Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Though they both made important contributions to contemporary political theory, Robert Paul Wolff and Robert Nozick have rarely been directly juxtaposed. Yet there would seem to be ample grounds for comparison: their Kantian proclivities, their engagements with the challenge posed to political obligation by philosophical anarchism, and the strikingly different conclusions they reach about the state, despite their purportedly similar assumptions. This paper will begin with an examination of the extreme Kantian individualism that underlies their respective projects. This discussion will focus on the ways in which the authors conceptualize the notion of autonomy, and the Kantian imperative to treat other human beings as ends rather than means. Next, Wolff’s and Nozick’s views of the state will be scrutinized, not just for the momentous divergence which allows one to reject and the other to accept the state, but also for the importance each affords to the state’s claims of legitimacy and the necessity of justifying such claims. Finally, these comparisons will be assessed in light of their implications for the questions of agency which Wolff presents as his central concern. It will be shown that (1) Wolff, unlike Nozick, is concerned with fostering conscious moral agency rather than defensive egoism, and (2) Wolff, unlike Nozick, envisions individual well-being as bound up in a complex network of social interconnections, suggesting that a positive orientation toward our social environment is crucial to individual moral integrity, and compelling us to view his exhortation to autonomy on a social rather than merely individual level.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper analyzes the historical importance of analogies between the American Civil War and the Second World War that were first developed by Robert Sherwood in his 1938 Pulitzer Prize winning play, Abe Lincoln in Illinois (adapted into movie in 1939). I argue that Sherwood, a rabid war hawk and one of President Roosevelt’s speech writers, attempted to solve the dilemma of interventionism—does a foreign war have to continue to be deemed “foreign” until the enemy actually attacks the U.S. mainland?—by globalizing the Civil War through an analogy which systematically conflated the years leading up to the Civil War with the contemporary global crisis, the Southern slavery with the Axis powers, and, by inevitable derivation, Lincoln with FDR. Though evidence shows that many cabinet officers attended the performance of the play and FDR hosted a private screening of the movie at the White House in the winter of 1940, it is impossible to state, with any degree of finality, to what extent Sherwood’s theatrical campaign for intervention influenced the U.S. foreign policy. Instead, my analysis hopes to reveal ways in which the analogy between FDR and Lincoln provided the interventionists within the diplomatic and military establishments with a convenient guise under which to implement their covert plan to put the nation on the collision course with the Axis powers. In short, the emergence of the “ United States as a hegemonic power on the global stage was conceived from the start on a domestic analogy that narrated the globe as national space in need of self-defense.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper focuses on anthropologist Robert Lowie’s literary output in the field of ethnology/cultural anthropology as it engaged broader discourses on race, culture, and progress in the first half of the twentieth century. It contextualizes Lowie in the cultural and intellectual history of that period, but looks back to the late nineteenth century, when the writings of Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Galton influenced notions of Manifest Destiny, the White Man’s Burden, and American exceptionality. These ideologies, carried into the twentieth century and embraced by many scientists, underwrote many racist and sexist movements that Lowie deplored. Accordingly, this paper examines the rhetoric of cultural anthropology employed by Lowie in his literary fencing with scientists who used Darwinian evolution to justify their “philosophy of culture” and understandings of human progress. The paper reveals that Lowie’s antievolution stance in explaining the “determinants of culture” did not prevent him from racializing the world in much the same way as his adversaries.

The paper divides Lowie’s thoughts on human progress into two major sections—(1) his views on the immigrant and “Negro” problems in the early twentieth century and (2) his refashioning of the “primitive.” Of particular focus is Lowie’s book *Are We Civilized?*, wherein he presents the chimpanzee as foil to humanity. In this text, Lowie questioned the basic assumptions of scientific racism by discrediting the belief that a direct cultural evolutionary line could be drawn from “chimp” to “Negro” and other “primitives.”

I argue that even as Lowie challenged the “propaganda” of the “votaries of race cults,” and the “new faith” of eugenics and other racist movements, he himself was caught in the tangled language of Culture, Race, and Progress. Although he disavowed any adherence to theories of racial superiority, his own acceptance of the paradigmatic shift to cultural relativism in anthropology did not preclude a belief in cultural backwardness, savagery, and primitivism. His defense of the “lower races” upheld a tradition of dividing the world into tribes and nations, primitive and civilized, Other and white/European. Although Lowie challenged the conclusions and findings of scientific racists, he did not overthrow the cultural categories from which they operated. Even as he encouraged his readers to think critically about what denoted primitivism or civilization, his acceptance of a “progressive” anthropological model of cultural stages perpetuated notions of the superiority of Western “civilization.” In this sense, Lowie reified evolutionary anthropology’s trope of “the dark-skinned savage.”

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We argue that President Bush’s primary motivation in selecting High Court nominees was his desire to achieve a Supreme Court that is sympathetic to claims of executive authority. We suggest, however, that the Senate missed an opportunity to make presidential power the central theme of the confirmation hearings. Instead, the issue was virtually ignored during the Roberts hearings and lost in the sea of topics discussed during the Alito hearings. Through a content analysis of the hearings, we document how the Senate’s failed to highlight the issue of executive authority, thereby missing a unique opportunity to foster public debate on a controversial topic and possibly scuttle the nominations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Achieving cooperation is difficult in international politics. However, cooperation sometimes occurs. Multilateralism is based on the WTO agreement, regionalism is based on regimes, and bilateralism is expressed by Free Trade Agreements (FTA) even if legislative confirmation by both sides is still pending left. South Korea agreed to a FTA with Chile and Singapore in 2004 and in 2006. This paper draws attention to the interesting point that the negotiation process and its result can be explained by the logic of two-level games. It is now well known that preferences and strategies of domestic actors, political structures, strategy of negotiator, the character and level of political issue have great effect on the process and result of negotiation. Considering the South Korea-Chile, and the South Korea-Singapore FTAs, the former was faced with radical opposition by domestic interest groups while the latter had almost no objection. It is quite interesting that there was a great distinction between them. Analysis structure will be proposed in this paper through combination of Putnam's logic of two-level games and its subsequent various theories.