Critical Thinking in Political Science

Study Sheet, 2017-2018

Exam date: 24 January, 17:00-20:00

KEY TERMS:

1)IDEOLOGY:
A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory
and policy
OR: the study of ideas. It is a comprehensive set of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious
ideas, that an individual, group or society has. Ideology is more restrictive in ideas than ontology.
Political ideologies can be proposed by the dominant class of society, such as the elite to all
members of society (According to Marx view – base and structure – where ideologies and ideas are
determined by the economy (base). Pluralist point of view on ideology: different ideologies co-exist
in a society and represent different beliefs and opinions. Ideologies can be left and right. E.g.
Democracy vs Socialism.

2)ONTOLOGY:
Is a philosophical study that deals with the question of ‘being’, reality and existence. Asks whether
there is a ‘real’ world ‘out there’ that is independent of our knowledge of it. Reflects the
researchers view about the nature of the world. Ontology consists of 3 sub-fields: 1)Realism –
reality is reality and things those, that you see. 2)Empiricism – you can not be sure what the
things are until you observe it. 3)Constructivism – you need to give a name to things in order
them to exist. An Ontologist like Heidegger – questioned what makes an idea and idea?

3)EPISTEMOLOGY:
Is a branch in philosophy about the nature or theory of knowledge.What can we know about the
world and how can we know it. It is a theory of knowledge. It asks whether an observer can
identify ‘real’ or ‘objective’ relations between social phenomena. There are different ways of
classifying epistemological positions like for example: scientific and hermeneutic position or
positivist (natural world is the same as social world and therefore social world is patterned and
predictable – e.g. the amount of money woman earns will determine her musical taste), realist and
interpretivist position (social world is not the same as the natural world and therefore its not
patterned and predictable – focusing on how people make sense of the world).

4)FOUNDATIONALIST ONTOLOGY:
Every justified belief is justified by basic beliefs. Foundationalists think that knowledge is like a
building: 1) at the bottom there are functionalist – basic beliefs; 2) built on them, these beliefs can
directly justify others. 3) further beliefs that are built on them. E.g. this is right because this is
right. E.g. Physics – we are building laws that are built on other laws. In order to arrive at the
underlying reality, start with the most fundamental questions, and then work up from there to
more specific questions. Those most fundamental questions are usually ontological questions

5)EMERGENT ONTOLOGY:
Constructivism/ anti-foundationalism: phenomena are socially constructed. Anti-foundationalist
emphasises the social construction of social phenomena, like feminism have an anti-foundationalist
view on ontology where they question male centered nature. Constructivism – you need to give a
name to things in order them to exist. World is socially contrasted.

6)OBJECTIVITY:
is a central philosophical concept which claims that methods and results of science should not be
influenced by particular perspectives, values, personal interests, emotions etc. → objectivity claims
to be starting from facts. Or it is the ability in any context to judge fairly, without partiality or

1
external influence. Related to critical thinking: however, can people really be truly objective as
they are affected by the society and social reality (pre-notions – Bacon)?

7)POSITIVISM: (natural world is the same as social world and therefore social world is patterned
and
predictable – e.g. the amount of money woman earns will determine her musical taste)

8)TELEOLOGY:
Hegel – history or spirit is reaching its end.
It holds that all things are designed for or directed towards a final result, that there is an inherent
purpose or final cause for all that exists. Teleology denotes the view that the end is already pre-set
within the conditions that framed the beginning, making it a very deterministic concept. In addition
it holds that all things exist for a purpose, directed towards a final result, with everything existing
holding an inherent purpose or “final” cause for its existence. Contrary to Teleology is Nietzsche’s,
and later Foucault’s, idea of genealogy.

Он считает, что все предназначено или направлено к конечному результату, что есть неотъемлемая цель
или конечная причина для всего, что существует. Teleology обозначает точку зрения, что конец уже
заранее задан в условиях, которые подставили начало, что делает его очень детерминированным
понятием. Кроме того, он считает, что все сущее существует с целью, направленной на конечный
результат, при этом все существующее имеет неотъемлемую цель или “окончательную” причину его
существования. Вопреки Телеологии, идея генеалогии Ницше, а позже Фуко.

