Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Despite the, now substantial and developed, interest in post-structuralist approaches with International Relations (IR), the study of International Political Economy has enjoyed no such development. One might argue that there is a plausible explanation for the lack of a post-structuralist IPE; that is, while there is an obvious role for the politics and discourses of identity within IR, the study of political economy, it is argued, is all about the material. There would appear to be two possible responses to this. First, to suggest that even when dealing with the economy that not everything can be reduced to the material, and emphasise the presence of discursive and the political in the reproduction of the material. Second, we can retain the centrality of the material, but emphasise that the material is not antithetical to a poststructuralist analysis. Of course these two strategies are inextricably bound up with one another and should go together, but my contribution explores the latter. Thus, rather than showing why IPE should relinquish some of its materialism and economism (which it should), it suggests that that a post-structuralist analysis is quite suited to dealing with the material. By drawing upon literatures from outside IPE the paper develops what John Law has called a 'semiotics of materiality'. That is, it shows how the contemporary ordering of economy and society is enacted and performed through a promiscuous play of things and people, neither of which can be reduced to the other. Objects only take on their attributes as a result of their relations with other entities. It is this radical relativity that Law is referring to with his 'semiotics of materiality'. Ontologically things are in constant need of being performed, reminding us of Nigel Thrift's urgings to develop a new materiality, but one that is never more that a 'materiality of surface'. In the final section of the paper these insights are developed in relation to 'the market'.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: ABSTRACT
AUTHORS (Presenter) Helen Purkitt, Dept. of Political Science, US Naval Academy, United States purkitt@usna.edu

The paper discusses some aspects of emerging policy issues related to the develoment of dual use civilian iotechnology commercial activities worldwide. The nature of the threat and the types of actors that are likely to engage in biowarfare acts in the near term future are identified. The concluding section offers one recommendation for managing an emerging class of biowarfare threats.

The views expressed in this paper are personal ones of the author and not the US govenrment.

The paper is available from the author at: purkitt@usna.edu. In your commuincation please provide your name and affliation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Feminist studies of Filipina domestic workers in various contexts has resulted in an extensive literature that has advanced considerably our understanding of this phenomenon. The great majority of this work has, rightly, focused on the gender effects of this sort of work. Regrettably, scholars of International Political Economy (IPE) have largely ignored these contributions. IPE has much to learn from this literature, and concomitantly, I argue that feminist studies of migrant domestic workers have too often overlooked aspects that are traditionally the domain of IPE. My paper attempts to bridge these differences in two ways. First, I demonstrate that the familiar understanding of this forced migration must be understood in terms of the explicit strategy of exporting governments adapting to changes in the global political economy. From a critical IPE perspective I argue that the focus on gender too often elides questions of class which can more fully inform our study of domestic workers. The second argument I present is based on a more pronounced focus on class. Utilizing Marx's dual freedom thesis I demonstrate that while the conditions of employment for these women are indeed exploitative the dual movement from non-wage to wage labor and from domestic to overseas work produces surprising effects. Among these effects are a more pronounced sense of consciousness as women, workers, and agents of social change. My paper is based on research conducted in Hong Kong, including interviews with domestic workers, union activists, and NGOs involved in furthering the interests of domestic workers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Students in an upper-level political science course at a public, land-grant university in the Southeast were asked what stood out to them about International Political Economy (IPE) in the Barbara Kingsolver novel, The Poisonwood Bible. Student papers were analyzed in a phenomenologically-informed hermeneutic study, for which they received no extra credit. Collective thematic analysis of responses identified three meanings common to student experiences of the book. These themes included the relative power of IPE theories to explain the Congo’s underdevelopment during the period covered in the novel, the salience of interpersonal skills in international relations, and holism in knowledge and politics. Each theme appeared in all papers, although individual students developed them in different ways and emphasized some more than others. Underlying theoretical implications and study results are discussed in terms of pedagogical implications for the ongoing debate within IR as a discipline of explaining vs. understanding.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The 'birth' of political economy is often traced to Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment who conceived the economy as a distinct sphere within modern society. This notion is intimately intertwined with our ability to sustain the Scots' division between modern European civilization and the primitive life of Amerindians. It is in this context of a 'conjectural' or 'comparative' historiography that modern understandings of property, commerce, the social and technical division of labor, inequality and poverty are articulated. IPE as heir to Smith and the Scots is informed by the idea of economy as the specific difference between a primitive and modern society and by the theme of economic development as the natural historical erasure of cultural specificity. This paper aims to show how contemporary articulations of international political economy are influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment's construction of otherness.