Rerun
I recently looked back to some of the first blog posts I wrote in 2006, when I started writing these blog posts. Here's one of those early messages that's especially appropriate for people beginning to teach comparative politics. (BTW I've now been retired for over 15 years.)
Appreciating ambiguity
Not long ago, someone asked me
why I stay involved with teaching comparative politics. After all, I
retired from high school teaching four years ago. My accountant says
that my book publishing venture is fortunately a hobby that pays for
itself. She tells me I could better help pay my youngest son's college
tuition if I was a greeter at Wal-Mart.
Part of my response to
explain why I keep working to promote teaching of comparative politics
is that I think the course is one of the more important courses students
can study.
- The subject matter offers opportunities to expand our frames of reference.
- Comparisons teach us that there aren't single, simple answers to big questions.
- The comparative disciplines offer academic and intellectual methods for making sense out of variety and alternatives.
All these things are more and more important in today's global economics, politics, society, and culture.
Of
course it's easy for all of us to see evidence that reinforces what we
believe is true, so it wasn't difficult for me to see this message in
the March issue of
Fast Company, a business journal.
Columnist
Dr. Kerry J. Sulkowicz answered a question about keeping up with
advances in technology and the effects of globalization. Maybe there is
advice here to offer your students.
The Corporate Shrink"
...[A]dvice
on how to cope with a world of fast and furious change. Bottom line:
You better have a taste for ambiguity and uncertainty."I'm
convinced that in the future, the most successful among us will be those
who understand that they are citizens of the world. Keeping up with the
effects of globalization takes both openness and work--openness to
learning, reading, and seeing the world, and work to adapt to the
competitive, intellectual, and cultural shifts before they bite you in
the rear...
"[T]he pace of technological development has long
outstripped our human capacity to use that technology, including our
brains' ability to process information and to do actual work...
"The
biggest variable in all this change is you, especially your personal
flexibility and your open-mindedness to listening and learning... I'll
go even further: With rapid globalization and technological innovation,
the more you can tolerate or even enjoy ambiguity, uncertainty, and
change, the more successful you'll be."
Teach comparative politics; teach ambiguity. (If you've read my book, you'll recognize that theme.)
Labels: ambiguity, concepts
Please discuss
If you pick a few trenchant paragraphs out of this essay, you can instigate a good discussion. The discussion might be one of those that recurs over the course of the semester.
Is the discussion about comparative politics? That's one of the topics. You might guess from my choice to post this that I think it is.
The essay is by Adam Etinson, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Of Cannibals, Kings and Culture: The Problem of Ethnocentricity
 |
| Montaigne |
In August of 1563, Michel de Montaigne… was introduced to three Brazilian cannibals who were visiting Rouen, France… The three men had never before left Brazil… Despite this, they still had enough poise to lucidly respond to Montaigne’s questions about what they thought of their new surroundings.
The observations shared by the native Brazilians have a certain comical quality. Because they looked on French society with such fresh eyes, their observations make the familiar seem absurd. But they are also morally revealing… [T]he Brazilians were shocked by the severe inequality of French citizens, commenting on how some men “were gorged to the full with things of every sort” while others “were beggars at their doors, emaciated with hunger and poverty.”…
Montaigne makes the… provocative claim that, as barbaric as these Brazilian cannibals may be, they are not nearly as barbaric as 16th-century Europeans themselves. To make his case, Montaigne cites various evidence [including] the fact that some European forms of punishment — which involved feeding people to dogs and pigs while they were still alive — were decidedly more horrendous than the native Brazilian practice of eating one’s enemies after they are dead…
Montaigne most certainly wasn’t the first to make note of our tendency to automatically assume the superiority of local beliefs and practices; Herodotus, the Greek historian of the fifth century B.C., made very similar observations in his Histories, noting how all peoples are “accustomed to regard their own customs as by far the best.”…
Philosophers have responded to the pervasive influence of culture on our moral beliefs in various ways. Many have embraced some form of skepticism… John L. Mackie (1917-81) famously cited ethnocentrism as evidence that there are no objective moral facts, or at least none that we can access…
Many have argued, for instance, that the influence of culture on our moral beliefs is evidence… of moral relativism: the idea that the moral truth, for any given people, is determined by their culture… We know from various sources, including Plato’s dialogues, that some Ancient Greeks defended such a view…
[H]owever obvious it may be that culture plays an important role in our moral education, it is nevertheless very hard to prove that our moral beliefs are entirely determined by our culture… For it’s not at all clear why the influence of culture on our moral beliefs should be taken as evidence that cultures influence the moral truth itself…
 |
| J. S. Mill |
Most important of all is the fact that there are other, more straightforward, and less overtly skeptical, ways of responding to ethnocentrism. Chief among these, in my view, is the simple but humbling acknowledgment that ethnocentrism is a danger that confronts us all, but not one that should disillusion us from the pursuit of truth altogether. This is the sort of response to ethnocentrism one finds, for instance, in the work of the 19th-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill… The fact that our deepest-held beliefs would be different had we been born elsewhere on the planet (or even, sometimes, to different parents farther down the street), should disconcert us, make us more open to the likelihood of our own error, and spur us to rigorously evaluate our beliefs and practices against alternatives, but it need not disillusion…
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher
The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: ambiguity, comparative methodology, concepts, theory
Complicated lines of power
According to this analysis from
The Economist, the power relationships within the political elite in China are at least as complicated as the organization of sub-national units of government in Russia.
