Research & Curriculum Vitae
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This is How It’s Done”: Rules as Rhetoric and Meaning-Making in International Politics (paper; currently under review)
This paper responds to the fact that actors articulate meanings of rules in flexible and context-specific ways, but the literature on international legal, norm-based, strategic-logical, and ethical/moral rules typically treats them as pre-given, relatively stable objects. This study examines how actors invoke rules to leverage the authority and claimed universality of rules concepts to elicit specific actions and legitimize behavioral prescriptions. Such invocations contest presumed-to-be-stable international norms and laws and enable the formation of innovative configurations of governance, institutions, and conceptions of appropriate conduct. Starting from Wittgenstein’s observation that rules cannot directly govern action and drawing on recent scholarship on rhetorical adaptations of international norms, I argue rules invocations constitute a resource through which meanings of rules are produced and negotiated. Rather than merely delimiting what is allowed or prohibited, rhetorical invocations of rules change the meaning of the rules they purport to reference. A rhetorical approach to international politics that rethinks assumptions about the internal coherence of rules and global processes of normative change uncovers social processes that are under-explored by dominant scholarship on international norms and law.
From ‘Way of Life’ to a ‘Form of Torture’: Rhetorical Multivalence of Incendiary Bombing Rules and the Construction of National Identity (paper; in progress)
This article traces the rhetorical mutual construction of standards of appropriate incendiary bombardment and national identity. It examines the shift from precision bombing to obliteration bombing during WWII, the widespread use of incendiaries during the Korean war, and the growing backlash against American deployment of napalm during the Vietnam war. As actors invoked various international legal and norm-based rules, notions of military reciprocity and necessity, strategic reasoning and deterrence theories, and ethics to debate appropriate wartime conduct, they co-produced and revised specific friend-enemy distinctions. These rhetorical invocations are flexible discursive tools for legitimating action that (re)define the scope of the subjects they purport to govern, including what constitutes an incendiary weapon, membership to protected groups such as “civilians,” and what groups fall within the protective umbrella of the state.
Norming Humanitarian Intervention (paper; in progress)
IR scholars largely fall into two theoretical camps when talking about the evolution of international norms. According to the predominant school of thought, international norms have an ontological status akin to objects. The second conceptualizes normativity as a process – that is, norms are not things that independently exist in the world; rather, practices and discourses have norming effects. Much of the research that analyzes norm evolution begins with the former theoretical commitments. Shifts in U.S. humanitarian intervention practices in the 1990s show, however, the value of a rhetorical approach to theorizing norm evolution. This paper argues that the meanings of norms related to intervention and sovereignty evolved through interactions among co-evolving discourses of strategic interest, ethics, identity, political responsibility vis-a-vis constituent populations, and the legitimacy of international organizations. I assess the analytical leverage gained by rhetorical/discursive approaches to norm evolution by applying it to two influential IR debates about norms related to humanitarian intervention: the territorial integrity norm and the disappearance of military collection of sovereign debt.
Prometheus’ Blind Spot: Invoking Rules and Political Histories of Fire (dissertation)
By examining people’s evolving justifications of practices related to firefighting (protecting against and rebuilding after conflagration) and fire setting (debating the appropriate use of incendiary munitions during armed conflict), the project demonstrates that the meaning of rules is flexibly constructed as they are applied in action. I explore rhetorical rule-meaning-making through the empirical lens of responses to fire events partly because human affairs have taken countless unexpected turns on account of people succeeded in harnessing, responding to, and making sense of fire in pioneering ways and partly because fire events touch human life beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries and levels of analysis. These political histories of fire demonstrate that shifts in dominant notions of appropriate conduct in urban design and planning, public service provision, organization of state bureaucracies, state culpability, and international law draw on and tap into rules concepts from a diverse array of areas of life. Through invocations of rules, related to specific fire events, actors give context-specific meaning to general criteria for judging appropriate action. By invoking rules to justify actions, people leverage the authority and claimed universality of rules concepts to elicit specific actions and to legitimize behavioral prescriptions. Historically, doing so has also contested presumed-to-be-stable existing rules (including international norms and law) and enabled the formation of innovative configurations of domestic governance, international institutions, and new constellations of conceptions of appropriate conduct.
