People Count!

Networked Individuals in Global Politics

James N. Rosenau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317254362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

People Count! rests on a single but important premise: As the world shrinks and becomes ever more complex, so have people-as "networked individuals"-become ever more central to the course of events. This book seeks to depict a new era by analyzing the basic roles people occupy in their family, community, and society, including the wider world.

CHAPTER ONE

Teachers and Scholars

 

Let me recount my experience with the study of world politics. More than fifty years ago, when I was earning my doctorate in political science, the field focused mainly on diplomats and heads of state. That was the prime way in which individuals were considered relevant to international affairs. Since then, I have watched—and helped—my discipline expand beyond the interaction of states and their diplomats: today most scholars focus on nation-states, organizations, and institutions. For a long time, this seemed a reasonable and rational approach to the study of world politics.

In the past decade or so, I began to think that this might no longer be the case. More and more I saw anomalies that could not account for the standard frameworks of the field. I wrote a trilogy of books that attempted to identify and explain the sources of these anomalies: first, a book about change, called Turbulence in World Politics;¹ then Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier,² about governance; and finally, Distant Proximities,³ my contribution to the globalization literature. These books were written primarily for other academics—college students and professors of international relations—but lately I suspect that they may be relevant to an even larger audience.

One theme of the three books recurs and stands out as central, namely, the increasing skills and capabilities of individuals. I call this the “skill revolution” and first discussed it as a parameter of change in Turbulence. My point, put simply, is that people are becoming more skilled and that, as they do, their orientations and relations to each other and their organizations undergo change. They become more engaged, more involved, more able to shape their world.⁴

Many mainstream scholars in political science tend to ignore this trend, but it is becoming increasingly evident in the news and elsewhere. Consider that in the summer of 2005 a California woman, Cindy Sheehan, who had lost a son in Iraq, camped outside the president’s vacation ranch in Texas in the hope of getting an interview with him in order to ask why her son had been sent off to die in a remote war. President Bush refused to see her, and her one-person protest soon escalated into a large crowd of supporters who came from far away to share in her protest. Subsequently, antiwar protests mushroomed across the country, giving rise to a noticeable shift in the nation’s political climate. In effect, that one person activated a dormant network that proved consequential.

In short, it is misleading to think of world affairs as being driven exclusively by large collectivities such as governments, corporations, universities, churches, and the like. Such macro organizations are surely central to the course of events, but so are people at the micro level. They have become important in a variety of ways, from individuals whose reputations, accomplishments, and positions enhance their public judgments to people who collectively share an organization’s policies that are publicized for others to consider.

Thus the central idea in this book is that People Count! As economic, social, and political changes accelerate at ever-greater rates, as time and space continue to shrink with the relentless innovation of new technologies for moving people and ideas around the world, people—as people—have become increasingly important. To make that claim useful, however, requires that we introduce analytical rigor—in this case, the concept of “roles.” The next chapter elaborates on this concept, but it is easy enough to put succinctly: each of us has different roles that we play in our lives. Why this matters for world politics is that, increasingly, we are able to choose the roles through which we engage our world and to define those roles once we have chosen them. This is nothing less than a radical shift in international affairs and a challenge to all of the organizations, institutions, and governments that try to assign or constrain the roles of the people in their jurisdiction.

The Classroom as Home

Before proceeding to more analytic concerns, I want to share more about the role I have occupied for more than five decades in four universities: that of a professor. For me, as for many of those who spend their working lives with students—either standing in front of them, sitting around a table with them, or consulting with them individually—teaching is more than a form of earning a living. It is, rather, a means for me to serve a commitment to sharing ideas, elaborating thoughts, and exchanging perspectives. Indeed, if one wants to maximize income, teaching is not the right profession to enter. Teachers at every level are not well paid and could make more money in a number of other pursuits. Yet most chose to stay on in the classroom. It is a kind of home, a setting where ideas flow, thoughts are contested, information is provided, and minds are expanded as part of the processes of growth—qualities that cannot be measured in terms of income.

Besides their offices in which they engage in one-on-one sharing of ideas, teachers have a variety of classrooms, depending on where they work. In elementary schools their classrooms are filled with low tables and chairs at which students play, draw, and learn to read. In high schools their homes are rooms with chairs in rows for some thirty or more students. In colleges and graduate schools their homes vary from large lecture halls to small classrooms and laboratories. Despite the variation, however, each type of room is a home, a place where teachers practice their craft, impart information, cope with challenging questions, and raise some of their own.

