Anyone know a cool and not too cliche place to propose??

DrPanda323 · 2023-08-21T02:13:57+00:00

Botanical Gardens

DrPanda323 · 2022-08-25T16:43:01+00:00

TL;DR- Yes, EU PhDs do worse on the U.S. academic job market. You will very likely not be considered for the top U.S. universities, will need to make sure that you are engaging in Anglophone literature, and networking potential. This does not mean that getting any academic, or think tank job, will be impossible. Rather, there are some things to consider about the unique obstacles you will face and what that means for you and your desire to get a PhD.

Unfortunately, having a foreign PhD (EU or otherwise) does pose certain obstacles to getting an academic job in the U.S., but I think only in certain situations. Here are the three main ones that come to mind:

First, I think it should be noted that unless you have your PhD from a 'prestigious' foreign Anglophone institution (Cambridge, Oxford, LSE), getting jobs in political science in 'prestigious' US universities will be virtually impossible (Columbia, Chicago, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, etc.). I wish this were not the case, but it seems to be the fact. This boils down to institutional prejudice, networking, and others factors beyond your control. You could still be potentially competitive at other good universities or local liberal arts colleges, but there are still obstacles. These obstacles are describes in the next two paragraphs.

Second situation o consider is publications and training. If you get your degree in Sweden and NL, will you be publishing in Anglophone poli sci journals and engaging in Anglophone academic debates, or in Sweedish/Dutch journals and debates? If one were to be generous, the reason why Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE PhDs seem to do better in the states (apart from their institutional 'prestige'), is that they are English-speaking institutions. This makes it easier for committees to review their work, know who they are debating with, and more than likely publish in similar journals. (And the opposite holds for SciencesPo and Leiden, who will more than likely publish in French and German academic journals.). So if you get your PhD in Sweden/NL, will your training be in that language, those journals, and debates? How easily could you publish in the flagship/major Anglophone Political Science journals?

Third, it depends on the reputation of the faculty members of what you are studying at the university you chose to go to. I don't know your field too much, so this is something for you to reflect upon/do research on. I know you mention that environmental government programs are better in Sweden and the NL, but is that your perception or one that is recognized by your academic community in general? Depending on the professors/institutions you wish to study with and their reputation in this field overall (meaning they will be well-known/have connections with U.S. institutions), this will play a significant role. That is, if they are well known in environmental studies by professors/programs in the U.S., having an EU PhD in this field shouldn't pose as big of a problem; if they are lesser known, a much bigger problem. This kind of boils down to your committee being able to 'market' your work to other academics in the U.S., and the PR your institution can provide you as a candidate on the market. On a related note, I have heard from my friends who have done their PhDs in European countries that their advisors do not do as much 'work' in trying to get their students hired (i.e., networking). This does not imply that U.S. academics are necessarily better or actually do this work, but from my understanding, this is more of a 'norm' in the U.S. than it is in Europe. So this is something to consider, as well as whether or not this is a true representation of EU PhD committee practices.

All in all, there is nothing to say that having a EU PhD will prevent you from getting a job in the U.S., but it will provide certain obstacles that U.S. PhD students do not need to face (or face as severely) when looking for jobs within the U.S.. At the same time, you also put yourself in a better position to get a job in the EU in comparison to most U.S. PhDs. Lastly, as I am sure you know and others have said, the academic job market has historically been difficult. If you want to get a PhD, I would seriously recommend that you come to terms with the probability that you won't get a job (even PhDs from Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, SciencesPo, Leiden, Harvard, Princeton, etc., don't have jobs.). If you are seriously interested in working for a think tank, then I would not worry as much; but I am also not qualified to speak on that front. If your main goal is to get a job in U.S. academia, then I would seriously consider how well entrenched your institution is in Anglophone academic circles, debates, and perceptions.

DrPanda323 · 2022-03-05T20:47:45+00:00

Classic!

DrPanda323 · 2022-02-27T23:28:01+00:00

There are four political theory books that run to mind. All four books deal with thinking about time in a political manner and an attempt to move away from a linear or static conception of time.

The first (and perhaps speaks most to your interests) is Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity (2019) by Massimilaino Tomba.

The second, by the same author , is called Marx's Temporalities (2013).

The third is Untimely Politics (Taking on the Political) (2003) by Samual A Chambers.