9)COMMODITY FETISHISM; FETISH:

Karl Marx
Fetish: when an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made
object that has power over others. In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, commodity
fetishism is that peoples desire for commodities lead to situation where social relationships
involved in production, not as relationships among people, but as economic relationships among

2
the money and commodities exchanged in market trade. As such, commodity fetishism transforms
the subjective value into objective, real things that people believe have intrinsic value.
Social relations: Producers are independent of each other but dependent upon money, thus money
rules the world.

10)CREATIVE DESTRUCTION:
Karl Marx/Schumpeter
Schumpeter: “revolutionizing the structures from within”. Dialectical concept: in situation of
destruction/crisis there is also an opportunity. Inventing something new always goes hand in hand
with the destruction of what was there before. Example: the Bourgeoisie has creative destructive
force: “Bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family
relation to a mere money relation” → transformative, progressive, revolutionary character
(revolution in bourgeoisie society is made by bourgeoisie themselves which will overthrow the
system and therefore bourgeoisie has a creative destructive force).

11)DIALECTICS:
Hegel
Is a debate between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but
wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments. Dialectic resembles debate which
however, avoids subjective elements such as emotional appeal. Hegelian Dialectics meant that
history is always moving forward where thesis (ideas) are clashing with conter-ideas (anti-thesis)
and their final result in synthesis (agreed ‘truth’ at between both parts), until the whole process
starts all over again. In this way, society is constructed in levels that are built on top of the each
other through described processes, where lower levels (past) are more basic and higher levels are
more advanced, which lead to a higher sense of understanding. However, all of these levels are
interconnected and dynamic.

12)DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM:
Karl Marx
The Marxist theory come from ideas of Hegel (new ideas are the clashes between ‘new orders’)
and Feuerbach. Marx argues that political and historical events result from the conflict of social
forces and are interpretable (can be interpreted) as a series of contradictions and their solutions.
The conflict is seen as caused by material needs. There are 3 stages of dialectical Materialism.

13)SOCIO-METABOLIC PROCESS:
Ecological crisis is rising under capitalism
A gap in the metabolic interaction between humanity and the rest of nature, caused by capitalist
production

14)PARADIGM:

3
Fundamental way of looking at the world. It is a set of ideas, a framework that helps us making
sense of the world. Can be universal – therefore, it organizes our world’s views. What is
considered legitimate at a certain point in time can change through paradigm shift.

15)THRESHOLD OF EPISTEMOLOGIZATION:
Foucault
Threshold of epistemologization = a point at which a discursive formation establishes ways to
systematically (re)arrange its claims -> crossing this threshold makes what was previously just a
way of speaking into a knowledge practice (internal knowledge of the practice)
Element of domination: a way of thinking about a given topic becomes bound by new regularities,
and certain kinds of statements become excluded in the process

16)CALCULABILITY:
A.Smith
When objective is quantifiable rather than subjective (taste). It refers to predictability and order in
social life. This makes the human governable. If something can be calculated, it is calculable or it
can be predicted and it will always be the same and we know what will follow our act.
(we saw this last year with McDonaldization, people love McDonalds because they know how long
they will have to wait, where they can sit, how their food tastes and how much the food will cost)

17)PERFORMATIVITY:
Performativity is the power of language to effect change in the world: language does not simply
describe the world but may instead (or also) function as a form of social action.
Performativity of knowledge: knowledge is part of the world, thus affects it (knowledge changes
the world).
Connected to geneology (not looking from the outside)

18)ANALOGICAL METHOD:
As opposed to deduction and induction, the analogical method moves from one particular to
another particular. It looks for analogies between 2 particularities or problems in order to be able
to see a solution to a previous problem and to solve the current one. Of course, for this, both
problems have to be similar in order to create a more understandable or analysable system.

19)CONTINGENCY (случайность):
Foucault
Geneology includes the principle of contingency, which assumes that the past is open and so is
the future → which leads to deliberating thought (all could have been
different if just some certain relations would have been changed in a certain manner).