Whatever its size and however it may be arranged, the classroom has one indispensable piece of furniture: the chalkboard (and the chalk with which to write on it). The chalkboard serves several purposes, depending on the students in attendance. For younger students the chalkboard is used to present new words and how they are spelled; at more advanced levels it is used to enumerate concepts, solve equations, and pose questions. It can also be educational in the sense that most teachers do not erase what they put on the board when their class is over, thus presenting the next user of the room with ideas and connections that seem both unintelligible and intriguing. I have long made it a practice to ostentatiously pause and read what is on the board when I arrive to start my class, hoping thereby to demonstrate the uses and virtues of curiosity to the students as well as to find out what goes on in other classes.

Training the Citizen and the Specialist

Depending on the level of students they are instructing, teachers engage in different forms of presenting ideas and eliciting student reactions. Elementary, junior high, and high school teachers are responsible for providing the skills and basic knowledge children need to become mature adults and responsible citizens. College teachers are charged with introducing students to academic disciplines in several fields as well as helping them to begin to acquire expertise by majoring in a particular discipline. Those who give graduate courses are responsible for training students in a discipline as well as introducing them to the frontiers of their field. They are also expected to engage in innovative research that is eventually published and serves to push back the frontiers of their discipline. Their research commitments often lead to their being called “scholars” or “academics.” It is in this capacity that I have been teaching for several decades. I think of myself as both a teacher and a scholar, with this book being only the latest in a long line of publications.

Many students and some teachers derisively view the expectation that professors in colleges and graduate schools engage in research and publication because of a requirement that they “publish or perish.” It is true that untenured professors who do not engage in research and publish their work are unlikely to retain their jobs. Academics do not devote time to writing up their findings and ideas for publication in order to avoid “perishing,” however, else those who have tenure would not publish, a possibility that describes very, very few tenured professors. Most academics seek to publish their work because they feel an obligation to contribute to the expansion of knowledge in their field. This can best be done by sharing the results of their inquiries as widely as possible, that is, by publishing them and thereby reaching unknown others. Thus a more apt phrasing of the expectation is “communicate or perish.” Furthermore, teaching and research are not antithetical. The ideas one develops in seminars often become the basis for research inquiries, just as the latter subsequently serve as the focus for ideas discussed in seminars.

To teach at the graduate level is often to serve as a mentor for those students who aspire to writing a dissertation and then going on to a career in the academy. There is considerable satisfaction in mentoring, in seeing one’s students move on to establish their own careers as professors and researchers. In effect, one’s students eventually become one’s colleagues, fellow investigators whose research findings often carry the work of their mentors to new levels. Thus does knowledge in a discipline expand and get refined.

Rivalries

If mentoring and pushing back the frontiers of knowledge are the positive side of life as an academic, the negative side involves needless and unproductive rivalries among scholars in the same field—rivalries for prestige, research funds, and influence. Most scholars are not caught up in such rivalries, but those who are tend to allow their competitive impulses to dominate their teaching and research. Such rivalries can be debilitating for those caught up in them and for the discipline in which they occur. They can become debilitating because otherwise neutral scholars are pressed to take a position on the merits of one or another side of the rivalry. Some of the pressure comes from those who have taken sides in the debates, but it also originates in the press and among people whose professions may be affected by the competition. More often than not, the rivalry peters out as other issues come to the fore.

Twice in my career I have been involved in a rivalry with colleagues. In both situations I had administrative responsibilities that led me to differ with some members of the department’s faculty who did not view research as a major aspect of their responsibilities. In one of these situations I was eventually ousted from the administrative role, in good part because I was unable to encourage or otherwise reward unproductive senior colleagues whose annual reports struck me as reflective of mediocrity. We differed on the balance between teaching and research as well as on what kind of research advances the discipline. In effect, the rivalry—which was ideological—was supplemented by personality clashes. It also served to teach me that I was not cut out to be an academic administrator. Except for these brief moments of administrative digression, however, I have thrived in my academic role and deeply believe in the expectations and goals of universities.