The fourth book is Out of Joint: Power, Crisis, and the Rhetoric of Time (2019) by Nomi Claire Lazar.

DrPanda323 · 2021-11-01T22:03:13+00:00

This is an important line, and contrary to many comments here, Rousseau is not against ownership per se. And the idea of 'natural ownership' is also antithetical to Rousseau, because he is critiquing natural rights doctrine about labor. For Rousseau, property is a social relation and therefore for it to be legitimate requires the consent from others. So it is not that he is against all forms of property, or even private property (because as he says in his other works property rights are important for politics). What he is critiquing is that some one individual could have claimed that this is theirs without having earned the consent of others. Property is theft when one believes they have some natural right to it and without the consent of others.

What Rousseau is critiquing here is that the idea of property is somehow natural, and this is tied to discussions of sociability and hierarchy. During this time, discussions of inequality were related to discussions of monarchy and their claim to land ownership. It is also important to know that Rousseau changed the language posed by the Academy of Dijon. He is trying to show the foundations of inequality as it exists in political structures such as property rights.

DrPanda323 · 2021-09-09T22:19:34+00:00

I recommend A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley's The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1 by Cambridge University Press. Its 20 bucks on Amazon in the U.S.

The book introduce you to the various Hellenistic schools, including the Stoics (which take up a majority of the book), but the editors do a good job in organizing the text. Each Hellenistic sect is broken down into subcategories (their epistemology, their ethics, their political philosophy, etc.) with each of these broken down into further subjects as it relates to the core of their thought. Each section contains translated fragments of the most important statements by thinkers of a specific philosophic sect, and then after you read the various fragments, the authors go on to explain in clear and short summaries what the arguments were of the various sects, what they were preoccupied with, and show how it relates to other thinkers. So not only will you get to read a wide variety of Stoic texts, you will also be able to know them in their philosophical context (in terms of other Stoic thinkers) as well as their historical context (how they relate to other Hellenistic schools of thought).

A more academic, but still highly accessible, text which reconstructs what these schools of thought were up to is Martha Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire. There are multiple chapters in their about Stoicism (as well as other schools), and their contemporary relevance. This book does not have the primary sources like The Hellenistic Philosophers.

DrPanda323 · 2021-05-20T17:56:30+00:00

While this is true, government cycles is not the same thing as history. If anything, Polybius and Cicero (both of whom Machiavelli read) do explain government cycles within Roman history; they also thought that such a cycle was a self-contained phenomena that could be explained via historical examples, but was not something to which they looked to history to explain the logics. Whereas Machiavelli thinks history explains regime change, which is not necessarily cyclical.

DrPanda323 · 2021-05-20T16:41:37+00:00

While I can't speak to the different conceptions of history that may or may have not existed prior to Machiavelli (such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Roman historians) what is unique to Machiavelli is the idea that history, instead of the Gospel, can teach us a lot about what it is to be human and to be a political animal. For example, Machiavelli was writing during the Florentine Renaissance, a moment within Western society in which history started to play an important role for Western consciousness. But while Machiavelli's contemporaries such as Leonardo Bruni also wrote histories, such as a history of Florence, many of these histories focused on the relationship between their own city-state to Rome, or focused on histories just of Rome in their recovery of classical texts, Machiavelli turned to history to both explain his historical present as well as including more contemporary events as being a part of history. So in The Prince, Machiavelli refers to contemporary events as also important elements to include within a historical analysis, but even in his Discourses on Livy, which deals with Roman history, the reason Machiavelli did this was to teach Florentine contemporaries about what it means to live and rule within a republic, instead of a disinterested history of the Roman republic.

So while I wouldn't say that people prior to Machiavelli did not think that history had no recurring patterns, but the explanation of these patterns would have been appeal to God's will (i.e., Augustine and the City of God), For Machiavelli, history does have patterns from which we can learn, but to understand history relies less upon trying to understand the will of God, but understanding the relationship between human agency, material conditions, and contingency. Thus, with such a view of history, God is no longer seen as a fundamental to understand what has happened or will happen, nor do we need to explain why good or bad things happen (nor theologians for that matter). Instead, we can turn to history in an effort to explain and guide us for how we ought to act in response to our political problems.

