Dan Bousfield | Western University Canada (original) (raw)

Papers by Dan Bousfield

Globalizations, 2017

This paper situates Canada–China relations in the context of recent internet developments and deb... more This paper situates Canada–China relations in the context of recent internet developments and debates about information and communication technologies (ICTs) infrastructure. I argue that protest events in Hong Kong surrounding the #occupycentral movement help us understand the tension between internet access, technological innovation and state centric forms of internet governance. By foregrounding the tension between the horizontal exchange of ideas and national surveillance and control, it is possible to identify important similarities between Canadian and Chinese state and the experience of internet users. In the wake of the Hong Kong occupy protests, it is possible to see how the internet promotes the practices of ‘Other Diplomacies’, functional relationships between citizen, market and foreign actors that present challenges for national regulation and traditional diplomatic mechanisms. The paper proposes a revival of the concept of Cyber-Diplomacy to better explain the challenges of state-to-state relations in an era of ICT innovation.

American Review of Canadian Studies, Sep 6, 2013

International Studies Perspectives, Jan 1, 2011

This article discusses practical forms of participatory assessment in the international relations... more This article discusses practical forms of participatory assessment in the international relations (IR) classroom to examine the relationship between teaching and practicing democracy. These techniques include a series of exercises that allow students to explore the links between IR course content and classroom pedagogy. Drawing on the work of Slavoj Žižek, this study examines the ways in which participatory teaching methods challenge students to think about freedom and participation in the classroom and in general. Creating a responsive and participatory classroom generates important questions about the nature of foreign policy creation and the practical and ideological limits on democracy in IR.

This article outlines the rise of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship... more This article outlines the rise of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) as an international performance of militant masculinity. Emerging in response to the inroads of feminism in popular and academic explanations of militarization and war, MMA and the UFC is remasculinizing conflict across the globe. Existing studies of masculinity in International Relations have exposed the important links between gender, conflict and militarization but risk producing a static vision of masculinity that does not address current popular and political and cultural events. This analysis addresses the international dimensions of the rise of MMA and the UFC through the deployment of populist and subversive understandings of violence and conflict through a carefully crafted notion of masculinity. The success of these militant masculinities has increasingly supported their inclusion into the American Armed forces through the development of Modern Armed Combatives, an institutionalized training and fighting system drawing directly on the professional experience of the UFC. The consequence of this development is a remasculinization of the military with an emergent institutional culture of perpetual combat, where fighting takes place in the barracks and the battlefield. The subversive militancy of MMA is a growing intersection of combat, militancy and gender, one that defines the popular, cultural and international connections across the globe.

This paper explores my experiences with the ethical and political ramifications of 'going viral' ... more This paper explores my experiences with the ethical and political ramifications of 'going viral' through an account of an uncontrollably successful and short-lived viral YouTube video. In late 2009, I documented and posted an entirely happenstance police arrest on campus, which was subsequently reposted and picked up by major media across Canada. With half of a million views within two weeks, the ethical and political consequences of going viral exemplify the changing relationship between cultural commodities, the study of global politics and the ethics of online politics. From the creation of immediate parodies and remixes to offers of commercialization and official partner status; the process of going viral is a series of political and ethical considerations with little room for critical reflection and response. Subsequent international backlash and campus protests exemplified the ways in which pop culture harmonizes global issues, but also overwhelms political sensibilities. This paper will explore the performative, practical and popular consequences of 'going viral' and develop an ethical framework to situate the political sensibilities created by such 'citizen journalism.'

This work explores the importance anti-capitalist protest in the contemporary international syste... more This work explores the importance anti-capitalist protest in the contemporary international system. In doing so, I address some of the practical, philosophical and ethical considerations of academic depictions of protest through examples in Toronto, Canada and Seoul, South ...

Historical Materialism, Jan 1, 2001

Historical Materialism, Jan 1, 2003

Books by Dan Bousfield

Psychoanalysis and the GlObal, 2018

This paper critically assesses the racialized hierarchies underpinning European responses to debt... more This paper critically assesses the racialized hierarchies underpinning European responses to debt and financial crises. I begin by exploring the social and cultural identities that underpin contemporary understandings of capitalism and economic decision-making. I argue that the coherence of European capitalism reflects a Lacanian sense of fantasy that denies the racialized hierarchies that frame European responses to the crisis. Specifically, belief in capital and the European project was employed by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to justify imposing market discipline and responsibility on new European members through extra-legal decision-making. Technocratic responses to crisis deploy a supposed necessity and objectivity to bypass democratic, legal and constitutional limits, but rest on a vision of capitalism that denies the subjective and fantastic nature of this authority. As these 'policies of faith' are propagated via European debt and restructuring it is necessary to expose the cultural and political assumptions about capital, capitalism and expertise that underpin these policies.