20)SCALE:
Anna Tsing
A scale in political geography means the level of understanding of a political phenomena. E.g. to
understand Marx theory we have to look at a national level. To understand globalization we have
to look at a global level. So Scale is on which spatial (территориальнный) level we must go to in
order to understand something. Geographers in the sixties saw a hierarchy of scale, going for
example local > regional > national > international. To understand the international we have to
understand the national, to understand the national we have to understand the regional and so on.
However, Globalization destructed the notion of scale, global cities arise and we can no longer look
at capitals as only existing on the national level. Our understanding created a inter-spatiality.

21)THE SPATIAL TURN:

Is a paradigm shift that created a new perspective on the world
→ From a singular view (a world with one single history) to non-singularity (a vision of instantaneity of
interconnections – мгновенность взаимодействий)

4
→ Rather replacing the single history with many histories

22)TINA:
Massey,D.
“There Is No Alternative” - Margaret Tatcher (the market economy is the only option) opposed by
Massey, D.
There is no alternative (shortened as TINA) was a slogan often used by Margaret Thatcher. TINA
means that market economy is the only system that works, and that debate about this is over. It
can be seen as "Globalised capitalism, so called free-markets and free trade were the best ways to
build wealth, distribute services and grow a society's economy. Specifically Thatcher argued that
the market-principle of choice flows from the moral principle that for human behavior to be moral
requires free-choice by people.

23)ASSEMBLAGE:
Open ended gatherings. A multitude of parts, living or non-living, that interact to shape potential
histories. Allows for the possibility of asking about communal effects without assuming them.

24)HEGEMONY:
Gramsci
The concept of hegemony was addressed by Gramci where he argued that a dominant group must
maintain its stability through a combination of force and hegemony (and not only physical force –
such as policy and army, but also through ideological sphere, like religion, arts media etc.).
Gramcy stated that if dominant group wants to keep power for a longer term, they must dominate
society ideologically or culturally where people should choose themselves to be dominated. It is
important to know that hegemony is not imposed ideology (like Althuser says), but a system
where society agrees to accept dominant hegemony. However, counter-hegemonic forces for
example, groups and ideas can contest and overthrow the existing hegemony. Conter-hegemonic
views co-exist and fight against hegemonic view.

25)ANTHROPOCENE:
Anthropo: human, cene = epoch
Earth's most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on
overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth
system processes are now altered by humans since the beginning of modern capitalism and
industrialism which began in the 19th century. These global destructions are requiring the shift in
the world paradigm, the way people inhabit the planet.

26)GOVERNMENTALITY:
Foucault
In other words, there are two sides to governmentality (‘the art of government’). On one hand, the
term means a specific form of representation where government government enables a problem to
be addressed and offers certain strategies for solving/handling the problem. On the other hand, it
also structures specific forms of intervention. For a political rationality it is not pure, neutral
knowledge which simply ‘re-presents’ the governing reality; instead, it itself constitutes the
intellectual processing of the reality which political technologies can then tackle. This is understood
to include agencies, procedures, institutions, legal forms, etc., that are intended to enable us to
govern the objects and subjects of a political rationality.
Shorter: Firstly representation, it defines a problem, and by doing so it from the scratch offers a
limited set of strategies to solve this problem. Secondly Intervention, which analyses the actual
procedures of government.

27)NEOLIBERALISM:
Chicago school/Reagan/Thatcher

5
An economy where the government has few, if any, controls on economic factors (little control
over economy). Laissez-faire (a doctrine opposing governmental interference in economy, unless
to maintain peace and property rights) free market (open trade)
Neoliberalism, ideology and policy model that emphasizes the value of free market competition. In
particular, neoliberalism is often characterized in terms of its belief in sustained economic growth
as the means to achieve human progress, its confidence in free markets as the most-efficient
allocation of resources, its emphasis on minimal state intervention in economic and social affairs,
and its commitment to the freedom of trade and capital.