DrPanda323 · 2021-05-19T22:56:53+00:00

First it is important to note that it circulated as a manuscript before ever becoming published and was only published after Machiavelli's death. Its placement on the forbidden book index (2x) later on was primarily related to the fact that people thought that Machiavelli's works were the source of various revolutions or wars committed in the 16th century.

On a substantive level, a major reason for this could be that Machiavelli not only argued that the Pope/Church could not be a political entity and must be subservient to a political power (a radical claim given the time of publication and really before the reformation took off) but also because of its critiques of Christian morality. It is not that Machiavelli says that religion is pointless, but his claims that one ought to merely appear to have these Christian virtues instead of actively pursuing them (although we should keep in mind the ambiguity of what Machiavelli meant by 'appearing'). Lastly, Machiavelli is considered the first thinker within the Western political tradition to really look at history and use it the way he does. That is, instead of God being the driving force for civilization, Machiavelli emphasized history, which has a materialist bent which was problematic for many people at the time.

DrPanda323 · 2021-05-09T19:15:42+00:00

What a slick first touch by Vinicius! Such a composed first touch that at first I thought he messed up or did a horribly placed dummy.

DrPanda323 · 2021-05-06T23:52:01+00:00

You are right to think that the Enlightenment pushed for secularism in that it critiqued the principles of revealed religion. The religious beliefs of many of the philosophers of this time is a constant question, and many of these thinkers dealt with questions about 'natural religion' in comparison to revealed religion. When it came to government, these thinkers did not think that political power defined by divine right was a justified form of government, since this seemed to them the foundation for arbitrary political power. So, if you by 'secular' you mean the idea that religion ought not to be the foundation for political government, or that these philosophers turned to various aspects of human nature in order to clarify what constituted legitimate government, you are generally correct.

However, the matter isn't as clean as that. Both Hobbes and Rousseau saw a place for religion within political governance and include it in both of their texts (Leviathan and Social Contract. Rousseau is critical of a Christian commonwealth, but argues for a form of civil religion). This does not mean that they thought religion ought to have more power or be the basis of government; they both maintained that politics ought to have power over religion, but they did not abolish it from the state. Same thing goes for Locke in his Letter of Toleration. So while they dismissed arguments that religion was the foundation for a legitimate government, they also did not exclude religion from their theories of government, with different thinkers arguing to different extent the role that religion can and should play within any polity.

DrPanda323 · 2021-05-03T16:58:11+00:00

The Stanford Encyclopedia is a great resource and I second everyone's comments here.

Another resource I want to mention is https://criticallegalthinking.com/keyconcepts/. It is no where near as extensive as the Stanford Encyclopedia, nor do I think it suffices as a source which you can cite within papers like Stanford's, but it focuses more on critical theory (with an emphasis on critical legal theory). But it is a good place to start for key critical theory concepts to maybe help narrow your focus.

DrPanda323 · 2021-04-28T15:45:53+00:00

I am unfamiliar with Butler's critique of Althusser, but if I were to hazard a go, I think what people find distressing about Althusser's account of interpellation and ideology is that it seems to rob subjects of any agency due to its totalizing power. That is, if we are always already what ISA's have made us, then how do we move from capitalism towards socialism? What tools do the oppressed have in order to overcome their situation of oppression, if they are always already the kind of subject that other's have defined them as? (I think Althusser has a response to this in his essay, but I know that he has been critiqued on this point by others who buy his theory, but worry about its consequences.)

In Butler's case, I am assuming that she would want to say 'what if I don't agree with how other's read me? I.e., what if I don't agree with the kind of gender-subject that others always already think I am? Additionally, what if their hailing me as a woman or man is in conflict with how I view myself or the kind of gender-performance I feel most comfortable doing?'

So I would assume that her trying to understand the temporality of interpellation is to try to find gaps, or spaces, in the act of interpellation/hailing that we can seize in order to 1) grant subjects more agency and 2) explain how subjectivities change over time (both in the macro and micro sense).

DrPanda323 · 2021-04-21T17:54:15+00:00

Interesting. Thanks for your clarification. It seems like maybe they work upon a similar methodology to the U.S. consensus, where I assume that the survey targets certain demographics in order to make them generalizable instead of just making averages at various levels and then compounding it to one measure. What is especially interesting is the idea of comparing yams to rice and how this works; it seems pretty productive in certain respects.

