I was mentioned a while back on The Browser. After reading a Monkey Cage post a few days ago about the value of academic blogging (see here), I thought to put this post together and link it back to The Monkey Cage conversation in the comments.
First, I am interested in the path by which I was quoted by The Browser, which is: World Affairs, USA, Foreign Policy, John Girdwood, on rhetoric. I would have expected two different paths before that specific path.
(1) my posts more often reflect rhetoric on “Politics & Government.” For example, why does the American government, structurally, continue to overspend? Or, what are the structural implications of Citizens United–you know, SuperPacs? Or, how should municipal governments structure an economic development webpage? As for direct local public policy, have we all grasped the implications of economic gardening?
(2) my posts are more often a reflection “Philosophy & Religion.” For example, see my “philosophy” tab under “Challanges.” Or, see my posts that I categorize as Philosophy–which will be much expanded as I continue research. Perhaps my musing on “Right to Work”–which is organized as a poem for reading enjoyment?
To The Browser’s credit, I do really focus on American political langauges. Appreciatively, categorizing me, on the rhetoric, “There are three major political languages in America: liberalism, republicanism, and biblical thought” in the path of World Affairs, USA, Foreign Policy has implications worth thinking about. Because they are considered major political languages (Abbott 2009), I suppose we could think about some global political langauge game theory. Perhaps America projects all three political languages–taking positions–in interaction (e.g., iterations) with foreign political structures, institutions, and cultures. We sure know that liberalism does (i.e. Hartz)! Well, I’ll start thinking more about that! Some of which was in the post that The Browser linked to my blog: i.e., John Girdwood, on rhetoric.
Now, on the one hand, I’m a few years away from being able to sequence iterations of multiple political languages across borders. Really, I don’t really study foreign policy too much yet–but this would be research worth writing.
On the other hand, I would like to leave you with an abstract for my dissertation, and it is a working abstract; because our world isn’t made of parsimony:
I research political languages as external structures and examine the habits of rules and regulations within and between their structuring. This approach allows for political languages to take positions in political space and to advocate, hold constant, and admonish position-takings against other political languages. This is not predicated on human behavior, rather the political languages are external and consistent in their processes and functions. However, the second step of the research is to realize how human behavior is both impacted and utilized through the political languages of authoritarianism, liberalism, and republicanism. The answer will help resolve today’s stalemate: Is America exclusively a liberal society, or does it showcase multiple traditions?
My research demonstrates a path of scientific inquiry using Bourdieu’s “habitus” in order to locate the state, its culture, its institutions, etc., according to the power and agency employed in human behavior as observable to researchers against the spatial and temporal positions of republicanism, liberalism and authoritarianism. I research the human political behavior in order to spatially and temporally locate a state, a culture, factions and/or individuals, etc., according to the structural positions and position-takings of liberalism, republicanism, and authoritarianism. The case study of the USA Patriot Act reveals an authoritarian-type national law; and in America, over 400 republicanism-type local laws were passed to indemnify the people against the USA Patriot Act. I find that America is multi-lingual; and I provide an explanation regarding why the United States is near the core of liberalism—outside its doorstep—with authoritarianism at its back.
So, in The Browser quote, I was using Professor Abbott’s classic American political thought book. As you see from my dissertation, I add in authoritarianism as a political language structure and I leave out biblical thought. I probably should use biblical thought, but parsimony comes at a price, and the dissertation project doesn’t depend on excluding other political language traditions in America, since I mainly aim to show that some Americans do speak republicanism to some degree–measuring just how much is to be determined.
Thanks Browser for the mention. I’ll be reading in the future.
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As of April 2013, the link for The Browser (and the site itself) is broken.
Political Pipeline 