THE JADAVPUR
ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
A non-Profit, Non Governmental Organization
(Registered under The West Bengal Societies Registration Act, 1961)
29,BRAHMAPUR, GOVT.SCHEME, BANSDRONI, Kolkata 700070
Tel: 033-24107726/6394
e-MAIL: mailtojair@rediffmail.com
REPORT OF THE SEMINAR DATED 26TH OF JULY 2008
THEME: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN 21ST CENTURY
NEWS LETTER: VOL: I, ISSUE II
Under the auspices of Jadavpur Association of International Relations, on 26th of July, 2008 a Seminar was organized at the Jibanananda Sabhaghar , Paschim Banga Bangla Academy. Distinguished scholars and students attended the seminar. The speakers at the seminar were Professor Radharaman Chakraborty, Former Vice-Chancellor, Netaji Subhas Open University and All-India President, JAIR, Dr. Purusottam Bhattacharya, Professor, Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University and Dr.Subir Bhowmik, BBC, Bureau Chief( East and North East India). It was a single session seminar and was chaired by Professor Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta. The theme of the seminar was International Relations in the 21st Century. Inaugurating the seminar, Professor Partha Pratim Basu, President, Working Committee, JAIR delivered the welcoming address where he introduced the speakers to the house and deliberated on the theme in brief.
Professor Radharaman Chakraborty
Initiating his deliberation Professor Radharaman Chakraborty questioned whether we are trying to out state the whole discipline of International Relations or not? According to him State as a concept remains central to the discipline of International Relations. And this is a sustained continuity for over six to seven decades. In the empirical field of International Relations the state has been showing an overwhelming presence. There is also a recognition that state is conceptualized differently in International Relations than in other fields of social sciences. The current parameters of study always remain keen to identify that the State as the centrality of the discipline is on a Retreat. So Professor Chakraborty thinks that there is a dire need for a reconsideration of the concept of state. Certain other considerations which dominated the discipline of International relations like the functioning of the Westphalian paradigm, the western bias of the discipline, visualizing a stable international order through the prism of Mutually Assured Destruction, the historicity of Millitarism have taken a backseat as the dynamism of the discipline has increased due to various other political-economic factors. Professor Ckakraborty emphasized that International Relation currently not only comprises the outside of the state but also involves the domestic obligations that a state is expected to perform. These are the post war developments, which have added new parameters to judge the international political environment. In the current discourse the international order is not just concerned with the foreign policy priorities of the nations but in a way the domestic policies also remains under intense scrutiny by the international actors. A domestic problem of a state is even taken to be harmful for international environment. This is because it has been observed that of and on the domestic crises often spill over as a major international problem. Human rights regimes and other international humanitarian regimes are indicative of the fact that every human rights violation draws international attention and there is a conscious effort by the actors to intervene in the domestic problems so as to ensure human security. No state can discard the part played by the international regimes. Non-membership can be an escape route and this strategy was followed by many nations for many years in order to not to allow other agencies and other nations to intervene but of late the trend is opposite. In a way the countries that expressed disinterest are now joining multinational organizations to exploit that international space.
The international economic scenario is such that no country can remain isolated from the ripple effects of the international economic trends. Big or small states, whatever they are the compelling international economic forces never allows a state to close itself up. Moreover states have to look for the remedial actions by external agencies when such conditionalities arise. The world has shrinked and as a result no state can claim homogeneity as far as their demographic content is concerned. The efforts to create national societies have backfired and have led to ethnic conflicts. At this point Dr. Chakraborty categorized states into two types, namely the Consolidated States and the Unstable States. The order of the day accordingly gives way to a situation where the Internal Communities have to submit to external remedies. The external remedies come in various forms. The most common forms are UN Peace building measures. Though interventions are not always unquestionable. Where on one hand external remedies like the interventions promise to stabilize the economic and the political scene of a country but at time the stabilization process remains half done thus emanating further societal complications.