28)KEYNESIANISM:
John Maynard Keynes
Fiscal programs where government intervenes in times of economic recession to stabilize
economy. Keynesian economics was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes
during the 1930s in an attempt to understand the Great Depression (to protect people from
boom). Keynes advocated increased government expenditures and lower taxes to stimulate
demand and pull the global economy out of the depression. Subsequently, Keynesian economics
was used to refer to the concept that optimal economic performance could be achieved -- and
economic slumps prevented -- by influencing aggregate demand through activist stabilization and
economic intervention policies by the government.

29)FORDISM:
Henry Ford early 20th century
A manufacturing philosophy that aims to achieve higher productivity by standardizing production,
using conveyor assembly lines (конвейер), and Taylorist principle (where the production process
should be divided up into the simplest possible tasks and that workers should be taught the most
effective ways to perform them). Also emphasises the need for mass consumption to come along
with mass production → workers also have to be paid enough to afford the goods they produce

30)METHODOLOGICAL NATIONALISM:
Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller/ Fourcade (illustrated)
In Social Science, Methodological Nationalism is a term used to describe an intellectual orientation
that looks at the nation-state as the sole unit of analysis or as a container for social processes.
This term has been greatly developed by Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, who specifically
define methodological nationalism as "understood as the assumption that the nation/state/society
is the natural social and political form of the modern world". E.g. Fourcade describes how
professionalization is seen as a progress within national boundaries.

31)EPISTEMIC COMMUNITY:
“Epistemic communities” located in the international sphere are powerful producers and
disseminators of norms about economic policy, which foster international homogeneity among
comparable national institutions (Adler and Haas 1992). It is a community that follows the same
epistemological tradition.

32)Socio-technical practice:
Mitchell
The practices, shaped by socio-technical arrangements, that refer to the underlying technologies of
the world, but also frame the world. It is the starting point for Mitchell’s analyses when criticizing
De Soto.

33)Sovereignty:
Diplomatic rule established in the peace of Westphalia . It is the full right and power of a governing
body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies. It is the capacity of the
state to control and determine events within its own territory. Sovereign state has power to make
its own laws. Critical thinking – are states sovereign as they are interdependent and share
economic, cultural and even territories? E.g. EU.

6
SHORT ANSWERS:

1. In class, I suggested that critical consciousness first appeared together with the emergence of
monotheism in the ancient Near East. What is the basis for this suggestion? How might monotheism
be linked to the fundamental problems and questions that we associate with critical method today?

One of the first critical thinkers was a philosopher called Herodotus. Herodotus was a well-travelled man,
during his travels he noticed that each country had their own different gods. Herodotus did not reject this fact,
but noticed that different gods shared similarities across countries. Therefore, the idea of Monotheism emerged
as a critical thinking to believe in one God, where Herodotus critically concluded that all countries speak of one
God due to their similarities. Monotheism and further religions were the first steps towards finding the ‘truth’
and if we would ever find the truth, critical thinking would not be already necessary. Therefore, critical thinking
is always related to the notion of finding the ‘truth’ and we are still looking for it nowadays.
In addition, critical thinking comes with the idea that knowledge includes power. Therefore, a lot of powerful
leaders have always used the knowledge of critical thinkers in order to legitimize their own certain actions. It is
in their interests that their ‘truth’ is being accepted. E.g. Hitler applied the idea of critical thinking that certain
species move other species because they are superior – which lead to genocide of Russians and Jews.

2. How does Marx’s approach to dialectics differ from that of Hegel? Do these different approaches
lead to radically different understandings of change and progress? Explain.
Put simply, for Hegel, history is a progressive march towards more freedom in the political sense. This gets
called idealism (although as Kojeve points out, it's really materialist as well) because the slave has to work
through the process of freeing his mind from the ideologies that he uses to justify his own inaction against the
material enslavement by the master. Once the slave can finally free his mind, then he can fight the master and
win political freedom (which Hegel believed was exemplified by Napoleon's spreading of the ideals of the
French Revolution across Prussia). This has a necessary political element, and given Marx's disdain for politics,
Marx says all this focus on freedom in the political sense is upside down, material conditions are what drive the
battle between master and slave, not some idealist desire to free one's mind from ideological oppression.
For Marx, history is a progressive march toward freedom in the economic sense. This is driven by clashing
economic classes, as the slave is solely concerned with winning economic freedom. Marx argues that the
political structure is simply a "superstructure" of the economic system, and thus any political unfreedom is
simply a reflection of economic unfreedom. Marx says to Hegel, look at your "free Prussia" the workers are still
economically unfree and exploited by capital.

