questions.
I imagine both these projects are important and there should be more scholars from the global south as well who ask the big macro questions. What has happened for too long is that we have relegated this responsibility to the traditional post Second World War major powers and they have treated it as natural to offer us macro-historical narratives and pictures. I think scholars from the global south need now to attend to both tasks: to write good micro histories as well as reframe the larger questions of macro history. I would add that normative concerns such as the content and feasibility of global justice needs also to be an integral part of contemporary international relations scholarship. For instance, it would be fair to ask that in a world of plenty, why do so many people go hungry?
So if you were to ask me about my dreams and my hopes, I still think that the 1955 Bandung Conference and subsequent nonalignment visions remain unfinished business. I hope that within the span of the current generation there is greater egalitarianism accomplished in the international system and ultimately a balance not just in terms of what Achebe called the stories of the world, but also in terms of actual institutional designs and political outcomes. This should translate into much better provision of various public goods to global citizenry with special attention to those who have been historically disadvantaged. For assorted reasons there have been deep asymmetries within the international system which have persisted and resulted in diminishing the life chances and collective self-esteem of various peoples in the global south. There is an urgent need to both acknowledge and remedy the situation in the world we live in.
In your experience, what is the role of the IR scholar in India in relation to the foreign policy establishment and the policy makers?
It is quite hard to find traction of one's ideas in terms of any influence of scholars or groups of scholars on the social or political establishment. Overall I would say that academia has for a long time not been taken seriously by the foreign policy establishment, and that has more to do with the institutional structure where there is a pecking order and the bureaucracy sees itself as being better informed. Even in academic conference settings, one could periodically expect a practitioner of foreign policy to argue that they know best having been present at a particular negotiation or at the outbreak, duration and conclusion of any recent episode in diplomatic history. This does not in reality translate into the best knowledge because there is the possibility that besides the immediate detail, the absence of a larger historical context or even unaccounted variables in terms of the contemporary political forces at work during that moment could be blind spots in the narrative. It is fair to say therefore that the influence of academia on the Indian foreign policy establishment by and large has tended to be minimal. However, one could make the argument today that there are some early stirrings of changes in the offing.
Quite evidently, the Indian Foreign Service is far too miniscule for a country of India's size and desired influence in the international system. There is a perceived need from within the foreign policy establishment to draw on expertise from elsewhere and on occasion they do turn to the academia to invite counsel on specific issues. From the perspective of the IR academic, it is perhaps equally important to be not too close to the corridors of power as it could alter the incentive structure to the detriment of independent opinion making for securing short or long term political patronage.
Siddharth Mallavarapu is currently Associate Professor and Chairperson at the Department of International Relations at the South Asian University in New Delhi. He is on deputation from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He completed his doctoral thesis on the politics of norm creation in the context of an Advisory Opinion rendered by the International Court of Justice in 1996 on nuclear weapon threat or use. This culminated in his first book, Banning the Bomb: The Politics of Norm Creation. His principal areas of academic focus include international relations theory, intellectual histories of the global south, disciplinary histories of IR, global governance debates and more recently the implications of recent developments in the field of cognition on the social sciences. Mallavarapu retains a special interest in issues related to the politics of knowledge and examines the claims advanced in the discipline of International Relations through this perspective. His immediate teaching commitments include a graduate course on 'Cognition and World Politics' and a doctoral level course on 'Advanced Research Methods'. He has co-edited (with Kanti Bajpai) two books on recent Indian contributions to International Relations theory. In 2012 along with B.S. Chimni, he co-edited International Relations: Perspectives for the Global South.
Read Mallavarapu's Dissent of Judge Weeramantry (2006 book chapter) here (pdf) Read Mallavarapu's Indian Thinking in International Relations here (pdf) Read Mallavarapu's Because of America here (pdf) Read Mallavarapu's Nuclear Detonations: Contemplating Catastrophe here (pdf)