Warfare. Subjecthood. IR for the 99%
In these difficult times for academia, I find it heartening that Korean Studies is on the rise globally, trackable in a marked increase in applications to PhD and BA programs. At Leiden, we have about 45 full time freshmen that have declared Korean Studies as their major this year. While I would like to personally take credit for this development, larger structural forces (including, but not limited to Hallyu) are responsible. Hiring of Koreanists seems to be trending upwards, particularly at European institutions. It is frankly long overdue. The days when a department's coverage of China and Japan should be considered as "sufficient" are hopefully over. Such Cold War area studies logic makes no sense; if we were to organize our departments according to world population, or even according to metrics of cultural or economic power, they would look quite different.
My long path to academia and to Korean studies allows me to perhaps appreciate the "why" of Korean studies, or what the study of Korea can bring to the table. As a cultural historian, an early modernist, and a political theorist, there are several characteristics of Korean history that are conducive to the big questions and longue durée analysis that I prefer. Compared to my colleagues who work in other geographies, the early modern source base for East Asia offers an embarrassment of riches. Or perhaps the wealth of material reflects the legacy of meritocratic bureaucracies--aka what happens when you have a bunch of literary nerds run your state for centuries. Much of this material is skewed towards the powerholding (and power contesting) elites; significant effort is required to read against the archival grain.
Being neither an exceptionalist nor a nationalist, I think of Korea as a country that should be studied in and of itself, and for itself. But as much of the study of Korea increasingly occurs outside of Korea for non-Korean audiences, the burden that we bear to communicate our work to multiple audiences is real. Thankfully, the analysis of Korea, a country that is sometimes referred to as a "middle power" today, I dare say resonates more powerfully with more people in the world--the 99%--than the study of the so-called [and sometimes emerging] "Great Powers."
"IR for the 99%" is my call to humanists to take back the study of international relations. It is based on the premise that we must abandon the self-obsessed Great Powers model of doing IR which equates the study of the world and of how we relate to each other in the world to the myopic perspective of two or three nations. A humanistic understanding of international relations is one that does not consider the transborder study of cultural flows merely "soft power" or "noise" that must be eliminated in order to focus on a "signal." It does not relinquish politics to a vacuum that lies outside of culture. Certainly, research could be far easier if we pretend that that were so. A humanistic IR stems out of a desire for greater accuracy, for better information, and for a realistic grasp of the world.
"Taking back" the study of IR sounds pithier and harsher than I may intend, given my innate tendency towards collaborative work. What I mean is this: it is worthwhile to dialogue with each other, and to remember that both History and IR shared common hallways and departments not that long ago. We can be better at what we do by learning from each other. There are problems that we can best solve by talking to each other.