There's a chart that accompanies this article, but I'm not sure it helps. If your students can explain it to you, you can be pretty sure they know their stuff.
Vertical meets horizontal: Who really holds the power in China?
IN THIS year of drama, intrigue and scandal at the highest levels, the opaque machinery of China’s political system has received unusual scrutiny. The outcome of intra-party manoeuvring among China’s ruling Communist Party officials was finally revealed in November, at the 18th Party Congress. Now, as Xi Jinping and other party leaders get their feet under their new desks, the focus turns to the reshuffling of senior government posts due in March.
 |
| Part of the Economist's chart |
But even when that is done, there will still be plenty of mystery. China’s power grid is a tangle of interlocking entities, overlapping vertical and horizontal lines of authority, and complex interplay between government, party and military bureaucracies…
For foreigners, the first challenge is determining whether the officials they meet actually have the authority implied by their titles… Positions that foreigners expect to be powerful, such as foreign minister, defence minister and finance minister, are not even members of the Politburo, let alone its standing committee…
This is one consequence of all those jumbled horizontal and vertical lines. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) enjoys the same rank as China’s State Council, or cabinet, meaning the executive branch of the government can issue no orders to the PLA. Even the Ministry of Defence lacks command authority over China’s armed forces…
In China more power is held by “leading small groups”, informal bodies that report directly to party leaders, than by ministers, who control portfolios in most systems of government…
Internal affairs also have tangled webs of power. Central ministries rank equal to provincial governments. So do many large state-owned enterprises (SOEs), a fact which, according to a study by America’s Congressional Research Service, leads to vast regulatory difficulties. SOEs, it said, sometimes outrank party and state leaders in their locales, and so are not bound by their orders…
Jean-Pierre Cabestan of Hong Kong Baptist University says the same problem plagues sectors like oil, gas and heavy industry, where SOE leaders enjoy the rank of minister-level officials. Some, he says, also serve on the powerful party Central Committee. “These SOE leaders belong to the nomenklatura. They are aristocrats, or promoted through connections,” he says…
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher
The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: ambiguity, China, leadership, politics, regime
Classic reruns: Appreciating ambiguity
Another classic blog entry from 2006 that's still very relevant. My reasons for continuing to do this blog, update my book, and create teaching materials are still accurate.
Not long ago, someone asked me why I stay involved with teaching comparative politics. After all, I retired from high school teaching four years ago. My accountant says that my book publishing venture is a hobby that fortunately pays for itself. She tells me I could better help pay my youngest son's college tuition if I was a greeter at Wal-Mart.
Part of my response to explain why I keep working to promote teaching of comparative politics is that I think the course is one of the more important courses students can study.
- The subject matter offers opportunities to expand our frames of reference.
- Comparisons teach us that there aren't single, simple answers to big questions.
- The comparative disciplines offer academic and intellectual methods for making sense out of variety and alternatives.
All these things are more and more important in today's global economics, politics, society, and culture.
Of course it's easy for all of us to see evidence that reinforces what we believe is true, so it wasn't difficult for me to see this message in the March 2006 issue of
Fast Company, a business journal.
Columnist Dr. Kerry J. Sulkowicz answered a question about keeping up with advances in technology and the effects of globalization. Maybe there is advice here to offer your students.
The Corporate Shrink: [A]dvice on how to cope with a world of fast and furious change. Bottom line: You better have a taste for ambiguity and uncertainty
I'm convinced that in the future, the most successful among us will be those who understand that they are citizens of the world. Keeping up with the effects of globalization takes both openness and work--openness to learning, reading, and seeing the world, and work to adapt to the competitive, intellectual, and cultural shifts before they bite you in the rear...
[T]he pace of technological development has long outstripped our human capacity to use that technology, including our brains' ability to process information and to do actual work...
The biggest variable in all this change is you, especially your personal flexibility and your open-mindedness to listening and learning... I'll go even further: With rapid globalization and technological innovation, the more you can tolerate or even enjoy ambiguity, uncertainty, and change, the more successful you'll be.
Teach comparative politics; teach ambiguity. (If you've read my book, you'll recognize that theme.)
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher
The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: ambiguity, concepts