The phase of globalization has radically changed the way we are used to look at a state. State is no longer in a position to hold on to its controlling position. Intervention by the forces of globalization compromises the conventional wisdom of sovereignty. The relation between the position of the individual and the state has radically changed as the ‘flattening of the world’ has enabled the physical boundaries to take a backseat. The conception of command control economy has taken a beating and the intense usage of information and technology has enabled individuals to come out of the clutches of the state. Parallel global systems, corporate systems, new methods of management, product processing, market management have ensured alternative opportunity to come out of the state. Modern states also finds problems in controlling capital as the finance capital that runs the international system is free from the priorities of the state and follows it’s own priorities and directions. All these factors taken together, according to Dr. Chakraborty there is a need to conceptualize state in a light which will surely be independent from the Westphalian and classical realist wisdom.
Dr. Subir Bhowmik
Dr. Subir Bhowmik who is the Bureau Chief of BBC, Eastern and Northeastern India deliberated on the role of media in International Relations emphasizing on the change and the evolution of the role in the phase of globalization. In his presentation Dr. Bhowmik pointed out at the very outset that media provides Space as well as plays an important part as an Actor. *Till cold-war media was basically national in adversarial relations conditioned nature and the reporting. In India also media reporting was in a way monotonous and in certain occasions got manipulated by the governmental priorities. Currently after the overarching intervention of globalization and it’s effects the importance of media has been changing over the last two decades. The value attached to media has undergone a change immensely. The economic and cultural change in International Relations has in a way led to a changing role of media. According to Dr. Bhowmik media is not dealt much in the discourses of international relations but media is offering a space for the interactive agents of international actors thus media also has turned itself into a space for various actions that contribute to opinion building. According to Dr. Bhowmik media creates social spaces thus allowing the various social actors for self representations. In many cases accordingly media creates an opinion out of the interactions between the social actors that in a way helps the international system to take decisions. Another modern role that a media play is the role of surveillance. Media is constantly surveying the inter and intra state services thus media transcends to the level of mass media and gets accepted as one of the central instrument of surveillance. The main method of surveillance through media is gathering information but apart from the consideration of market values also impact the quality of news reporting. According to Dr. Bhowmik credibility is the key to media power. Technology without credibility cannot espouse much hope in considering media as an important player. The central contention of Dr. Bhowmik’s deliberation was that media currently is transnational in nature and so plays the role of a continuous observer and information gatherer thus becoming an agency to accumulate opinions from the varied spectrums of international populace which in a way matter for various actions pursued by the international agencies and actors.
Professor Purusottam Bhattacharya.
The third and the final deliberation was on various aspects of Globalization and it’s impact on International Relations by Professor Purushottam Bhattacharya. Professor Bhattacharya initiated his presentation by claiming that globalization is a hotly debated and contested concept. There remain various disagreements over the definition of globalization. There are basically four dimensions that are attached in attempting to define the concept. It has been seen primarily as an economic globalization that promised to create a global economy. Secondly globalization is also defined in terms of socio-economic parameters. According to Professor Bhattacharya the globalization process has also seen the globalization of ideas and mostly globalization is attached to the radical technological evolution that characterizes this time period. In this phase of globalization when we try to capture the multidimensional set of social processes and deepening connections we need to enquire into certain creations and of them most importantly connections between the multiplicity of interdependencies among the financial and the market stretches. The phase of globalization has seen the intensification of local happenings by the impact of social events. According to Professor Bhattacharya today’s human beings are a part of the global whole. Talking about the globalization many scholars think that globalization is not unique only to our time but can be identified also through the preceding centuries divided into ages. But the importance of the current phase lies in the fact that today’s globalization is a revolution to the Copernican extent. It is also argued that it cannot be reversed and the argument is well founded. But there is an anarchical element in the operational aspect of the globalization. Globalization promises free market but that can be disrupted by rogue individuals and organizations. This phase of globalization characterizes the disappearance of the conventional wisdom of sovereign states but not state in itself. The promise of free market is challenged by the arguments that the market is not free but the transactions are structured round the interests of the big players. Globalization promised to shrink the world by accommodating all but reality shows that during this phase peripheralization of communities peaked in the third world countries. The 9/11 incident did put some brakes on the march of globalization and emanated from it an irony. An irony where the open and globalized world is fenced more and fortresses are much well founded as nations are adopting intense securitization methods. The promise of fair play in the international trade is more cumbersome as organizations like WTO represent not fair play but extremely anti democratic order.
