Clash of Labels ~ By: Mustafa Kemal Dağdelen

Written by: Mustafa Kemal Dağdelen

Think Without Labeling

This Video was a commercial video fo a leading newspaper in Turkey.  The motto of the commercial was "Think Without Labeling"

Clash of Labels

How do you label your counterpart? According to his/her nationality, race, ethnicity, religion or sect? What is the motivation behind labeling other human beings? Establishing a ground to explore differences peacefully or identifying potential adversary?

The youth of 21^st century has been familiar with national identities, political identities, ethnic identities, racial identities, sexual identities and religious/sectarian  identities and has witnessed a number of clashes which are arisen from those identities and/or differences between them. 

It is not the intention of these poor words to propose a very idealistic prescription for the oldest problem of humankind. Rather, these words intend to reflect a deep burden of the author who was born in one of the most diverse cities of the world which historically has been home to different religious and ethnic communities and very rarely seen severe conflicts between different groups.

Since 2001 every aspect of socio-political arena has been affecting the author’s life-path, decisions, orientations and motivations. The author has always been trying to understand explicit and/or implicit generators of socio-political developments and has realized the fact that from philosophy to literature, respective systemizations/disciplines within Humanities offer various explanations for human beings’ tendencies and actions.

By the way, the burden of the author should be clarified before getting drowned in the chaos of thoughts; ‘Why do we always tend to label other human beings and treat them accordingly?’  This is a very broad and complex question and could open several paradigmatic discussions. Yet, this piece does not have an academic purpose; thus, the simplistic inspiration or reaction desires to be tolerated and accepted as a written formation of sensitivity against current developments in the world. 

The author has always been puzzled by this burden and usually been told that the answer could be explored with a scholastic pursuit and very first shock was reading ‘Homo homini lupus est’ and its depth and a big question appeared in the author’s mind ‘Why?’ and Machiavelli approached with his remarkable words ‘In judging policies we should consider the results that have been achieved through them rather than the means by which they have been executed.’ Meanwhile, the author’s fantastic journey has begun  in the wild nature of politics, which is basically ‘affairs of state’ according to Aristotle’s politika. Getting closer to the youngest, most attractive, most aesthetic, and most contemporary discipline of social sciences -International Relations- made the chants more hearable ‘let the war begin between glorious écoles of International Relations, namely realism and its foes.’ Since the subject was being analyzed very subjectively, it was lacking an academic basis; it did not have a well-identified research question, dependent and independent variables, indicators, theoretical framework etc., it was highly encouraged to visit scholarly jungles. However, if it had been desired diligently, several scholarly clichés would have been applied and  it was pledged that the problem would be lost and shadowed again in the luxuriant academic patterns.

Before forgetting, what was the problem? Are the labels truly needed in this world or should they always been strongly emphasized? The author of these paradoxical words thinks that learning beyond the names of human beings usually establishes a ground to clashes which occurs in different levels – international, regional, internal, societal etc. -  Do you often pray to see solutions for Arab-Israeli, Shia-Sunni, India-Pakistan, North Korea-South Korea conflicts or Flemish-Wallon, Turkish-Kurdish, Pashtun-Punjabi crises or Republican-Democrat, Communist-Nationalist, Leftist-Rightist tensions? Although it is not difficult to enrich examples, it is not necessary to demonstrate the sable tableau of our world again. 

Written by: Mustafa Kemal Dağdelen

Should women get Ph.D.s in international relations? | Daniel W. Drezner

Click Below to read the post at The Foreign Policy Website. 
Should women get Ph.D.s in international relations? | Daniel W. Drezner

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On Epistemology: How do we know what we know? ~ Scott Duryea

On Epistemology: How do we know what we know?
written by: Scott Duryea

Humans act purposefully. Yes, believe it. It’s true.

This may seem like a fairly obvious statement, but the logical extensions of this proposition fail to prove meaningful in mainstream political economic thought. The study of economics and politics, it is believed by Karl Popper, among others, are empirical sciences. Propositions, in order for them to be true, must have observable falsifiability. This is the way we know, as political scientists, if a theory is scientific.

The social sciences, it is believed by logical positivists like Popper, belong to the same epistemological category as the natural sciences. In other words, we can gain scientific knowledge by employing the same methods for acting humans as we can for mechanical instruments or biological ecosystems. How do we know things to be true? Because we can observe hypotheses in reality and be able to falsify them.

But, the study of human action deals with complex phenomena that hold no constants in the empirical world.

Why?

Precisely because humans act purposefully and subjectively. Individuals use means to achieve ends. This is an a priori statement. The only way to understand and explain complex human interaction is by these deductive methods. In other words, the study of human action is not an empirical science. Constants in (and therefore the predictability of) human action can only be derived from axiomatic deductive reasoning.

To be sure, a priori knowledge does not explain much about human action, but what it does reveal is extremely important.

