APSA 2009, Day One
I've just got back from the Australian Political Studies Association Annual Conference, and want to put down a few notes about the presentations I attended and some of my favourite papers. It would have much more convenient to liveblog the conference, but for some unaccountable reason there was no wireless network available. Perhaps I'm being a bratty digital native here, but I do find it rather peculiar and inconvenient to be offline when I'm bursting with ideas I want to share and learn more about (danah boyd has a few thoughts along similar lines). Anyway, the frustrations of being offline aside, I had a great time and was very excited about some of the papers. I didn't get a chance to see every paper that I wanted to, so maybe later on I'll do a follow-up post about papers I wish I'd seen.
For now, a few of my favourites from Day One:
The opening panel on 'The Secret History of Democracy' was excellent, and I was pleased to find out that it's linked to book being put together by Benjamin Isakhan and Stephen Stockwell. I enjoyed the disruption of the standard history of democracy (which my grandfather always tells me sternly began with the Greeks). Stephen Stockwell talked about the history of democracy in Phoenecia and early Greek city states, Benjamin Isakhan presented on Iraqi attempts to establish democracy in the face of US resistance and occupation, and Halim Rane looked at the history of Islam's relationship with democracy. These are definitely papers I will be pointing people towards when I hear claims that Islam and democracy aren't compatible, or that Iraqis just don't want a democracy.
I also enjoyed Alana Mann's presentation on 'The politics of resistance', which looked at Via Campesina's relationship with the global justice movement and its use of human rights and global justice master frames. My notes for this are rather sketchy, but there were some interesting applications of frame theory that I'm looking forward to reading more on.
I'm glad I stuck around for the last panel, and Delphine Rabet's paper on 'Corporate power in global governance' was particularly interesting. In summary: corporate social responsibility is not as warm and fuzzy as you might, in a brief fit of optimism, be inclined to think.