Question-Answer Session
The three presentations were followed by the question answer session where respected professors, scholars and students participated enthusiastically. While questioning important aspects were dealt upon. Professor Sanjukta Bhattacharya pointed out in media though credibility is important but it is because the technology is easily at our disposal as a result media is playing an important role. Professor Partha Pratim Basu enquired about the possibility of any media structure exclusively for third world if possible or not so that the third world communities get that space for self representation. Professor Shibashish Chatterjee questioned about the larger transaction points between the the discipline of International Relations and the various determining factors which are playing a part in a way to define the character of the discipline in a different way. Other questions are also raised about the media imposition of perceptions over various issues in a larger populace thus at time determining which issue to be taken up seriously and which issue not. The issue of Human Security is also raised as it was deliberated that though modes of conventional securitization are pursued intensely but there is a very new orientation towards conceptualizing security in terms of human security.
Concluding Remarks
After the question answer session Professor Shobhan Lal Dutta Gupta presented his concluding remarks where he observed that from the seminar emanated two kinds of observations. Firstly there is a common concern for human survival. This is incumbent on the thought that how human beings can live with a certain amount of dignity. Secondly another observation that came out was of the concern for an attempt to make the world humane and democratic. Where every constituent of human individuals and groups can self represent themselves at the international level. Whenever we require the need for democratic representation at the international level we tend to look towards UN. But UN has never shown any consistency over innumerable political questions thus denying the level playing field. Professor Gupta pointed out that there is a dire need for an workable ideology in International Relations but as in the current phase speculative capital is the driving force espousal of any ideological framework seems impossible.
Formal vote of thanks was given by Professor Shibashis Chatterjee,Convener, JAIR.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Prepared by Sreejan Das for The Jadavpur Association of International Relations © The Jadavpur Association of International Relations, 2008
ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
A non-Profit, Non Governmental Organization
(Registered under The West Bengal Societies Registration Act, 1961)
29,BRAHMAPUR, GOVT.SCHEME, BANSDRONI, Kolkata 700070
Tel: 033-24107726/6394
e-MAIL: mailtojair@rediffmail.com
REPORT OF THE SEMINAR DATED 26TH OF JULY 2008
THEME: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN 21ST CENTURY
NEWS LETTER: VOL: I, ISSUE II
Under the auspices of Jadavpur Association of International Relations, on 26th of July, 2008 a Seminar was organized at the Jibanananda Sabhaghar , Paschim Banga Bangla Academy. Distinguished scholars and students attended the seminar. The speakers at the seminar were Professor Radharaman Chakraborty, Former Vice-Chancellor, Netaji Subhas Open University and All-India President, JAIR, Dr. Purusottam Bhattacharya, Professor, Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University and Dr.Subir Bhowmik, BBC, Bureau Chief( East and North East India). It was a single session seminar and was chaired by Professor Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta. The theme of the seminar was International Relations in the 21st Century. Inaugurating the seminar, Professor Partha Pratim Basu, President, Working Committee, JAIR delivered the welcoming address where he introduced the speakers to the house and deliberated on the theme in brief.