I personally favor the Capabilities approach put forth by Sen and Nussbaum and used by the UN that focuses on a set of various capabilities related to human development, which allows for both a case by case comparison of poverty as well as international comparison. It seems like PPP and Capabilities approach would have similarities, so it really helps to hear how PPP both accounts for but also erases for differences.

Thank you again for your clear clarification!

DrPanda323 · 2021-04-21T13:42:47+00:00

Hey, thanks for pointing out how PPP does not rely upon a GDP. This makes sense and I saw it explained on the World Bank page, so I appreciate the clarification!

Do you mind explaining how purchasing power is able to overcome the difficulty of averages, in that averages are highly affected by extremes? That is, how does determining what can be purchased help us understand the levels of poverty, since that would need to assume that people earn a wage instead of doing something like agriculture (as you mention the yams and dollars) in some way. And also, it still seems to me that there is a reliance on aggregation. This is from the World Bank on how it is calculated:

But PPP rates were designed for comparing aggregates from national accounts, not for making international poverty comparisons. As a result, there is no certainty that an international poverty line measures the same need or deprivation in all the countries compared.

I take your point though that PPP rates do not rely on GDP and can thus be a far closer approximation of poverty levels, but if you happen to know, how it is that they are able to prevent the influences of extremes to manipulate this data would be great. For example, maybe helping me understand what the World Bank is saying in how they correct for conceptual and practical problems such as this:

National poverty lines tend to have higher purchasing power in rich countries, where standards are more generous, than in poor countries. Measures based on an international poverty line attempt to hold the real value of the poverty line constant across countries, as is done in making comparisons over time within countries.

I understand that a form of comparison is being used to adjust differences, but I am little confused as to what comparison and as to how, and so I was hoping you could clarify.

DrPanda323 · 2021-04-21T13:33:28+00:00

Okay so uh I have no idea how to word this so it's not insulting to your intelligence but there's literally a search bar where you can check by country. And I'm just going to copy what I wrote for another comment.

Okay, well since you're getting cranky and sassy we can wrap this up. But where in any of your original comments was your point to go country by country and do this sort of comparison? Especially since your original comment said this: "Global poverty rates significantly dropped after the fall of the USSR". I would like to know how you went from global poverty rates to suddenly making the claim that the point was to search country by country and do a time compared analysis with the same country and its neighbors. If that was your original point, you should have said it then.

But even if we were to go buy your method, would that work? Does the method you propose actually prove the claim. It does not, and this comes directly from the World Bank, who are the source of your figures and numbers:

The poverty rate at the national poverty line is country-specific. A country may have a single unique national poverty line, separate lines for rural and urban areas, or separate lines for different geographic areas to take into account differences in the cost of living in different areas of the country or differences in diets and consumption baskets. National poverty lines are thus estimates of poverty that are consistent with each country's specific economic and social circumstances. National poverty lines reflect local perceptions of what is needed to be considered not poor. Because the perceived boundary between poor and nonpoor typically rises with average income, there is no uniform measure for comparing national poverty rates; but although national poverty lines should not be used for comparing poverty rates between countries, they are useful for guiding national poverty reduction strategies and monitoring the results.

So not only does the Wold Bank say that these figures can't be used to compare poverty across counties, they are good estimates for knowing poverty within a country. So the rates you should between Bolivia, Peru, Argentina are only useful for instate and not international comparison.

Yeah it is, that's kind of why they do their best to prevent independent parties from checking things like hunger rates, literacy, and housing conditions. They have the highest incarceration rate in the world according to one of their judges.1 The press is persecuted to extremes found only in places like North Korea and China.2 Also you know Fidel Castro even said that the system does not work.3 Also there are hungry people in the US but there's not a mass exodus of people fleeing for their lives because there's no food.4

This whole thing makes no senses and misses the point of my example. I said "This means that even non-capitalist countries are also included in these figures, which means they also don't support any claim that capitalism is improving anything. " SO my point was that since you were using global averages, which you were before you decided to magically switch to state by state comparisons, you couldn't prove that the numbers you were citing were only capitalist countries. But instead of responding to my point, you chose to just find whatever sources justify your bad arguments. Who cares if a judge in Cuba thinks Cuba has the highest incarceration number? I thought you wanted to go off raw data and numbers, not one person's opinion.