3. What is the fundamental issue at stake in the debate between Foucault and Chomsky? What
distinguishes Foucault’s approach from that of Chomsky? And in what sense is Foucault’s
reformulation of the question at the center of the debate “genealogical?” Or, to put it differently,
how does that reformulation open the issue to genealogical inquiry/critique? (see video + exerpt
from Rabinow, both of which were discussed in detail in class; note Foucault’s tendency to pose
“how” questions rather than “what” questions.)
Chomsky is a foundationalist and believes that there is a foundation, that justice and creativity are part of
human nature. Foucault on the other hand is constructivist. He doesn’t think of justice and creativity as
inherent to human nature, but constructed by those with power and who exercise such power. He thus neglects
their universality.
His approach is also genealogical because he believes in contingency: knowledge could have been different if
the power relations were different.
For Foucault power is always external to humans, that is also why it humans are not responsible for their own
freedom. For Chomsky there is a claim about what a perfect society is based on and his theory itself is pre-
figured and that is what Foucault works against.

4. In making the case “for space,” Doreen Massey points to the blind spots in accounts that
represent the “non-Western” world as somehow behind in the historical que (вопрос). Why might
it be problematic to view, say, the Middle East or sub-Saharan Africa as simply behind “the West?”
How might attention to space (or, more specifically, the relations that articulate space) address
these blind spots?

7
When considering countries as “behind” we begin to put them into a line that suggests they have to follow the
one and only trajectory laid out, our vision of how they should develop. This thinking rejects the possibilities of
their own trajectory, independent of the “Western” story. As Massey points out, the nature of globalization
does not permit countries to follow the same trajectory even if they were to be held to it. “Western” countries
got to where they are by the exploitation of these other countries (e.g. imperialism and division of Africa) and
their continued subordination allow for the success of “Western”. The relations that articulate space, draws
attention to the source of how we define space. Since the current discourse leaves the impression of space as
transformed into time, countries in the South are left considering space as the future, where they might one
day enjoy the freedom of borderless trading and economic investment, but nowadays they are staying in the
past. If we would separate spatial (территориальный) and temporal (временноые) states in globalization we
could begin to see the multiplicities in space (if we would not follow only one culture, we would see how
different spaces are unique). Seeing that Chad, experiences space entirely different than the USA would permit
Chad to pursue other possibilities not tied to the current trajectory of globalization as defined by the “West”.

5. In “The Arts of Noticing,” Tsing points to the co-presence of, and to the productivity of
entanglements between, “multiple temporalities.” What does she mean by “multiple
temporalities?” How might attention to the entanglement of different temporalities help us to think
about the force of global capitalism without getting stuck in narratives of progress and ruin?

‘Multiple temporalities’ (временность) refers to all sorts of livelihoods that make worlds because making worlds
is not limited to humans. In the process each organism changes everyone’s world. It shows us to look around
us rather than ahead. We need to see lifeways and non-living ways of being as well, coming together. Non-
human ways of being, like human ones, shift historically. This way of thinking might have an impact on political
economy and environmental studies and thus give us another view on global capitalism. As Tsing points out,
progress felt great but the problems is that progress stopped making sense. (personal addition: instead of
progressing and moving forward, we are just exploiting and damaging everything around us, we have to look
at new ways of “progressing” (around us) without becoming our own gravediggers).

