What "IR research" should be about

At the end of the semester, I usually give a pep talk/general rant about how my students should send off their research papers for publication. While I am aware that most of their work is probably not suitable for publication (yet), some is and I try to give a general rallying cry about how getting stuff published is "good" for you. I know, even while giving the talk, that this is a lie. I know that many of these students will probably end up never using any of the research skills we have discussed in class. That is why I think the whole idea of teaching students "research skills" is b.....s.

Does this mean I want to make myself redundant? No. This means that a course on Research in International Relations shouldn't be about how you interpret (and, yes, it is "interpret" since the results aren't objectively knowable) results of statistical tests or review "good" survey questions. Instead, it should be about how research is not just something you do for my class. It is something that goes on all the time--it is about what you (we) think about the world we live in. It is about what we think is knowledge and what counts as knowledge. It is recognizing that different types of research do not all have the same evaluative criteria for what counts as "knowledge" and applying one set of criteria (Asking "What's your independent variable here?" to someone doing a discourse analysis makes no sense) to all research is also b.....s.

This is how my class is designed. We don't sit around and talk about ontology and epistemology but I try to get students to think about different ontological standpoints and related epistemologies (without calling them such). We talk about what a commitment to ethnography entails and when students come in saying: This seemed too "casual" to me (when writing up their ethnographies), I point them towards Michael Barnett and Jack Santino and Jeffrey Sluka (among others) and how they write about how they felt during the process of doing research. How political ethnography adopts a perspectival viewpoint. How the Truth is not out there (in this approach).

At other times, we talk about the logic of doing a "large-n" study, an approach which assumes events and factors in the world are unchanging and that your ideas (hypotheses) about how the world works can be tested against the world. Language, in this view, is not constitutive, unlike in discourse analysis in which language-use constitutes objects of inquiry and how to deal with them. Then, there's social networks in which a node's position in relation to other nodes and in relation to the overall network is important. It doesn't matter who (or what) the node is in terms of its characteristic but its position determines the choices and options available to it.

It's a lot for a short one semester course to cover and I always feel rushed and this semester was rather different because I missed the first week due to the events of the Summer of Horror. This meant the class on ethics was missed as was my spiel about how research methodologies are like languages or how the class is like an Indian buffet lunch. Probably for the best, really.

I usually know how things went at the end of the semester. This time, I am not sure. Surprisingly (to me) my early morning class is the one that I think will have the most students who end up doing further research on their topic. It also had a few students who nodded off half the time and yet produced extremely well-written assignments.

Articles that remain unwritten

Yet another post in which I want to remind myself of what I am thinking.

1. Need to write a paragraph explaining why the materialism/idealism divide is nonsense (in terrorism studies). Need to do that today. Not sure when since it's already past 5pm and I'm off to the Irish filmfest to see Seaview.

2. Thought of some songs-inspired ideas for possible articles including

i) What do terrorists really (really) want?: Terrorist motivations and counterterrorism strategies

ii) Do they really want to hurt us?: Time, crime and repentance in terrorists' discourse

iii) Put a ring around it: British counterterrorism strategies in London and their application in a post-9/11 context

iv) Terrorism: is it real or just a fantasy?*

3. Actually want to write, "Can the Terrorist Speak?" but fear Ms Spivak might not find it amusing. The question is: should I do it anyway OR wait till I get tenured (which, at the rate I'm going, might never happen)

* I could go on at length but I'll spare yous the rest.

Miserable Me

The last day of class for this semester was Friday. For the past few years, at this time, I'd be madly dashing around town trying to buy things for family and getting ready to set off on the long way home (usually via a series of other destinations). This year, I made a decision to stay here and catch up on work--there's book chapters to be written, three classes to devise (including lesson plans), jobs to apply for and articles to be written/revised. I knew I'd probably be a bit miserable since I'm used to winter = long plane rides and being sat on the balcony of my grandparents' house, sunning myself during the daytimes, eating oranges and spitting the seeds down. Work would happen but it would happen at a slower pace and, since there would be no electricity for much of the day, there would be little reason for working all the time (or feeling guilty for not working).

I didn't expect I'd be damned miserable. As a friend who had to listen to me whinge over IM pointed out, maybe I've lost my "rugged individualism" (hah!) acquired over 14 years of being (mostly) on my own and grown soft in my old age. Probably. I just know that if this is going to continue for the next few weeks, I'll probably end up doing no work and moping around at home. Or online. That is going to get dull fairly soon.

So, I'll just share some of what I've been doing. I did revise my job application stuff and start on one of those three classes I need to get sorted. I also spent a lot of time watching Never Mind the Buzzcocks. My usual moping time videos are QI but sometimes QI can be rather too intellectual and you just want some silliness. For that, NMTB fits the bill. This episode, for example, made me realise that Josh Groban who I always thought would be full of himself) is actually rather amusing. Here's part I:

Things to be thought about

The last time I wrote a "here's what I have to do/want to do in the next few weeks" post, I ended up being told I had a dire future, spent weeks at doctors' and hospitals and spent months recovering. So, I had started this post with a view of doing just that (not staying in hospital but writing what I want to do) and stopped myself in time. Instead, I'll tell you what is going on:

- in uni life: stress, stress and more stress. Ugh. It's sad when a class I used to love teaching (and still very much enjoy the subject and the students) is ruined by non-class-related issues. Next semester, I have two new classes and more students. I also have to...

- revise an article for a pretty well-known journal* that got a revise and resubmit. This means the article is almost in (yay?) but the revisions are pretty major (issues of philosophy and arguing why this way of studying terrorism is a good way) so I need to re-read quite a lot of the philosophy of security studies stuff before I can even start revising. This means there might be less time for...

- the Book.* Of which four chapters are due to the publishers' by April and of which not one word has been written so far. But there really isn't time for panic since...

- I have heaps of pages (virtual) to grade by 15 December. Heaps. Of course this would be a lot easier if...

- my computer had not died. Yes, Died. At least it's not me, I guess. I got a bit cheered today by...

- a few of my students asking me if I were teaching another upper-level class next semester (I am not) since they found me funny (note the "funny" not "fun") and would like to continue having me as a professor. Aww...(end of egotistical bragging. But, hey, this is a blog. Hence, a site for egotistical bragging at all times.)

* I have a co-writer for both these endeavours so at least I'm not floundering around the sea of writing on my own.