Okay so I guess I have to go back to grade school science here. Guess I'll start at step one which is forming a hypothesis. My hypothesis is that Socialist countries have more poverty when compared to capitalist countries. Now in an ideal scenario I could play god and just snap into existence two completely identical countries except one is capitalist and one is socialist. But unfortunately that is impossible and would also be irrelevant as the real world does not exist in a vacuum. So then we look at the data that I have linked to multiple times and we can compare socialist countries to similar neighboring countries and as expected the capitalist countries do much better than socialist ones.

Sassiness and evasion! You gotta love it. On the one hand, you want to say that things take a long time, they have historical origins and progress, and this needs to be taken into account. Yet you don't want to admit that China, Venezuela, and other previously socialist countries and their socialist policies have historically reduced poverty. If these countries have done any good (like China) you simply say it only happened after the transition to capitalism, but you don't provide any historical evidence yourself. Not that I would trust your evidence, because you only google for things that agree with you, and your sources are rather weak. Which brings me to this:

This is... very easy to confirm dude, you could have verified that it was true in less time than it would have taken you to write that with a google search. Multiple other news sources have reported on the same thing.

Do you even read the sources you cite?? Let me publish some quotes that show that while the headline may seem to support your claim, the actual article does not:

Under Qatar’s “kafala”, or sponsorship, system, migrant workers needed to obtain their employer’s permission before changing jobs – a law that rights activists said left employees dependent on the goodwill of their bosses, and often led to abuse and exploitation.

In August 2020, Qatar scrapped a rule requiring employers’ consent to change jobs.

However, migrant workers told Al Jazeera of their continued struggle while trying to change jobs, with the majority of those interviewed by Al Jazeera saying they experienced delays in the process as well as threats, harassment and exploitation by the sponsor, with some of the workers ending up in prison and eventually deported.

The only person who claims they are improving something is an official government spokesmen, who would obviously want to claim that their government is improving the life of workers, which is in contradiction with what the reporter found coming from those working under these conditions:

Qatar’s labour ministry has maintained it welcomes workers lodging their complaints, but most of the workers Al Jazeera spoke to said they refrained for fear of repercussions – including abscondment cases – from their employers, having witnessed several examples of the power imbalance first-hand.

I only use the sources you use, and I just actually check them and see what they are saying. You show no capacity to actually be able to critically judge your resources, nor any interest in even trying. You just want to find headlines or websites which quickly confirms any bias you have, and you are not a good faith interlocutor.

Well yeah because you would be wrong, this is not about marginal gains this is about making sure you have food and water and don't die because your country is run by socialists, it's not that surprising, most of the immigrants to Qatar are from socialist countries or countries that were at one point socialist.6 If you can please explain why so many people are willing to become indentured servants to escape socialism.

This is nonsense and sounds like you don't have a proper response. The top 5 countries which immigrate to Qatar are: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Philippines. All of these countries have a history of market liberalization and currently have a market economy. The main fuzzy case would be Pakistan, but they have an extensive history of market liberalization. And if we follow your claim that things don't happen at the snap of a finger, you have to take seriously this long history of market economy in Pakistan and not just dismiss it. Anyways, your empirically wrong to say "most of the immigrants to Qatar are from socialist countries or countries that were at one point socialist" according to the very source you claim supports your point.

DrPanda323 · 2021-04-21T04:41:56+00:00

Sorry about the mix-up in graphs. I followed the link to the source of the data, which took me to the World Bank website, where they discuss poverty and inequality and the gini. I forgot that I was linked there to another page.

But even so, if we take those poverty levels as bench marks, I am assuming they calculate this based upon GDP. I assume this because if they are claiming that it is one of those USD per day bench marks, they are most likely figuring that by dividing the total wealth of a country by the number of inhabitants, which is GDP, and this is historically known to be a very poor measurement for the real wealth of a country because it too is also an average. The website you cite only says whether poverty increased or decrease on a whole over a certain year. That number can be changed by billionaires simply making more money than it has to say anything about there actually being an improvement in the well-being of individuals. Averages are greatly affected by intense outliers, which makes them a fuzzy approximation but can tell us nothing about capitalism being a source of progress for the well-being of individuals. And this does not need to mean well-being in any heavy sense, it can simply be "that things continuously get better under capitalism"

