Peter E Marshall

@poltheorypete.bsky.social

Casual Academic at York St John. PhD in Political & Social Thought from the University of Kent. BA & MA from Royal Holloway. Ideology, creativity, poststructuralism, and related political theory. he/him https://poltheorypete.wordpress.com/

New Article out in Global Society! 🚨 "Anti-Satellite Weapons and Norm Clusters in Space: Dynamics of Contestation, Activation, and Resiliency" is an #OnlineFirst article by Jeffrey S. Lantis (College of Wooster). Click the link below to give it a read! 👇

Modern advances in the development of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons threaten the safety and sustainability of orbital space operations, and critics charge that government tests of ASAT systems may represent violations of norms embedded in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and follow-on agreements. This study explores how international norm structures for orbital and outer space security offer adaptive mechanisms to respond to applicatory contestation. It develops a multi-stage model of meso-level norm clusters and responses to challenges, including activation, stigmatisation, response, and remediation, and then tests the utility of this model using two case studies of responses to meso-level norm contestation over ASAT weapons. The study concludes that the activation of norm networks appears to provide some level of resiliency for norm structures, allowing them to absorb, diffuse, and even redirect the energy of contestatory challenges toward new norm development for space governance in the 21st century.

Getting 2 job rejections (within a day of each other) when the application deadlines were just under 2 weeks ago stings a lot more than the rejections I wait months for. Like, damn, was my application really so bad that you just immediately threw it out? I thought they were pretty good...

The sixth article in Global Society 40(3) is "Anti-gender Normativity and Advocacy in Turkey – Making a Case for Practice Diffusion" by Hüsrev Tabak and Marella Bodur Ün. Click on the link below to give it a read! 👇

This article offers a practice-oriented perspective on the near-simultaneous rise of anti-genderism in the post-2010 context. Using the Turkish case, it argues that normative isomorphism across different locales is not always the result of recent norm diffusion; their simultaneous and isomorphic emergence can be attributed to the diffusion of practices that enact pre-existing normative frameworks. Empirically speaking, this would mean re-reading the rise of anti-genderism as also a process of practice diffusion, no doubt, within the broader context of the growing influence of right-wing populism and illiberalism. The research suggests focusing on the diffusion of practices rather than norms per se, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of global normative similarities and claims of globality.

The third article in Global Society 40(3) is "For a Better Future: How Parenthood Affects Attitudes toward War" by Shih-chan Dai (@ National Chengchi University) and Navida Chun-han Wang (@umich.edu). Click the link below and be sure to give it a read!

ABSTRACT
How does parenthood affect individuals’ attitudes toward war? Existing literature on public support for war offers some explanations as to when the public is more likely to support the use of military force. Yet, it has largely overlooked an essential factor: parenthood. Building on rational choice and social identity theories, we argue that individuals who are parents are less likely to support war. Individuals with children face greater uncertainty and are more vulnerable to the damages that war could bring. In addition, the shift in identity as parents affects how individuals perceive security threats. We test our hypothesis using the World Value Survey Wave 6 (2010-2014). The results show that parenthood decreases the likelihood of expressing support for war, for both females and males, even after controlling for other demographic traits and country-level covariates such as exposure to militarised violence and gender inequality. Our findings contribute to the literature on security studies and public opinion and suggest a need to consider the impact of parenthood.

Our last monthly pick in June is the #OpenAccess article "Innovating Algorithmic Warfare: Experimentation with Information Manoeuvre beyond the Boundaries of the Law" by Lauren Gould (@ Utrecht), Marijn Hoijtink (@ Antwerp), Martine Jaarsma & Jack Davies (@ Utrecht). Link below!

This article analyses how algorithmic innovation in contemporary warfare unfolds through new alliances and contestations among civil and military actors in the face of an overarching rhetoric around the need to lead in “information manoeuvre”. Drawing on assemblage thinking and applying it to the case of the Land Information Manoeuvre Centre (LIMC)—a data centre founded by the Dutch Army that unlawfully tracked and algorithmically predicted its citizen’s sentiment and behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic—the authors identify three logics that held this centre together and helped ward off critique: entrepreneurialism, informality, and experimentation. Emulating innovation practices elsewhere, together, these logics have important political repercussions beyond the Dutch case, pushing the expansion of military surveillance, pattern-finding and targeting, while undermining the rule of law and democratic accountability within algorithmic warfare.