Exploring the Interdisciplinary Landscape of International Studies

Lecture/Notes Intro This is an introduction to International Studies. It is a multi-disciplinary approach incorporating the perspectives of History, Geography, Anthropology, Economics, and Political Science into the study of the complex interactions of states, international government and non-government organizations, multi-national corporations, cultural groups and so on. In the past, had you taken an International course in a Political Sconce department, you might have been offered the following distinctions. Comparative Politics: intensive study of politics within selected nations. International Relations: The Study of the interactions of states with little or no consideration of politics or society within those states. World Politics; Similar to this class; all the actors considered but focusing on political issues Global Politics: a focus on all actors thought intensely interested in issues requiring collective action to solve. Foreign Policy Studies:  an intensive investigation of how decisions about policy outside the country are made with some focus on the content of policy. In the past few decades a different, more inclusive approach has emerged: International Studies.  If we wanted to put a date on when the "new thinking" emerged I would argue for 1973 and the Arab Oil Embargo though some scholars would credit the fall of the Iron Curtain in the early 90’s. The embargo demonstrated that international power did not always revolve around who had the biggest army or the most nuclear weapons. The ability to control resources on which the rich and powerful were dependent was also a source of power. What is emerging is a complex web of interdependent parts spurred by the forces of technological, economic, cultural and political change that we currently refer to as Globalism. What you need to know from the Introduction. What is globalism? What contributions does each of the disciplines mentioned in the Introduction contribute to the understanding of global interactions? What are the pros and cons of a regional approach? Chapter 1: Historical Approach. “History teaches us something. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m pretty sure it’s important’ a paraphrase from John Gierach “What you see depends on where you sit” wrote an analyst of how bureaucrats view the world.  Something similar could be said of historians.  History is not just a collection of facts about how things happened in the past; history is a narrative told to make a theoretical, national, political, or personal point!  Historians select “facts” that are deemed relevant to the narrative while ignoring those that are not. Needless to say, there is a lot of bad history purporting to be “the truth” about something. In many ways history combines all the disciplines of international study: Geography Economic History Political History Intellectual History Environmental History. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the study of history as related to International Studies was primarily political history. Historians detailed the interactions of countries focusing on wars, conflicts, conquest, and political figures. In the last half of the 20th century other current in the study of history began to creep in. Revisionists rethought historical writing and began questioning the received wisdom of previous writings. Historians became increasingly critical of “National Histories” – history written from the perspective of a single nation or culture.  There’s an old saying about war history: “The winners get to write the history”. In doing so the winners push their own narrative about causes, good guys –vs –bad guys, justifications for actions etc. They often paint their adversaries as the bad guys. One factor in American thinking about International studies is the pervasive sense of American exceptionalism. Here is a short piece by Howard Zinn analyzing that perspective. The Power and the Glory http://bostonreview.net/BR30.3/zinn.html Myths of American exceptionalism by  Howard Zinn The notion of American exceptionalism -- that the United States alone has the right, whether by divine sanction or moral obligation, to bring civilization, or democracy, or liberty to the rest of the world, by violence if necessary -- is not new. It started as early as 1630 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony when Governor John Winthrop uttered the words that centuries later would be quoted by Ronald Reagan. Winthrop called the Massachusetts Bay Colony a "city upon a hill." Reagan embellished a little, calling it a "shining city on a hill." The idea of a city on a hill is heartwarming. It suggests what George Bush has spoken of: that the United States is a beacon of liberty and democracy. People can look to us and learn from and emulate us. In reality, we have never been just a city on a hill. A few years after Governor Winthrop uttered his famous words, the people in the city on a hill moved out to massacre the Pequot Indians. Here's a description by William Bradford, an early settler, of Captain John Mason's attack on a Pequot village. Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword, some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy. The kind of massacre described by Bradford occurs again and again as Americans march west to the Pacific and south to the Gulf of Mexico. (In fact our celebrated war of liberation, the American Revolution, was disastrous for the Indians. Colonists had been restrained from encroaching on the Indian territory by the British and the boundary set up in their Proclamation of 1763. American independence wiped out that boundary.) Expanding into another territory, occupying that territory, and dealing harshly with people who resist oc