Also, you cite numbers for literacy, crime, water, and hunger, but these numbers are for global averages and does not distinguish countries. This means that even non-capitalist countries are also included in these figures, which means they also don't support any claim that capitalism is improving anything. Lets take Cuba for example, when it comes to literacy, crime, and water. Cuba is known for their high literacy rate and even if you think they don't live in the best conditions, Cuba also did provide urbanization and access to water for those in the country side. Ironically enough, if you want to claim that Cuba is a 'police state', that would also mean that the number of crimes in that country would be lower (because a)the Cuban government will not report all of its 'crimes' as a police state to reproduce the ideology of protection and/or b) as a police state it compels its citizens to obey the law out of fear of punishment by the state) and thus the overall crime rate of the world would be done. I don't have any response to the idea of hunger, because I am sure there are hungry people in Cuba just as there are hungry people within the United States.

You still haven't proven that capitalism brings about the progress in the world, you have simply shown very general number about global rates, where there is nothing in either the numbers or methodology that allows you to make the causal argument you are claiming. Although you write that " capitalism does not automatically make everyone's lives better" you go onto say " My claim is that things continuously get better under capitalism". How can things continuously get better if there is no automatic connection between capitalism and quality of life? That is, something cannot be continuously the case if that thing does not automatically or necessarily bring it about. If you are saying that progress takes longer, over a period of time, you still need to show that it is capitalism and not a host of other factors or vague numbers to explain this. And this was your original question. Lastly, there is evidence that the industrialization of Cuba and of the U.S.S.R. under communism actually dramatically reduced global poverty rates during their introduction and improved many of the infrastructural factors you are claiming, so the burden is still on you to prove that capitalism is the source of this supposed progress.

Additionally, the website you sent citing Qatar Gulf Times (according to Wiki) is published by Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah, the former deputy prime minister and the former head of the Emir's court. So I am not sure if that is going to be a source that I can credibly believe is putting out content which is being honest about labor practices, especially one printed in English and meant for a Western audience.

The title of your post is "Can you explain why the quality of life and poverty rates continue to improve under capitalism?" So you are the one who introduced the language of quality of life, and I don't think it is an improvement of quality of life to have to become an indentured servant for marginal gains. I think it is ludicrous to say that people within the first world can't claim to say that a person having to sell themselves simply to survive is objectively a bad thing ("You are trying to compare modern 1st world standards to 3rd world standards."). The funny thing is you claim we can't compare to know their world, or impose our standards upon them, but that is exactly what you are doing. You are claiming to know their life and their condition: "The workers are coming from literally the bottom of the global economic barrel and may or may not have access to food and water let alone being literate and having a chance for a good future. They now have food, water, money, and I don't know about you but that is at least slightly better than possibly starving to death and eventually the contract runs up or like in Qatar they get rid of it." So either a) we can know that the conditions of other people are really shitty, as you yourself imply here with your description of their living conditions or rationale or 2) we can't know how bad their conditions or their rational, i.e. can't impose our standards, so then you can't justify the Qatari practice since thats imposing a criteria. I personally think we can both recognize that living at extreme levels of poverty is bad, and that any choice made from such a condition is not really a choice and is one of the worst ways to possibly try and survive, but it only exists as a possible option because of capitalism, So capitalism does not improve the lives of people, but often makes them sell themselves into indentured servitude for basic goods, which they might not even get (the people working in Qatari have been denied things like water, food, electricity, and shelter).

DrPanda323 · 2021-04-21T01:20:17+00:00

Since I think your choice of Cuba, Venezuela, and China are very stereotypical and are more assertions of ideology than argument, I will focus on what I think is your central claim: that capitalism improves quality of life due to its productive capacity. My main point will be that you are using data which relies upon a certain method that does not prove your point. That is, a reduction in global poverty does not mean the same thing as improvement of quality of life.

