Episode 30: A Long, Strange Trek

It’s our first “actual” installment of Whiskey & IR Theory in Space! We discuss Star Trek: The Next Generation’s ‘gay rights’ episode, “The Outcast,” which Dan uses to introduce his students to different modes of “reading” the politics of (and in) science fiction. PTJ and Dan summarize the episode (can you spoil an 30+ year-old TV show?), discuss their own reactions to it, and then Dan talks about how his students respond to it differently now than they did a 10-15 years ago. The two hosts conclude by descending into rambling geekery as they discuss what they’ll cover in the second installment of the series. 

The answer, by the way, is the two short stories that PTJ opens his class with: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” and N.K. Jemisin’s “Those Who Stay and Fight.” 

The Whisky: Port Charlotte CC:01

LIVE recording of Whiskey & IR Theory at BISA 2023

Don’t miss the live recording of episodes 32 and 33 of Whiskey & IR Theory on June 21, 2023, starting at 3pm. We’ll be taping at the BISA annual conference. Rumors suggest that there may be whisky for tasting and schwagg for… something.

Episode 32 will be in “classic format.” We’ll discuss Robert Cox’s classic 1981 article, “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory.”

Episode 33 will be a “whiskey optional” on status and international-relations theory.

BISA attendees should register in advance for one or both of the special sessions.

Episode 29: Introducing: Whiskey & IR Theory… in Space!

Patrick and Dan talk about the newest feature of the podcast: a series in which they combine their long-running seminars on (international) politics and science fiction.

In each episode of “Whiskey & IR Theory… in Space!” Patrick and Dan will discuss a book, television episode, or film that they’ve assigned in classes past. Here, though, they introduce the series by talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of using popular culture in general — and science fiction in particular — to explore social science and social theory.

Works discussed, inter alia, include Jutta Weldes’ To Seek Out New Worlds: Exploring Links between Science Fiction and World Politics and Iver Neumann & Daniel Nexon’s Harry Potter and International Relations.

Episode 28: Are We Living in a Simulation… of Sovereignty?

PTJ and Dan discuss Cynthia Weber’s 1994 book, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange. Weber examines “the justifications for intervention offered by the Concert of Europe, President Wilson’s administration, and the Reagan-Bush administrations” and analyzes them via a combination of “critical international relations theory and foreign policy analysis.”

Topics include: why “sovereignty” was so important to critical and constructivist scholars in the 1990s, Jean Beuadriard and International Relations, and the Reagan presidency.

Also mentioned in this episode, inter alia, are Andrew Abbott’s Time Matters: On Theory and Method, R.BJ. Walker’s Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, and Cynthia Weber’s “Performative States” (Millennium, 1998).

You can contact us via email, and follow us or DM us on Twitter. You can also buy Whiskey & IR Theory merch at our Zazzle store.

Thanks for listening, and if you like the show be sure to leave us a five-star review.

Episode 27: Everything is Relational

It’s a nostalgia episode for our two hosts, Patrick and Dan. 

They tackle Mustafa Emirbayer’s 1997 article in the American Journal of Sociology, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.” According to Emirbayer, “Sociologists today are faced with a fundamental dilemma: whether to conceive of the social world as consisting primarily in substances or processes, in static ‘things’ or in dynamic, unfolding relations.” 

Was that also true of International Relations? PTJ and Dan certainly thought so back in 1999. 
Is it still true today? The two may or may not answer this question, but they do work through Emirbayer’s article in no little detail.

Additional works alluded to in this podcast include Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (1975); Emirbayer and Goodwin, “Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency” (1994); Emirbayer and Mische, “What is Agency” (1998); Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume II (1993); Pratt, “From Norms to Normative Configurations: A Pragmatist and Relational Approach to Theorizing Normativity in IR” (2020); Sommers, “The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach” (1994); Tilly, Durable Inequality (1998); and Wiener, Contestation and Constitution of Norms in Global International Relations (2018).