Professor Radharaman Chakraborty
Initiating his deliberation Professor Radharaman Chakraborty questioned whether we are trying to out state the whole discipline of International Relations or not? According to him State as a concept remains central to the discipline of International Relations. And this is a sustained continuity for over six to seven decades. In the empirical field of International Relations the state has been showing an overwhelming presence. There is also a recognition that state is conceptualized differently in International Relations than in other fields of social sciences. The current parameters of study always remain keen to identify that the State as the centrality of the discipline is on a Retreat. So Professor Chakraborty thinks that there is a dire need for a reconsideration of the concept of state. Certain other considerations which dominated the discipline of International relations like the functioning of the Westphalian paradigm, the western bias of the discipline, visualizing a stable international order through the prism of Mutually Assured Destruction, the historicity of Millitarism have taken a backseat as the dynamism of the discipline has increased due to various other political-economic factors. Professor Ckakraborty emphasized that International Relation currently not only comprises the outside of the state but also involves the domestic obligations that a state is expected to perform. These are the post war developments, which have added new parameters to judge the international political environment. In the current discourse the international order is not just concerned with the foreign policy priorities of the nations but in a way the domestic policies also remains under intense scrutiny by the international actors. A domestic problem of a state is even taken to be harmful for international environment. This is because it has been observed that of and on the domestic crises often spill over as a major international problem. Human rights regimes and other international humanitarian regimes are indicative of the fact that every human rights violation draws international attention and there is a conscious effort by the actors to intervene in the domestic problems so as to ensure human security. No state can discard the part played by the international regimes. Non-membership can be an escape route and this strategy was followed by many nations for many years in order to not to allow other agencies and other nations to intervene but of late the trend is opposite. In a way the countries that expressed disinterest are now joining multinational organizations to exploit that international space.
The international economic scenario is such that no country can remain isolated from the ripple effects of the international economic trends. Big or small states, whatever they are the compelling international economic forces never allows a state to close itself up. Moreover states have to look for the remedial actions by external agencies when such conditionalities arise. The world has shrinked and as a result no state can claim homogeneity as far as their demographic content is concerned. The efforts to create national societies have backfired and have led to ethnic conflicts. At this point Dr. Chakraborty categorized states into two types, namely the Consolidated States and the Unstable States. The order of the day accordingly gives way to a situation where the Internal Communities have to submit to external remedies. The external remedies come in various forms. The most common forms are UN Peace building measures. Though interventions are not always unquestionable. Where on one hand external remedies like the interventions promise to stabilize the economic and the political scene of a country but at time the stabilization process remains half done thus emanating further societal complications.
The phase of globalization has radically changed the way we are used to look at a state. State is no longer in a position to hold on to its controlling position. Intervention by the forces of globalization compromises the conventional wisdom of sovereignty. The relation between the position of the individual and the state has radically changed as the ‘flattening of the world’ has enabled the physical boundaries to take a backseat. The conception of command control economy has taken a beating and the intense usage of information and technology has enabled individuals to come out of the clutches of the state. Parallel global systems, corporate systems, new methods of management, product processing, market management have ensured alternative opportunity to come out of the state. Modern states also finds problems in controlling capital as the finance capital that runs the international system is free from the priorities of the state and follows it’s own priorities and directions. All these factors taken together, according to Dr. Chakraborty there is a need to conceptualize state in a light which will surely be independent from the Westphalian and classical realist wisdom.
Dr. Subir Bhowmik
Dr. Subir Bhowmik who is the Bureau Chief of BBC, Eastern and Northeastern India deliberated on the role of media in International Relations emphasizing on the change and the evolution of the role in the phase of globalization. In his presentation Dr. Bhowmik pointed out at the very outset that media provides Space as well as plays an important part as an Actor. *Till cold-war media was basically national in adversarial relations conditioned nature and the reporting. In India also media reporting was in a way monotonous and in certain occasions got manipulated by the governmental priorities. Currently after the overarching intervention of globalization and it’s effects the importance of media has been changing over the last two decades. The value attached to media has undergone a change immensely. The economic and cultural change in International Relations has in a way led to a changing role of media. According to Dr. Bhowmik media is not dealt much in the discourses of international relations but media is offering a space for the interactive agents of international actors thus media also has turned itself into a space for various actions that contribute to opinion building. According to Dr. Bhowmik media creates social spaces thus allowing the various social actors for self representations. In many cases accordingly media creates an opinion out of the interactions between the social actors that in a way helps the international system to take decisions. Another modern role that a media play is the role of surveillance. Media is constantly surveying the inter and intra state services thus media transcends to the level of mass media and gets accepted as one of the central instrument of surveillance. The main method of surveillance through media is gathering information but apart from the consideration of market values also impact the quality of news reporting. According to Dr. Bhowmik credibility is the key to media power. Technology without credibility cannot espouse much hope in considering media as an important player. The central contention of Dr. Bhowmik’s deliberation was that media currently is transnational in nature and so plays the role of a continuous observer and information gatherer thus becoming an agency to accumulate opinions from the varied spectrums of international populace which in a way matter for various actions pursued by the international agencies and actors.