6. What was the central issue or problem that occupied Gramsci and the thinkers of the Frankfurt
School in the period between WW1 and WW2? Briefly sketch the similarities and differences
between their responses.
Comparison: The rise of Cultural Marxism is correlated with the rise of fascist regime throughout the early
period of 20th century in Italy and in Germany. The distinguished scholars of the Frankfurt School in Germany
and the well-known philosopher Antonio Gramsci in Italy had great influence of the reinterpretation of Marxism
with their sociological and cultural analysis. Taking fascism as a main problem, both Frankfurt School and
Gramsci looked at Cultural Marxism approach under the influence of cultural hegemony and the culture of
Industry. The pushing effect of Fascist system and ideology cannot be denied since this pushing effect forced
them both to leave their countries and homes, and it lead to exile (изгнание) and imprisonment. Both
theoretical approaches have common views, especially on cultural criticism.
Distinctions:
1)Gramsci interprets fascism as the historical process and historical issues, whereas Frankfurt School members
are more into the human nature to explain fascist ideology.
2)The pessimistic approach of Frankfurt School is what particularly distinguishes it from Gramsci. For the
members of Frankfurt School, the separation of intellect and “will” prevents human beings from acting on their
desires. While Gramsci constantly believed in the “will” of working class, on which he grounds his fundamental
theory.

7. In what sense might it be said that the global market places a limit or boundary on the scope of
effective democratic deliberation?

8. If de Soto’s brand of poverty capitalism doesn’t really reduce poverty, what kind of work does it
do?
Informality is a central concept in de Soto's work on poverty. It describes the realm to which the Third World's
poorest are pushed away or banished from their nations' official economies. His concept does not reduce the
poverty, but instead describes that capitalism is failing due to the fact that people do not have rights to own a
property, which characterizes them as 3rd countries.

8
De Soto believes that, “Without formal property, no matter how many assets the excluded accumulate or how
hard they work, most people will not be able to prosper in a capitalist society. They will continue to be beyond
the range of policymakers, of the reach of official records, and thus economically invisible.”
De Soto’s experience with legal reform in Peru shows that, though it is not a simple task, establishing an
inclusive property rights system and enabling people to at long last title their properties has had many
economic benefits.
Moreover, exclusion of third countries from economies is a lack of property rights which holds back poor
countries and the entire world economy. That is why capitalism, despite its triumph over communism and its
wealth generation in America and Western Europe, has failed elsewhere.
He elaborated the principle of informal economy, that was failing in his own country and as a result, the poor
lacked legal title to their homes or land, and therefore could not use them as the guaranty to obtain credit.
Millions of Peruvians were left behind which caused unproductive lives, insecurity and poverty.

9. What aspect of contemporary world making does Tsing get at with her metaphor of
‘friction’(разногласия)? Might the underlying point be considered somehow dialectical? Explain
Tsing’s concept of friction guides us where we should look to understand the world. Without friction there is no
real movement. Every time something new is introduced, it will always correspond with an unthought or
unexpected dimension, creating friction. Technologies do not only bring about positive movement, but also
always something unaccounted. Therefore, “Friction is “the resistance to relative motion between two bodies in
contact”. The metaphor reminds us that global connections do not slide into place without a process of
engagement” For example, the only predetermined goals of the Korean company in Indonesia was to extract
resources, they had no idea they would develop a hybrid-language (unthought or unexpected) or affect local
populations. Those were just consequences that came with it.
Therefore, the metaphor of ‘friction’ can be considered dialectical, because according to Hegel notion of thesis,
anti-thesis and synthesis, illustrate: 1)the new-introduced idea will clash with the 2)opposite idea (which is
also unexpected) and as a result of these debates, 3)two different views will create friction which will lead to
4)consequences and consensus.

10.Elaborate on the role that “indicators” play within the techno-political apparatus of state-
building (and, if you have thoughts, in contemporary global political life more generally). What
does it mean to suggest that such indicators are “performative”?
Indicators were developed nearly a quarter-century ago for indicating the vulnerability of states to collapse.
Indicators are frequently used in for example Freedom rankings or Transparency rankings that try to indicate
the stability and vulnerability of countries. With the rise of the state-building process, indicators also became
important. Indicators were designed and introduced by CIA to measure this vulnerability in pre-conflict, active
conflict and post-conflict situations in the state, and continues to be used widely by policy makers. Most of
“state-building ” notions came from the US, either by independent think tanks but also by government funded
programs.
Indicators also consist of rankings which observe the risk and conflict situations. It legitimizes intervention
through rankings trying to indicate where “failure” will most likely take place and where priorities should lie in
foreign policy. However, these indicators are problematic, since they are often considered as general
assumptions. Therefore, these basic assumptions are by no means the legitimate concepts of establishing the
stability of a state.

