Politics of the ‘Other’ in India and China: Western Concepts in Non-Western Contexts

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The social sciences have been heavily influenced by modernization theory, focusing on issues of economic growth, political development and social change, in order to develop a predictive model of linear progress for developing countries following a Western prototype. Under this hegemonic paradigm of development the world tends to get divided into simplistic binary oppositions between the ‘West’ and the ‘rest’, ‘us’ and ‘them’ and ‘self’ and ‘other’. 

'Hurricanes and hashtags: the power dynamics of humanitarian reporting in a digital age'

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Glenda Cooper shared her insights on the power dynamics of reporting a humanitarian crisis in a digital age, and raised several pertinent questions, including: do social media really allow diverse points of view? Cooper has studied the news reportage during the earthquake in Japan (2011), the Hudson plane crash, Oklahoma tornado and Bangkok bomb blasts (2015) from an anthropological lens. 

Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea Published by: Hurst and Oxford University Press (US)

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This study, based on extensive fieldwork, interviews and engagement with primary and secondary sources, is the first on the subject to take on the regional, as opposed to the country-specific, dimension.  It has four key aims.  The first is to bring out the extent to which oil has forged the interaction of the region with the world economy and how the ongoing expansion of the oil sector will deepen this pivotal role.

Session 1: Getting Started

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Félix Krawatzek and Andy Eggers present a new podcast series in which they discuss Text in the Social Sciences.


[Please scroll down for podcast recordings.]

Language is essential to human interaction, and so is essential to understanding politics and society.

Researchers in many disciplines now employ a variety of methods to analyse large bodies of text in more systematic and reliable ways.  These techniques are complementary to conventional reading techniques and may generate new insights for understanding texts or using text as data.

'The Politics of Compassion: Combatting Xenophobic Nationalism with Empathy, Altruism, and a Relational View of Security'

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Professor Kevin Clements outlines the varieties of “pathological politics"--phenomena he identifies as a global problem in the 21st century. He then describes what a “politics of compassion” might look like. Professor Clements is the Foundation Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of the New Zealand National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago.

‘A Democratic Nation? Scottish Nationalism and Scottish Philosophy, c. 1961-2014’

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Professor Ben Jackson discusses an overlooked aspect in the rise of Scottish nationalism: its ideological and intellectual dimension. His talk focuses on an influential work by the Scottish philosopher George Davie, “The Democratic Intellect.”

'Oxford Women in Politics with Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter'

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Anne-Marie Slaughter is the President and CEO of the New America and the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Dr. Slaughter was the first woman to be the director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State. She served in this capacity from 2009-2011. Moreover, Dr. Slaughter served as the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton from 2002-2009.

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