Professor Purusottam Bhattacharya.
The third and the final deliberation was on various aspects of Globalization and it’s impact on International Relations by Professor Purushottam Bhattacharya. Professor Bhattacharya initiated his presentation by claiming that globalization is a hotly debated and contested concept. There remain various disagreements over the definition of globalization. There are basically four dimensions that are attached in attempting to define the concept. It has been seen primarily as an economic globalization that promised to create a global economy. Secondly globalization is also defined in terms of socio-economic parameters. According to Professor Bhattacharya the globalization process has also seen the globalization of ideas and mostly globalization is attached to the radical technological evolution that characterizes this time period. In this phase of globalization when we try to capture the multidimensional set of social processes and deepening connections we need to enquire into certain creations and of them most importantly connections between the multiplicity of interdependencies among the financial and the market stretches. The phase of globalization has seen the intensification of local happenings by the impact of social events. According to Professor Bhattacharya today’s human beings are a part of the global whole. Talking about the globalization many scholars think that globalization is not unique only to our time but can be identified also through the preceding centuries divided into ages. But the importance of the current phase lies in the fact that today’s globalization is a revolution to the Copernican extent. It is also argued that it cannot be reversed and the argument is well founded. But there is an anarchical element in the operational aspect of the globalization. Globalization promises free market but that can be disrupted by rogue individuals and organizations. This phase of globalization characterizes the disappearance of the conventional wisdom of sovereign states but not state in itself. The promise of free market is challenged by the arguments that the market is not free but the transactions are structured round the interests of the big players. Globalization promised to shrink the world by accommodating all but reality shows that during this phase peripheralization of communities peaked in the third world countries. The 9/11 incident did put some brakes on the march of globalization and emanated from it an irony. An irony where the open and globalized world is fenced more and fortresses are much well founded as nations are adopting intense securitization methods. The promise of fair play in the international trade is more cumbersome as organizations like WTO represent not fair play but extremely anti democratic order.
Question-Answer Session
The three presentations were followed by the question answer session where respected professors, scholars and students participated enthusiastically. While questioning important aspects were dealt upon. Professor Sanjukta Bhattacharya pointed out in media though credibility is important but it is because the technology is easily at our disposal as a result media is playing an important role. Professor Partha Pratim Basu enquired about the possibility of any media structure exclusively for third world if possible or not so that the third world communities get that space for self representation. Professor Shibashish Chatterjee questioned about the larger transaction points between the the discipline of International Relations and the various determining factors which are playing a part in a way to define the character of the discipline in a different way. Other questions are also raised about the media imposition of perceptions over various issues in a larger populace thus at time determining which issue to be taken up seriously and which issue not. The issue of Human Security is also raised as it was deliberated that though modes of conventional securitization are pursued intensely but there is a very new orientation towards conceptualizing security in terms of human security.
Concluding Remarks
After the question answer session Professor Shobhan Lal Dutta Gupta presented his concluding remarks where he observed that from the seminar emanated two kinds of observations. Firstly there is a common concern for human survival. This is incumbent on the thought that how human beings can live with a certain amount of dignity. Secondly another observation that came out was of the concern for an attempt to make the world humane and democratic. Where every constituent of human individuals and groups can self represent themselves at the international level. Whenever we require the need for democratic representation at the international level we tend to look towards UN. But UN has never shown any consistency over innumerable political questions thus denying the level playing field. Professor Gupta pointed out that there is a dire need for an workable ideology in International Relations but as in the current phase speculative capital is the driving force espousal of any ideological framework seems impossible.
Formal vote of thanks was given by Professor Shibashis Chatterjee,Convener, JAIR.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Prepared by Sreejan Das for The Jadavpur Association of International Relations © The Jadavpur Association of International Relations, 2008
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