11. What might it mean to say that the theory is in the infrastructure, and the infrastructure is in
the theory?
Explore the ways infrastructure come to matter socially, politically, economically and spatially
(пространственно) both symbolically and as a set of materials
Resurface and make visible infrastructure networks as concrete/material expressions of colonial capitalism
Understand the ways infrastructures are constructed, imagined and governed but also how they are
experienced and contested
Infrastructure as object and subject of analysis to understand its role in shaping and producing space and as a
window into the various actors and broader processes, forces and structures that constitute these networks.
E.g. Occupation is not colonialism
And colonialism is not settler colonialism

Colonialism is like a circle, you from the metropolity but you always return
Settling Colonialism is going to a place, building a city there and claiming the land for its own

9
12. In his talk, Omar Jabary-Salamanca made the following statement: “I don’t need electricity, my
life needs electricity”. What point or insight does this line convey? And how might that insight be
relevant to understanding the situated nature of political critique?

10
ESSAY QUESTIONS:

1. It is often remarked that we are living at a critical moment in human history. Climate change,
rising inequality, loss of faith in the ability of democratic government to deal with the seemingly
negative impact of globalization on regular folks—these represent critical problems. But what does
it really mean to characterize these issues as “critical?” And what might it mean to think critically
about them? Indeed, what is meant by the critical in critical thinking? Identify some of the different
senses in which social scientists might approach these issues critically (ranging from awareness of
ideology and attention to sources on the one hand, to the more theoretically critical approaches we
discussed during the course of the semester on the other). Identify a particular issue, phenomenon
or problem that you have come to look at and think about differently as a result of this course.
What did you learn that was new? Explain how critical thinking helped you to see the problem from
a new angle, and how it might inform your engagement with the problem (academic or practical)
from here on out.

Answer:
We are living in times where life on domestic and international level has become a race and a zero sum game.
Individuals and states use every available weapon in their armory to win win this race and those who lose are
called the left behind. This is the result of globalization. Climate change, rising inequality and declining
democracy has a strong correlation with globalization on the regression line. But its consequences are far
beyond the left behinds and our imagination.
As a student of the academic studies and a citizen of the democratic world i must constructively criticise
globalization and its folks regardless of their background to uncover the dark side of globalization and the
phenomenon it has enforced in society. This is the beauty of critical thinking.
Following the route of critical thinking hereby i will criticise globalization in political sense and issues which
related to it.
The seeds of globalization were planted by the United States and the West after the WW2 and they are its
prominent beneficiaries respectively. The USA established the existing world order with help of its allies and
they brutally eliminate every rebellion element, who dare to come in theri way , in the name of democracy and
terrorism. History has registered many such examples but I would like draw your attention to the particular
case of Afghanistan as I am going to develop the last part of answer on the baseof my very observation in my
motherland during American invasion. This is a detail discussion that how and why the US went to war in
Afghanistan and what are the outcomes in broader sense from American perspective. I however will highlight
some undiscussed issues using my critical skills that i have learnt in this course.
Collateral damage, destruction of economy, poverty and a backward life in Afghanistan was and is an obvious
result of war. In order to restore life back to normal international organisations and NGOs operated to their
extent while media and its agents showed the horrifics of war around the world. By that time it all seemed
positive and good to me. But after following the course of social sciences and learning about political economy i
find myself in a battle with all this good humanitarian work because of following reasons.
I believe poverty and political instability has become a market for humanitarian organisations and for leaders
of the globalisation. After doing a little research, I have learnt that employees who worked in humanitarian
organisations in Afghanistan were paid between five to seven figures salaries which is a dream for someone
working in a country like Belgium. Moreover the aid which came to the organisation mostly went to pay those
salaries. On the other hand media filmed and photographed the events of war and the poor life of Afghan
citizens and sold it around the world as a product which generated large capital for media. We can take the
example of the famous “The Afghan girl” picture which was taken by steve McCurry in 1984 . the photograph
was published on the front pages on many newspapers and magazine. He also recently organised exhibition of
his photography in brussels in which that particular photographed was listed top making it a source of his
income.
The point i want to make is that the poverty and political instability is the result of globalization but in the
meantime it has become a market which contribute the economies of the developed countries as their political
economy.

