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"Thoughts from the Global Periphery"
Remembering Dag Hammarskjöld
This September will mark the 50th Anniversary of Hammarskjöld’s death in a plane-crash in the country now called Zambia. A Swedish diplomat, economist, and author, he was an early Secretary-General of the United Nations. How should we remember his life and his work?
A hectic season for IR junkies
This is a hectic season for IR junkies – another American-led war, several new African catastrophes, another crisis over the Euro, and (perhaps, best of all) the return of the nuclear issue. As these have arisen I’ve been wondering what kind of a creature IR is in the aftermath of the endless procession of experts [...]
Tortured Ideas: a response to Harvey Sapolsky
IR – SO, WHO IS IT FOR? It is often said that the study of International Relations is either for the world’s people or for national politics. This cliché usefully explains the chasm between Harvey Sapolsky and myself. And anyone reading his Blogs and my own will recognise that we occupy different intellectual and political [...]
Tortured Ideas: the responsibility of IR scholars
Those eager to advise the prince often take the logic of Realist IR into dark places where fateful decisions are made. Why are so few voices in IR raised in dissent? And what must/should happen to those who carried the craft towards those fateful moments? And, most importantly, what’s to be done?
So, whatever happened to the idea of globalisation?
I have never been a fan of Globalisation. This is why I’ve not been distressed to see how quickly it seems to have vanished from the IR shelves, as it were. What is interesting is that not too many questions have been asked as to why it has disappeared from the discipline’s life so quickly [...]
Whose “World Cup” is this?
Not a stone’s throw from where we do our grocery shopping, I heard the BBC describe the opening of the Summer Olympic Games. I say ‘heard’ because, in those grim days, South Africa’s isolation meant that major sporting events — what we today call “global” events – were scarcely mentioned on the bulletins which passed [...]
Postcard from the Balkans
“The road less travelled ” – the American poet Robert Frost’s iconic metaphor has been much on my mind these past months as we have celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the fall of Berlin’s famous Wall; this, and the idea that politics, like people, is a great follower of fashion. Difficult as it is to [...]
Re-discovering Kwame Nkrumah
The recent centenary of the birth of Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana, passed without murmur in this little corner of the continent. Why this happened has both puzzled and, yes, hurt me a little. Whatever one thinks of the demons that drove the later years of Nkrumah’s leadership of Ghana, he was an inspiring figure in liberation circles.
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