Conference Presentations
(Proposed) International Political Science Association World Congress, Lisbon, Portugal, July 10-14, 2021:
"From ‘Way of Life’ to a ‘Form of Torture’: Rhetorical Multivalence of Incendiary Bombing Rules and the Construction of National Identity" (Paper)
(Proposed) International Studies Association Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV, April 7-10, 2021:
“Legal, Moral, and Identity Rhetorics and the Politics of Incendiary Munitions Use” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI, March 25-28, 2020 (conference cancelled due to COVID-19):
“This is How It’s Done’: Rules as Rhetoric and Meaning-Making in International Politics” (Paper; nominated for the ISA International Political Sociology Section’s Best Graduate Student Paper Award)
British International Studies Association Annual Conference, London, UK, June 12-14, 2019:
“Institutions Beyond Rules” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 26-30, 2019:
“Incendiary Warfare and International Rules” (Paper)
“Institutions Beyond Rules” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, Feb. 22-25, 2017:
“Grounding Social Processes: Rules, Norms, and Decisions” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, March 16-19, 2016:
“International Normative Regimes and Local Alternatives” (Paper)
“Transcending Assigned Identities: Queering Statehood” (Paper)
Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, April 16-19, 2015:
“Evolving Humanitarian Practices: Rethinking the Norm Life Cycle Model” (Paper)
“Excessive Cruelty during Armed Conflict” (Paper, co-authored with Christina DeJong)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA, Feb. 18-21, 2015:
“Whose Norm is it Anyway? Non-Western Norm Contestation” (Paper)
“Mothers of Dragons, Kings, & Nations: Gender Norms & War in Game of Thrones” (Paper)
International Studies Association Northeast Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, Nov. 6-9, 2014:
“The Arc of the Moral Universe is an Asymptote: Goal Contestation, Marginalization, Intersectionality, and Patterns of Social Movements' Pursuit of Justice” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 26-29, 2014:
“Discourse and Policy Permanence: US Non-Intervention in Rwanda” (Paper)
International Studies Association Northeast Annual Conference, Providence, RI, Nov. 8-9, 2013:
“(Re)Conceptualizations of “Power” & “Security” Based on the Experiences of Gay Men” (Paper)
International Studies Association Northeast Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, Nov. 2-3, 2012:
“Dynamic Norms and the Status Quo: The UN, Sovereignty & R2P” (Paper)
Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 4-5, 2011:
“Mass Murder & Mens Rea: The Intent Requirement in International Criminal Law” (Paper)
"From ‘Way of Life’ to a ‘Form of Torture’: Rhetorical Multivalence of Incendiary Bombing Rules and the Construction of National Identity" (Paper)
(Proposed) International Studies Association Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV, April 7-10, 2021:
“Legal, Moral, and Identity Rhetorics and the Politics of Incendiary Munitions Use” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI, March 25-28, 2020 (conference cancelled due to COVID-19):
“This is How It’s Done’: Rules as Rhetoric and Meaning-Making in International Politics” (Paper; nominated for the ISA International Political Sociology Section’s Best Graduate Student Paper Award)
British International Studies Association Annual Conference, London, UK, June 12-14, 2019:
“Institutions Beyond Rules” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 26-30, 2019:
“Incendiary Warfare and International Rules” (Paper)
“Institutions Beyond Rules” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, Feb. 22-25, 2017:
“Grounding Social Processes: Rules, Norms, and Decisions” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, March 16-19, 2016:
“International Normative Regimes and Local Alternatives” (Paper)
“Transcending Assigned Identities: Queering Statehood” (Paper)
Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, April 16-19, 2015:
“Evolving Humanitarian Practices: Rethinking the Norm Life Cycle Model” (Paper)
“Excessive Cruelty during Armed Conflict” (Paper, co-authored with Christina DeJong)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA, Feb. 18-21, 2015:
“Whose Norm is it Anyway? Non-Western Norm Contestation” (Paper)
“Mothers of Dragons, Kings, & Nations: Gender Norms & War in Game of Thrones” (Paper)
International Studies Association Northeast Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, Nov. 6-9, 2014:
“The Arc of the Moral Universe is an Asymptote: Goal Contestation, Marginalization, Intersectionality, and Patterns of Social Movements' Pursuit of Justice” (Paper)
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 26-29, 2014:
“Discourse and Policy Permanence: US Non-Intervention in Rwanda” (Paper)
International Studies Association Northeast Annual Conference, Providence, RI, Nov. 8-9, 2013:
“(Re)Conceptualizations of “Power” & “Security” Based on the Experiences of Gay Men” (Paper)
International Studies Association Northeast Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, Nov. 2-3, 2012:
“Dynamic Norms and the Status Quo: The UN, Sovereignty & R2P” (Paper)
Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 4-5, 2011:
“Mass Murder & Mens Rea: The Intent Requirement in International Criminal Law” (Paper)