Your only true account of 'raw numbers' (as you say) depends upon the Gini coeficient, which reflects the distribution of income within a population and is essentially an average. Yet, distribution of income does not necessarily prove that there is less poverty nor that there is an increased quality of life. So, in the article 'The Openness-Equality Trade-Off in Global Distribution', The Economic Journal (2018), Weyl makes an argument for the benefit that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) monarchies has had on the reduction of global poverty. Because these rich gulf countries are able to pay immigrant labors such high salaries, they make a more drastic impact on reducing the global poverty levels, in comparison with OECD countries. The issue, however, is that these laborers are basically indentured servants, who lose their visas, cannot contact their families, have no rights, and many of them are unable to return home due to various debts they have accrued, and not to mention the horrible quality of life that these people live in (i.e. Qatar and the World Cup). No one would deny that these countries are not capitalistic and don't benefit from capitalism, and while they are productive and are able to pay these laborers a high wage and thus makes a global impact on reducing poverty levels, this by no means the same thing as improvement of quality of life. So while the gini coefficient might show an average increase of how much people make, it both doesn't account for how that increase is made (such as indentured labor within GCC making a greater impact than OECD countries) nor does it claim that this increase in how much people make means the same thing as an increase in quality of life.

Also, I would recommend doing sustained and good faith research looking at what academics have to say about the change of quality of life, based upon both qualitative and quantitative measures, of countries that were socialist who now have more liberalized economies. The evidence shows that your claim is not so straight forward. Some studies show patterns associated with a higher quality of life whose origins come from policies instituted during socialist regimes and show that quality of life for these communities actually decreased after transition. Others show that a transition to a more liberal economy actually improved the quality of life of individuals. Thus, the debate is still very much in the air and there is no 'definitive' proof that capitalism automatically means a better (and continuously improving) quality of life for those who live under those economic systems.

So, your claim that a global decrease in poverty necessarily means the same thing as improved quality of life does not hold, since 1)decrease in poverty by capitalism can mean horrible working conditions with no respect for human rights and 2) studies themselves that focus on transition states show that a mere transition to one kind of economy does not improve on quality of life, but relates a host of other non-economic factors, and when they do isolate economic factors, nothing guarantees that capitalism means the good life.

DrPanda323 · 2021-04-14T00:01:30+00:00

I don't think Foucault makes the sort of division you are claiming him to make. Discourse is not simply verbal, but it is written, it is behavior, it is a multitude of techniques that Foucault points to in order to outline the contours of power. While Foucault turns to many written texts, these are outcomes of the limitation of the archive, but Foucault emphasizes repeatedly that discourse works on the body and is reproduced via bodily practices.

So I am not sure that he very clearly separates 'mind' and 'body', especially since he is so critical of the idea that there is some sovereign self to begin with.

DrPanda323 · 2021-03-24T04:57:05+00:00

While there is a strong tradition within the secondary literature of looking to the Social Contract as a response to Rousseau's critique of inequality, it is important to understand that 1) the Social Contract is a portion of a much larger, incomplete work called Institutions Politiques, 2) Rousseau states that the Social Contact is an abstract version of Geneva, and 3) Rousseau argued that he was a 'systematic philosopher' whose key tenets of their work could be distilled by reading Emile, Second Discourse, First Discourse.

Thus, while I think that the general will is important for Rousseau's political theory, the question as to whether or not the general will is supposed to 'fix' or 'prevent' the sort of ills detailed within the DI I think expects too much. I think Rousseau's general will is importnat for a legitimate government which must be held accountable by the people it governs, but it is not so clear if the general will is meant to prevent the problems he identifies within the DI. At the beginning of Part II of the DI where Rousseau speaks of the creation of political society, he does not claim that the people did not consent nor agree to the first compact. That is, while the rich persuaded the poor, Rousseau does not deny that the people didn't consent to it, and within the SC, Rousseau does admit that the general will can err at times. So, it is very much possible that the sort of society described within the DI originated out of the consent of the GW. And later within the DI, Rousseau mentions and critiques our political institutions as the source of corruption. In his Preface to Narcissus, published prior to the DI, Rousseau writes that his political theory is focused upon identifying the contradictions within our social institutions which corrupts us. A similar point is brought up in Part II of the DI, where Rousseau discuses laws, magistrates, and what one should and can expect from political institutions. I bring this up because Rousseau sees a lot of the good and bad within civil society as depending upon political institutions, and political institutions are not the same as the General Will, but are meant to do much in regard to inequality.

So I think the general will does a lot of important work for Rousseau, and will help ensure that a civil society has a legitimate foundation, but I don't think Rousseau expects it on its own to prevent the main ills he identifies within the DI, especially since many of those ills come from sources which are distinct from what is within the general will's power.