Public Service

Economists, sociologists, and political scientists often have opportunities to either serve or advise governments. Depending on the issues involved, occasionally those in the hard sciences, history, and other disciplines are also sought by public officials for advice. Most academics are pleased to respond to requests for their presence and advice, and indeed, some even take government positions for brief periods of time.⁵ Aware that knowledge in their fields has implications for the conduct of public affairs, such academics are flattered that their work is sought by their governments and thus feel an obligation to make their knowledge available to public officials who seek their guidance. On the other hand, some in the academy adhere to a contrary position and view public service as an intrusion upon their time or as possibly distorting their inquiries if they are motivated to have an impact in the realm of government. Such academics, of which I am one, feel that if their work can be of value to public officials, it will reach into the halls of government circuitously through either their former students, journalists who learn of their inquiries and use them as the basis for their articles, or perhaps a number of other indirect channels. Conceivably, for example, some of the observations set forth in this book will follow one or another circuitous path into the offices of public officials.

New Boundaries

But to avoid public service is not to be out of touch with the transformations at work in the world. On the contrary, as a student of international affairs I find myself endlessly aware of the changing world scene. More than that, as I fly across oceans to conferences and talks, e-mail colleagues and students around the world, and publish work in languages I do not speak, I am increasingly aware that the boundaries of the classroom have blurred into the boundaries of the world. Here, too, in the world at large I can act out my commitment to the exchange of ideas and perspectives. It is my hope that this book will serve as a sort of chalkboard, a repository for ideas that I hope the reader will find provocative and useful.

Conclusion

In all likelihood many readers will object to my inclination to avoid either advising or serving governments. If they do, they will give voice to the basic premise of this book. In effect, they will be saying that people count, that what individuals do or do not do matters, and that academics should thus be ready to contribute their perspectives directly to public officials.

I have always defined my academic role less as a specialist in international relations and more as a theorist of the subject. I have never tooled up in the dynamics of particular countries or regions—becoming what is generally known as an area specialist—but rather have sought to move ever higher on what I call the ladder of abstraction in order to depict the underlying processes and challenges that unfold in any country or political system. Accordingly, before examining how people count in the various roles examined in Chapters 4 through 23, in the next two chapters I revert to my role as a theorist by way of highlighting the central concepts that recur in the subsequent chapters.

CHAPTER TWO

Roles in a Fragmegrative World

Notwithstanding the prime concern here with individuals at the micro level, note must also be taken of the macro forces that both shape and are shaped by their actions. Some would lump all those forces under the term globalization, but that is overly broad and not very helpful. A more incisive perspective posits two overriding, continuously interactive forces at work on a global scale: one involves all the tendencies toward localization, decentralization, and fragmentation, whereas the other is manifest in all the dynamics in the opposite direction that foster globalization (in the useful sense), centralization, and integration. The available analytic vocabulary lacks terminology for capturing the innumerable ways in which these contrary tendencies continuously interact and impact each other. Other authors have coined words that highlight these tensions between coherence and collapse—such as chaord, a combination of chaos and order, and glocalization, which combines globalization and localization.

I prefer my own term, fragmegration—an admittedly ungainly and grating label, but one that captures in a single word the fragmentation and integration that marks the changing dynamics in world politics. An understanding of world affairs at both the micro and macro levels is greatly facilitated if these changes are viewed through fragmegrative lenses. Indeed, in a number of ways fragmegrative dynamics highlight the diverse ways in which people count. As will be seen throughout the ensuing chapters, they are frequently caught up in fragmegrative situations, in conflicts between the fragmenting and integrating expectations built into their roles.

Change

A prime characteristic of fragmegration is the degree to which it is rooted in the dynamics of change. Indeed, neither integration nor fragmentation is a static process. Both impose continuing and extensive change on individuals and collectivities. And the more the two interact, the greater are the transformations they initiate and sustain. Needless to say, this is also the case for the roles individuals occupy. Those roles and the expectations that sustain them are undergoing transformation as the dynamics of fragmegration continue to alter the conceptions that people have of themselves. Active citizens, for example, can no longer draw a clear distinction between local and foreign issues: fragmegration is merging the two types of issues in such a way that perforce the active citizen must pay attention to how each type impacts on the other. More than that, fragmegration imposes on individuals the need to become sensitive to both the integrative and disintegrative potential of any issue. In eff...