signalnoise

Sometimes the mental road blocks I construct for myself are pretty amazing. Today I had a meeting with M, who is my second reader, and we talked about my dissertation. A large part of my theory is that states are *competitive* actors, looking to foil their rivals. But states do coordinate at times, and in my theory, that comes out as a kind of minimal interaction that is all but coerced by circumstance. So I'm bouncing this off of M, and he's like hella smart but also very gentle, and he's just like "Maybe states just do both, choosing to cooperate or compete depending on circumstance." And suddenly placing states on a continuum of cooperation/conflict based on their contexts seemed so right, and so a part of my current assumptions that I just couldn't believe I hadn't come up with that. It wasn't an "Ah-ha!" moment so much as it was a "Duh!" moment and that's much less satisfying.

I think it's the result of:
1) M being much smarter than me mostly
but also
2) there is a real emphasis in the academy (and here especially) on parsimonious, elegant theory; this focus often makes us want to "sweep away" real world problems rather than fully incorporate them - seeing around that is hard sometimes; but luckily M was pushing me on that, and in a way that still keeps my theory elegant

O Academia!

[You know, sometimes I wonder just how many details of my diss I should be posting on here. I'd hate to think that any of you fuckers might be out there scooping me... not that there's much to scoop.. ]