Call for papers: What Matters? The Politics of Narrating War

What Matters? The Politics of Narrating War

University of Massachusetts Lowell, 17 May 2024

This workshop brings scholars together to investigate how governments generate public support for foreign policy in times of war. We ask scholars to consider a global politics of pluralist concepts and experiences of history, entanglement, identity and other processes, and what contestation this generates about, ultimately, what matters. By this we mean the moral and political imperatives but also, critically, the philosophical conceptions people hold about what “stuff” in the world must be considered to make sense of a war, and what can be ignored.  

It begins with the premise that narrations of conflict are not merely representations of the conflict itself, but also ontologically productive. Political leaders and media elites’ narratives create for their audiences novel scientific ontologies—catalogues of substances and processes involved in the situation under investigation. These scientific ontologies serve as mental maps and, in turn, they promote strategic purposes, encouraging certain policy responses and discouraging others. How do political and media actors create such maps for audiences, and does this shape how audiences think of those conflicts and their state’s foreign policies? How do citizens themselves use digital media to piece together what is meaningful about a war – what counts? Following Lerner and O’Loughlin’s recent article in International Studies Quarterly, we refer to these narratives as strategic ontologies. As they are continually narrated, strategic ontologies’ innovations can shape political imaginaries and policy preferences, often enduring beyond the context in which they are originally formulated.

Inspired by this framework, this workshop welcomes both theoretical and empirical contributions relating to the politics of narrating war. How do political and media elites and all other actors – NGOs, citizens, legal bodies, and so on – narrate what matters in a conflict? What impacts do these mental maps or ‘strategic ontologies’ have? Further, what ethical issues are at stake in choosing between alternative narratives of conflict? What do differing narratives highlight and occlude?

The workshop is jointly sponsored by the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Queen’s University Belfast because of its longstanding research and exchange partnerships with US universities, and the journal Media, War, and Conflict, which has published over a decade of research on the role of war narratives in both contemporary and historical cases. The goals will be to foster dialogue about the politics of narrating war, as well as to bring together potential contributions for a special issue.

Those interested should submit their paper’s title and abstract (<250 words), as well as a short bio (<50 words) to the three convenors of the workshop (contact details listed below).

Funds are available to cover some of the costs of transport and lodging for selected workshop participants. Please indicate whether you wish to be considered for funding of those costs.

Deadline: 15 November 2023

Adam B. Lerner

Associate Professor of Political Science, Director of the Bachelor of Liberal Arts
University of Massachusetts at Lowell

adam_lerner@uml.edu

Alister Miskimmon

Professor, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University, Belfast

A.Miskimmon@qub.ac.uk

Ben O’Loughlin

Professor of Politics and International Relations, Director of the New Political Communication Unit, Royal Holloway, University of London

Ben.Oloughlin@rhul.ac.uk

Strategic ontologies - how to agree on what we even communicate about?

Political disagreement occurs often because actors might use the same words but they’re talking about very different things. Adam Lerner and Ben O’Loughlin have published an article explaining this, entitled, Strategic Ontologies: Narrative and Meso-Level Theorizing in International Politics. Read it here in International Studies Quarterly. Ben also made a podcast explaining the idea — listen to it here — kindly hosted by Will Youmans at George Washington University.

This is a very basic point. What drives many disputes is nobody can agree what actually exists, so they argue about different processes, entities, and experiences. UK leaders talk about climate change in terms of new technology, new jobs, changing energy supplies. In other parts of the world, if you ask about climate change people will talk about lives already lost, not being able to leave the house, likely migration to places on earth where its not 40-50 degrees, and their fear of conflict and war that migration could cause. They talk about the loss of land that is sacred and fundamental to their identity. Its a completely different conversation. Chinese leaders bring in ideas about nature's relationship to man, but downplay any question of responsibility. Every region has its own way of classifying what exists and where attention must focus. 

Political leaders do some of this deliberately. Western and Chinese leaders don't want to talk about how poor countries understand climate change because if those leaders accept that poor countries’ stuff is what is actually happening, the West and China would be legally liable, and have to pay reparations on a huge scale for many decades. Hence, this talk about what 'stuff' counts, or what ontology, is strategic.

Ben has observed this often when working with policymakers. Many decide first what counts, which implies what they will model, what targets they could aim for using that model, and they base decisions on those targets. Anything else, they ignore. But people in other countries prioritise what our leaders ignore even on the same issue.

How anyone can bridge this is a big debate in the field of ethics right now. How to entertain multiple ontologies at once so that we can create dialogue? We live in a pluriverse of competing ontologies that few can comprehend. This is where communication could help, but only when people are open to moving towards that wider comprehension.