The national and the international

The narrative of Western dominance describes IR as a field organised around national traditions. It denounces the existence of Eurocentric international gatekeeping practices that silence the voices of ‘scholars from the Global South’ and prevent the internationalisation of their publications. Such gate-keeping practices would prevent scholars from ‘the Global South’ from expressing their national traditions, distinct from what is produced internationally, as the gatekeepers of the journals (mainly ‘Western’ scholars) are Eurocentric. This narrative that I have called the narrative of Western dominance contains a series of implicit assumptions regarding the relationship between what is defined as ‘national’ and ‘international’. The obviousness or naturalness (naturalité) of these assumptions is questioned by elements exposed in the first three chapters. First, analysing the geographical, linguistic and disciplinary scope of Brazilian and Indian publications reveals (by way of contrast) that the literature implicitly reduces the international space of publication to ‘the West’. Or, more precisely, it reduces it to Anglo-American, English-speaking IR journals. However, Brazilian scholars publish abroad in languages other than English. A large share of their publications is produced outside the geographical networks of IR scholars, in Latin America. Moreover, the multi-disciplinary nature of IR in Brazil and India (for example in history and area studies) makes some Indian and Brazilian scholars epistemically closer to other disciplines abroad than to IR as defined by Anglo-American journals. Second, internationalisation of national fields resulting from transnationalisation of the education of Brazilian scholars challenges the clear-cut division between national and international IR traditions. Scholars’ experiences of national specificities do not reflect the meaning attributed to them by the critical literature. Scholars do not invest in them or construct them as national anti-hegemonic tools against an alleged international ‘mainstream literature’. Third, the role played by the state (regarding foreign policy and higher education policies) challenges the idea that the practices of ‘non-Western’ scholars, and their visibility, is a result of international IR dynamics. Scholars’ professional habits are mainly conditioned by their relationship with the government and the relationship between IR and other national fields

How to problematise categories: building the methodological toolbox for linguistic reflexivity

Following qualitative researchers’ growing interest in reflexivity, a body of scholarship has emerged that aims to turn informal practices for reflexivity into methods that can be learnt and taught alongside other research practices. This literature, however, has focused on helping researchers become more reflexive toward their situatedness and positionality, rather than toward their use of language and its effects on knowledge production – a process I refer to as ‘linguistic reflexivity’. This article addresses this gap by formalising a method for ‘problematising categories’, an informal approach familiar to qualitative researchers as a promising solution to the analytical and ethical blinders that result from scholars’ unconscious use of language. I proceed in three steps. First, I review the literature to show the analytical, empirical and ethical rationales behind this approach and offer a definition of problematising categories as the practice of making conscious how socio-linguistic units of categorisation unconsciously organise our perception and can represent a problem for knowledge production. This practice, I argue, enables us to decentre ourselves from the taken-for-granted nature of those categories. Second, I develop a three-stage research method for problematising categories: noticing ‘critical junctures' when problematisation is called for, identifying the categorical problem through sensitising questions and reconstructing an alternative. Third, I demonstrate how problematising categories contributes to the research process by applying this method to my experience in problematising the binary pair ‘local’ versus ‘international’ in a research project on the environmental impact of Chinese investment in the Senegalese fishery sector. I show that problematising categories leads to more rigorous empirical findings and nuanced analysis in a way that is feasible within the frame of qualitative research projects. Overall, this article expands the practical tools for linguistic reflexivity and heeds the methodological call to make conscious and explicit choices for every dimension of our research