For instance, neoclassical economics teaches that individuals use cost-benefit analysis to make decisions and to maximize utility. Utility in the neoclassical sense is monetary gain. Humans often do act to increase their wealth. But, how do we explain someone who turns in a missing wallet to the police instead of raiding the wallet and throwing it in the trash? Cultural norms? Maybe. But, more specifically, individuals value things subjectively. This means that humans do not always act in accordance with monetary benefit, but with what they will benefit them in a given instance. The person valued more the satisfaction of knowing they did some moral good than the monetary benefit of keeping the money. In this sense, individuals will always act in accordance to their perceived personal benefit, whether it’s monetary gain, moral satisfaction, or leisure.

We know this because of a priori knowledge (self evident truths) instead of empirical testing and falsifiability.

Think about it. Every action is a choice and a preference over another action. Try to prove that you do not always act purposefully, and in a way that you think will get you a level of satisfaction that you would not have gotten had you not completed the action. Right now, I’m typing this article because I prefer it more than doing my statistics homework or eating an apple.

Whereas Popper would say that this is not a scientific statement because one cannot falsify it empirically, Immanuel Kant would prove that it is necessarily true given the law of non-contradiction.

We know that humans act purposefully because there is no way to disprove it without indeed acting purposefully and thus contradicting ourselves.

This is the science of praxeology, this science of human action.

This is not to say that the current methods of political science are not useful. We can understand how humans have acted in the past and may act in the future, given some probability and explanatory value of given variables. But, we should not forget that there is great explanatory value in deductive reasoning from the simple axiom that humans act purposefully.

written by: Scott Duryea

Maybe. Maybe Not. ~ By: Sabine Hirschauer

Written By Sabine Hirschauer, PhD Candidate

I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, these sentences. I’ve seen these images before. Men clustered on a hill, standing in line, their heads bowed, waiting. For their hair to be shorn. Like animals. Fathers and brothers taken to concentration camps. Mothers chased across a mine field. Their daughters systematically raped. For days. Screams and wails lingering in the air, coming from a police station. Thousands of people packed into boxcars, then later forced for three days and nights to march across a non-man’s land. Emaciated men behind barbed-wire. An entire village population evacuated. Into an 18-car train. Hundreds of men on the floor of cattle sheds. This is not the Holocaust. Not World War II. Not Germany in 1940. This was Manjaca, Brezovo Polje Slavonski Samac, Tuzla. Bosnia-Herzegovina, the cruel summer of 1992. The end of the Cold War and its false prophecy of a perpetual peace. A cliché again comes to mind: Does history really repeat itself? Or is it sometimes just a fluke of the most cruel kind? The infamous vicious cycle. Or a time warp that one can overcome. Bend back. Make straight. And good again?
I’ve just finished copying and pasting from excerpts from the 1992 Human Rights Watch/Helsinki watch report about the Bosnian conflict. And as I read on I know I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, similar sentences before. I’ve seen these images. Over and over again. The report “speaks” of the atrocities committed at the “refugee” camps by Serbian soldiers, of deteriorating conditions at the camps. The frustration of UN workers being paralyzed to act according to rules and regulations, according to senseless UN bureaucracy. And an international community seemingly oblivious of the medieval slaughter that is unfolding in the heart of a modern Europe – at the end of the 20th century. “Our frustration arises from our inability to do anything other than write reports and stand-by since UNPROPFOR has no operational responsibilities across the border.” In one of the memos a UN staffer begged for a minibus to help carry escapees “to safety since UN vehicles are not to be used for humanitarian purposes.” To no avail.
I’ve been here before. I’ve read these words, similar sentences. I’ve seen these images. The Holocaust. Trains and ships packed with people fleeing to borders, to the safety of other countries, just to be refused, turned around, pushed back into hell.
You’d think after all these second chances we would be a better people. So let me throw out a seemingly unrelated and in comparison innocent and trivial event. Twenty years fast forward, along comes the Euro Crisis. And Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski being quoted of saying in November 2011 “I fear German’s power less than German’s inaction.” This makes him the first foreign minister in his country’s history of making such remarks. Poland, today one of the junior members of the EU, a country which has been over and over again invaded, captured and left for dead throughout history by its brutal neighbors. For me, this quote, hearing it on the radio, came as an indicator as to how we – possibly - can overcome the curse of history. Maybe. Maybe not. Or how we construct our own signs and our own destiny?
The concept of the EU, in general, as a confederation/association of states, independent yet interdependent (to me) is an effective mechanism that deters war and fosters peace. And the concept of the monetary union, in particular, (to me) is a sign of a commitment for us to finally abandoning the bloody battlefields of our ancestors and to see each other collectively rather than insular. This is (for me) why the EU and the Euro cannot fail. In addition to its economic function, both could serve as a mechanism that raises our moral compass as a people to avoid mass slaughter and mass political contentment - again. Maybe. Maybe not.
Or: This is - at least - how I see it. And I know everything is complex. And comes in various shades of grey. But maybe it’s not so complex. And maybe not so grey.
But this is my imperfect reality. This is my truth. Today. And how I know it. So: Do we need to suffer over and over again from the same thing? I think not. I think never.

Written By Sabine Hirschauer, PhD Candidate