Drafts by Dan Bousfield

Settler Colonial Studies, 2019

This paper explores the intersections of vegetal ontologies and contemporary practices of settler... more This paper explores the intersections of vegetal ontologies and contemporary practices of settler colonialism. The rising popularity of the concept of the Anthropocene fails to give account to nonhuman encounters that shape contemporary sensibilities. As such, this paper explores the role of vegetal being in settler colonial practices to disrupt the efficacy of anthropocentric representations of the world. In concepts like ‘invasive species,’ ‘blight’ and ‘resilience,’ settler colonial metaphors construct the vegetal world alongside the practices of colonial expansion and capitalist globalization. To recover the occlusion of the vegetal world from purview, three cases will be explored to connect the role of automation (as mechanical processes and unconscious action) with the failures and inherent limitations of the settler project. This exploration begins with an examination of Fordlândia's failed efforts to develop scientific agriculture in the Amazon in the 1920s through settler fantasies of progress. This is followed by an examination of the concept of urban blight in the racialized reconfiguration of Detroit's green space following the 2008 financial crisis. Finally, through an examination of the role of transition agriculture in post-contact Haudenosaunee land tenure practices, the paper proposes some ways to recover the representation of vegetal world in contemporary situations. The intersections of settler colonial critique and vegetal ontologies produce new avenues for addressing decolonial practices and resistance.

International Studies Association Paper, 2012

This article addresses the relationship between Canadian identity and the practices of extracting... more This article addresses the relationship between Canadian identity and the practices of extracting Canada's oil reserves from the Albertan bituminous oil sands. Adopting an ‘affective’ analysis using the work of Julia Kristeva, the article addresses the ways in which the ‘tar sands’ have been deployed as at odds with Canadian identity. The nationalist consequence of the extraction of bituminous oil has been a recoiling from the supposed ‘monstrous’ character of these efforts, which is a fundamental misrecognition of the link between the industry and Canadian identity. Through an exploration of the affective issues of the extraction of oil from bituminous sands, the article establishes a link between the monstrous and identity, and the way in which the abject and the unclean is deployed in nationalism. The changing character of Canada's political economy has created a schism in Canada’s sense of self, one symbolized in the monstrous character of the ‘tar sands’.

Canadian Political Science Association Meeting, 2015

This paper proposes a queering of how we conceptualize contemporary Canadian foreign-policy. Foll... more This paper proposes a queering of how we conceptualize contemporary Canadian foreign-policy. Following the burgeoning literature on Canadian queerness and the complex experiences of gender and sexuality in Canada, this paper explores these issues in the context of international policies and practices. Given Canada's explicit support for gay rights initiatives in Uganda; open promotion of Iranian queer refugees; condemnation of anti-homosexuality laws throughout Africa, Canada has made issues of gender and sexuality a fixture of its foreign policy. Rather than compartmentalizing queerness into existing nationalist frameworks of foreign-policy theory and practice, this paper advocates a queering of policy to foreground existing struggles over Canada's heteronormativity in asylum, aid and development initiatives. In an effort to challenge the deployment of normalcy by the Canadian state, the abject, unruly and disruptive practices of queer politics will be foregrounded to call for a re-evaluation of contradictory issues such as the promotion of the Office of Religious Freedom, heteronormative Government communications and defunding of resources for contentious groups. A queering of Canadian foreign policy will inversely reflect the inability of existing theories to accommodate disruptive policies and practices by policy-makers and publics alike.

ISA Conference paper 2014, 2014

This paper situates the role of Arctic information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the c... more This paper situates the role of Arctic information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of Canadian federalism and postcolonial identity. The development of the Arctic Internet has followed a path that necessitates a critical reevaluation of the role of federalism in infrastructure provision in Northern communities. This paper uses indigenous and local communities as the starting point for policy analysis, decolonizing the modern nation state as the primary locus of policy action. By historically situating the development of the Arctic Internet with an emphasis on the needs of aboriginal and Inuit communities, it is possible to better understand the importance and potential of ICTs for these communities. Through the use of a range of ‘other diplomacies’ we can begin to recognize the ways ICTs and Arctic Internet access can support self-governance without continual recourse to Canadian federalism.