Reflexive discourse analysis: a methodology for the practice of reflexivity

How to implement reflexivity in practice? Can the knowledge we produce be emancipatory when our discourses recursively originate in the world we aim to challenge? Critical International Relations (IR) scholars have successfully put reflexivity on the agenda based on the theoretical premise that discourse and knowledge play a socio-political role. However, academics often find themselves at a loss when it comes to implementing reflexivity due to the lack of adapted methodological and pedagogical material. This article shifts reflexivity from meta-reflections on the situatedness of research into a distinctive practice of research and writing that can be learned and taught alongside other research practices. To do so, I develop a methodology based on discourse: reflexive discourse analysis (RDA). Based on the discourse analysis of our own discourse and self-resocialisation, RDA aims to reflexively assess and transform our socio-discursive engagement with the world, so as to render it consistent with our intentional socio-political objectives. RDA builds upon a theoretical framework integrating discourse theory to Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus for reflexivity and practices illustrated in the works of Comte and La Boétie. To illustrate this methodology, I used this very article as a recursive performance. I show how RDA enabled me to identify implicit discriminative mechanisms within my discourse and transform them into an alternative based on love, to produce an article more in line with my socio-political objectives. Overall, this article turns reflexivity into a critical methodology for social change and demonstrates how to integrate criticality methodologically into research and writing

Multi-method qualitative text and discourse analysis: a methodological framework

The growing interest in combining different approaches to qualitative text and discourse analysis has so far not been met with adapted methodological resources. This article aims to address this gap by developing a methodological framework for combining qualitative text and discourse analysis. First, we introduce four traditions that we identify as four families of methods of text/discourse analysis with different logics: Discourse Analysis, Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, Thematic Analysis, and Qualitative Content Analysis. Second, we review the literature to show how these methods have been combined across disciplines and case studies. Third, we build upon existing literature to unpack the benefits and challenges of multi-method text/discourse analysis, and offer strategies to help navigate the problems that may arise. Overall, this article introduces multi-method qualitative text and discourse analysis (MMQTDA) as a methodological framework to provide guidance and offer solid foundations for an emerging methodological conversation in qualitative text research

Dehumanized in death: representations of murdered women in American true crime podcasts

How do American true crime podcasts represent women victims of murder? Emerging research shows that the podcast storytelling format can produce more personal and compassionate discourse, potentially countering the overall harmful representations of the true crime genre. However, research focusing on the representation of women victims of violence in the podcast genre has so far been limited. Based on a discourse analysis of 14 popular true crime podcast episodes released between 2014 and 2021, we identified that the murdered women in the podcasts are represented as part of a dehumanized group who are complicit in their deaths and who serve as a cautionary tale for other women. Based on these findings, we argue that although podcasts’ discursive dynamics can potentially introduce alternative representations of the victims based on social group identification and self-reflexivity, overall, American true crime podcasts align with dominant representations and discourses about stigmatized victim

La thèse de la domination occidentale face à l'épreuve de la réflexivité : "nous" et les chercheurs indiens et brésiliens en Relations internationales

This research focuses on the problems faced by International Relations scholars who denounce the « Western »-domination of their discipline. In order to promote academic dialogue and diversity, they defend the use of reflexivity against the parochial and discriminative practices allegedly conducted by those they designate as the « mainstream » « positivist » literature. Twenty years after the beginning of the movement, self-criticisms have emerged among the reflexivists. This self-critical appraisal suspects reflexivism of not being able to produce an alternative to the academic practices it denounces; are reflexivist scholars merely reproducing the « Western-domination » they denounce?In order to complete this research, I have analysed International Relations international publication processes as a situation of utterance in which I participate as a reflexivist researcher. A socio-historical investigation on the internationalisation of International Relations in Brazil and India, as well as a textual analysis composed of the discourses of the different academic groups under investigation (the reflexivists, the « mainstream », and the Indian and Brazilian International Relations scholars) represent my main sources of analysis. In accordance with the self-criticism suspicions, my research puts forward the eurocentrism of the « Western-domination thesis ». It also highlights how the fact that reflexivism poses as « critical » generates a specific status quo. However, contrary to this critique of the critique, I consider that, by taking into further account their participation in academic discriminative processes, reflexivists are engaging an encouraging dynamic for reflexivism in International Relations. Indeed the experimentation I conducted through this PhD shows that the acceptance of our participation in the social dynamics we study represents a necessary step toward transforming our social relations in favour of more academic dialogue and diversity.Cette recherche interroge le problème auquel se trouvent confrontés les chercheurs qui, en Relations Internationales, dénoncent la domination « occidentale » au sein de cette discipline. