London School of Economics

Graduate Student, International Relations

Other Affiliations: The University of Western Ontario, CCST: Centre for the Critical Study of Terrorism

Thesis Title: The Material Construction of World Politics

About

My research examines how technology is used and adapted to grapple with the emergent complexities of our modern world. With the world expanding beyond our capacities for 'cognitive mapping' (Jameson, 1991), there is a need to employ technology to extend our own finite abilities. Combined with the scaffolding provided by distributed cognitive systems (Clark, 2008), technology is the means through which we make the world intelligible. My thesis is twofold: both that the modern globalized world is unthinkable (both un-cognizable and logistically impossible) without these technological extensions, and that this technology has its own internal autonomous dynamics that lead history down a particular path. The work aims to expand the conception of technology in IR, with its narrow focus on communication and military technology. It also aims to demonstrate the ways in which technology operates not merely as an empty vessel for human intentions (the social constructivist and instrumentalist thesis). In demonstrating this, my research analyzes three major areas where technology is crucial to the construction of the global and global actors.

First, the world of climate science and the politics of climate change is impossible without the world of global and regional climate models. Climate change as an issue is premised upon the material network of observation stations, satellites, data analysis models, databases, and various simulation models. This massively distributed system feeds into a cycle of modeling, calibration, and simulating that produces our current state of knowledge on the causes and likely effects of climate change. I aim to show how the complexity of the natural world, with its non-linear processes, interconnected ecosystems, and web of dependencies is measured, calculated, modeled and finally presented to negotiators and policymakers as a representation upon which to act.

The second area of analysis is the realm of financial models and their various attempts to grapple with volatility. Looking at the post-1987 crash world, what had previously been a simple orientation to volatility (the constant volatility of the Black-Scholes model) became disrupted with the emergence of the 'volatility smile'. The various attempts to model this volatility smile within different markets, as well as the attempts to hedge risk and construct new financial products (e.g. exotic options), in no small part facilitated the expansion of the global financial system. Contra liberal and Marxist analyses of finance, this aims to show the significant role of technology and its autonomy in constructing modern markets.

The final section turns to social complexity, exploring the recent rise of crisis mapping software and its uses in Kenya, Haiti, Japan, Libya and other countries. It will examine the history of this technology, and how NGOs and the United Nations have employed it in various crisis situations. My intention is to show the ways in which crisis mapping functions as an extended cognitive system (Hutchins, 1995) that produces particular perceptions of the social complexities involved in crises. Its effects will be analyzed in showing how NGOs are adapting to the benefits of this technology.

The conclusion will extract some of the general results found in the case studies, as well as detailing an implicit philosophy of technology that undergirds these tools. It will attempt to illuminate the overall significance of these developments, as well as pointing out the limits of technological representation.

Clark, Andy. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.

Hutchins, Edwin. Cognition in the Wild, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995.