2. What does it mean to say that knowledge is dependent on social practice? What does it mean to
suggest that we make “truth” in the process of making the world? And how might this insight
inform a critical analysis of, say, the state, the market or globalization (choose one)? Use concrete
examples and ideas from Marx in developing your answer (feel free to cite other authors as well,
but make sure to show that you know the main ideas from our discussion of Marx’s work).

Knowledge, Marx insists, is dependent upon social practice. This means that our knowledge of the world cannot
be derived from some point outside the world. Rather, knowledge—and with it truth—necessarily emerges from

11
within, and thus reflects, the particular historical, material and ideological relations that constitute “the world”
(or a given “world”) as such. In other words, knowledge of the world is inevitably dependent upon the
particular historical relations that constitute the world as “objective” and knowable; and, similarly, upon the
socio-technical relations that govern ways and possibilities of knowing. Thus, contra the Cartesian/positivist
position, Marx argues that “True” knowledge is not primarily a matter of establishing objective distance
between consciousness and the objects of consciousness. Rather, objectivity is itself an effect of human activity
and practice. It is thus active and practical relations—and not definitions, a priori categories or things-in-
themselves—that provide an objective starting point for understanding the world.

3. In the opening paragraph of her article “Contingent Commodities,” Tsing writes:

“How do people and nature become labor and resources? The process surrounds us every day, yet we rarely
think about it. Indeed, we are blocked from thinking by messages that tell us to take commodities, including
labour power and natural resources, for granted. We forget the violence and seduction that make it possible for
profits to be made from human and nonhuman lives. We call this mechanism of forgetting the market. To
speak of the market asserts the primacy of calculation over the uncertainties of history. Pushing culture and
politics aside, it offers invariant natural law.”

What does Tsing mean by “we call this mechanism of forgetting the market?” What, exactly, is
being forgotten? How does the market effect this forgetting? And what does she mean by “(T)o
speak of the market asserts the primacy of calculation over the uncertainties of history”? Starting
from these questions, elaborate on Tsing’s critique of economic reason. In what sense might we
refer to this critique as genealogical?

4. Explain the difference between “hegemony” and “governmentality,” emphasizing how each
proposes a different answer to the question of the “wherebouts of power.” To what extent are the
two approaches ontologicaly distinct? And how, if at all, might they be brought together in a critical
analysis of a contemporary political phenomenon? Explain using a case or example.

Hegemony is cultural and kept in place by society itself. Governmentallity is about maintaining the hegemony by
“producing the right citizen” as far as I understoord.

5. What does Mitchell mean by “carbon democracy”? In what sense did coal enable the mass
politics of the late nineteenth century? And how were the qualities of oil invoked/deployed in
efforts to reengineer democratic politics in the post-WWII era?

Coal based technologies were “progress’, something we had all to cooperate with since it was going to make all of our
lives better. Oil became central to politics already before the second world war with for an example the standard oil
company(Rockefeller) and the anti-trust campaigns it caused. Resistance was there but after the world war was
practically not there because now there were “more important things’ like rebuilding the world and economy.

12
Basically denotes how something has to be destroyed in order for something new to be constructed.
E.g.: Karl Marx in Communist Manifesto argues that bourgeoisie has ended feudalism to establish capitalism.
History of exploitation is seen as creative destruction – when one form of rule is being destroyed for creation of
the other.

“Carbon democracy”:
It is arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil.
Internet: Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political
consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as
the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the
greatest demand for energy

13