SISU-105.015 F2019 blog question #7

Question #7 already!

The version of constructivism that Shotter gives us, sometimes called “rhetorical-responsive constructivism,” emphasizes the way that people situated within various cultural traditions engage with one another. Social order emerges (and continually re-emerges) from those engagements, as people draw on the socio-ontological resources of their “living traditions” to determine what to do next. A skeptic, or perhaps a cynic, might call this naive or utopian, and say instead that social life can’t possibly be thought of as emerging from such rhetorical engagement; power and interest, the main themes of realist and liberal (not “liberalist” :-)) thought, are more important than dialogue and discussion.

Is constructivism, as portrayed and presented by Shotter, “idealistic” and “utopian”? Are the critics missing something, or are they essentially correct? Feel free to consider specific examples if that helps you make your argument.

reflection after seven (!) weeks of classes

Having not given myself the binding instruction or commitment to do a reflective blog entry every week, I find my blogging unsurprisingly sporadic this semester. On one hand I feel badly about that: I feel like I should be reflecting in this written space more often. On the other hand I don’t feel badly at all: I'm engaged in my usual practice of making notes about each class session after it concludes, but those are notes to myself, and while there’s nothing confidential there, I do worry about the possible effects and consequences of having members of my class read those rough and raw notes while we are still actively engaged in the early stages of the ongoing process of producing our learning community. When I do the mid-semester anonymous surveys in a couple of weeks, those results and my thoughts on them will be public contributions, but that’s a bit different from the in-process notes I regularly take.

That said, what I can and will say here is that the thing that has been most puzzling to me this semester is the class discussion format. 26 people is not a large class in some ways and in some pedagogies, but in and for others it’s quite unwieldy. If I were lecturing, 26 is a fine number, small enough that people can ask questions without feeling “performance anxiety” of the sort that can shut down questions in a much larger lecture setting, but large enough that the lecture form doesn’t break down into conversation all the time. But I don’t lecture, deliberately: I am not interested in any student figuring out what I think, and in my experience that’s what often happens when I or anyone else lectures. I don’t think of my role in the classroom as a presenter of arguments; my job is instead to facilitate encounters, and while that can be done through lectures of a particular sort — the “grand tour” sort of lecture, come here and look at what I have found — I’m usually not comfortable doing that in the classroom. So instead, it’s “here’s a thing, let’s see what we make of it.”

And for that kind of pedagogy, 26 is a large number, particularly in 75-minute class sessions. The common space of the conversation is a scarce piece of real estate, and I am still experimenting with how to create openness and hospitality in that space while still allowing the conversation to find its own way forward. Because that’s the real trick: to give the conversation its own reins, to let it breathe and stretch out in its own directions, not beholden to any one of the participants. “Joint action,” as Shotter (among others) would call it. I haven’t yet found a combination of structure and flexibility that will do that in this group...but I will keep trying alternatives and see what happens. Tomorrow is probably a second fishbowl, and Thursday likely a small group-with-outreporting kind of thing, but we’ll see.

Eventually I want to walk into the room and give the lightsaber to someone else and see what they do with it. Not quite sure we’re there yet, but perhaps soon.

SISU-105.015 F2019 blog question #6

Many things have changed since the authors of The Federalist Papers made their case for limited government that would preserve individual liberty by setting ambition against ambition and thus aligning individual interests with a maximal amount of individual autonomy. Central to their case, as we discussed in class today, is the idea that different individuals and different groups have different interests, and in consequence, having many such groups and individuals makes it unlikely that a faction can be put together that would abuse the rights and limit the liberties of others.

Given that “social media” in the days of the founding of the United States was the public reading of newspapers amid any subsequent discussion that might ensue in pubs and coffee houses — discussions that, like so much else in the social life of the time, were almost invariably limited to white property-holding male participants — I wonder what the authors of The Federalist Papers would make of our contemporary scene, in which social media seem to permit both a much greater range of participants and a much greater platform for reaching people in almost real time. Do these changes in the media, both changes in who gets to participate in conversations and how those conversations are carried out, necessitate any reconsideration or reevaluation of the praise heaped on a large republic by the authors, especially by Madison in Federalist 10 and Federalist 51?

SISU-105.015 F2019 blog question #5

Today in class we brainstormed six core characteristics of a “realist” approach to politics: independence/autonomy; the balance of power; anarchy/self-help; the national interest; "realpolitik"; and history as a source of wisdom. Broadly speaking these help to define what a self-identified political realist might value and emphasize in her analyses.

So the question arises: what might a self-identified realist make of the worldwide climate strikes last Friday, or of the speech given by the inspiration for if not the leader of this whole movement, Greta Thunberg, at the United Nations earlier today? How, if at all, do these events connect with what a political realist would consider the core elements of politics, particularly international politics?

I am deliberately asking you to stretch a bit with this question, since neither Machiavelli nor Kelanic have much to say directly about climate change or thousands of striking/protesting students. But a general theoretical perspective ought to have something to say about such events, whether that is a dismissal of their importance or an insight into their dynamics and potential impact. So, stretch out a bit in articulating an answer to this one.

SISU-105.015 F2019 blog question #4

Today in class we spent some time working out a few of the key points of Machiavelli’s argument, though a deliberately artificial set-up in which I assigned you a position for your side of the class to adopt. (I have posted photos of the board giving the points raised in the exchange on the BlackBoard site in case you want to look back at a them.) For this week's blog question I want to take off that restriction, and ask you the same question — on balance, is Machiavelli basically right? — but without the need to adopt either the pro or the con side as assigned. Now that you understand Machiavelli’s argument a bit better, do you think he’s basically right, or not? Why?