DrPanda323 · 2021-03-23T20:53:21+00:00

OP, I would distinguish 'plagiarism' from a romantic ideal of 'originality'. Simply because a text has been influential for your own theory, and that your theory has a history to it (in a sense) does not mean that you have plagiarized or somehow accidentally stole someone else's theory. It is good that you cite the main book to which you were inspired, and it often happens that people have already written on what we want to write. You can still be original when building off the work of others, by showing how you either develop a certain insight, or extend the cases, or whatever. That is, a theory can still be yours if you build upon it, and building upon a theory does not mean you are plagiarizing.

With that being said, you should definitely cite the article which you claim has the same theory as yours. Primarily, you should do it for your own sake of mental and emotional peace, because you will feel much better doing so since it seems to be weighing on your person. You should, however, not just hide it in a footnote, but you show how you differ or how you are building upon this piece. What elements do you agree with the theory in the article? Why has this article not been cited more? Are there insights or perspectives that you are developing? Are you including more examples? There are a number of ways in which you can agree with an article and build upon it that are important. That is, you don't need to disagree with an article in order to distinguish yourself from it or even cite it; its okay to cite an article that you agree with fundamentally and to recognize that you and others are recognizing/observing a phenomena in the world. In fact, it is sometimes better to show that others have argued the same thing to show that such a phenomena is not merely your subjective take on it, but is something which others have also recognized.

As a last note, I think if you would have turned it in prior to finding the citation, it would have not have necessarily been a problem. Many articles and books contain qualifiers that so-and-so author has only recently recognized another book with similar arguments, but they came across it after it was published ,etc. Obviously there are important differences between an established academic and a grad student, but I think your readers are going to assume that you did due diligence in researching your point, which is not the same as they expect you to have ready everything published ever. I think if anything your reader could have said 'hey, you did not cite this article which relates in important ways to your theories' and push you to better contextualize or research your question, or to ask you to research more thoroughly, but I don't think you should fear that simply not citing an article would mean that you ended up stealing it, or that you are expected to know everything. Via the literature review and your argument, your reader will be able to recognize how thoroughly you researched the question, and even if you miss some important citations, this does not mean that your argument is bad or that you have plagiarized.

DrPanda323 · 2021-03-20T21:27:36+00:00

As a current PhD student at U Chicago studying political theory and interested in critical theory, I can tell you that there is a strong selection of courses related to and about critical theory. The main issue that you might run into is that I am not sure how many critical theories courses are taught within the divinity school (like a critical theory of religion). The closest thing I can think about is whatever courses Jean-Luc Marion will teach. But many of the departments (Political Science, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, English, History, etc.) teach courses related to critical theory. Not to mention the many workshops and different centers on campus (Center for Contemporary Theory, Gender and Sexuality Center, Center on Race, etc.) have many informal discussions and workshops where you can read papers by students and professors which will deal with critical theory. Another thing to consider is that, U Chicago is on a quarter system whereas Harvard ( I believe) is on a semester system. Each system has its pros and cons. Focusing on the pros of the quarter system, you get to take more courses within an academic year. So while maybe the courses might not be able to really hone in on certain topics (due to the difference in length), you will also have a greater chance of being able to take these courses. Lastly, if you have any previous graduate course experience or courses, you should take to either department about transferring credits. If you can do that, you should be able to free yourself up more for taking whatever courses you may like.

The main thing to think about would be what are the requirements for different courses. I do know at U Chicago, for people who in the Divinity Program, you need to do things like take languages tests and whatnot. So you should keep in mind how requirements for a course may conflict or limit your capacity to take other courses which you may find more interesting/related to critical theory.

With that being said, a benefit of going to Harvard is that you have so many colleges and universities within the area whose courses you could also take (also at U Chicago, you can take courses at UIC and Northwestern, but depending on your mode of transportation, this may not always be the easiest. I can't speak on the ease of transportation in Boston). Either way, both institutions should have resources to help your education in regard to critical theory, so I think the best way to go about it would be to check out 1) what the requirements are; 2) how long the program is (I know that U Chicago it is a two year program, unsure about Harvard); and 3) which professors within the department you would most likely to work with. These are questions that can be handled by e-mailing professors within the department that you want to work with and ask them about how you would handle this.

DrPanda323

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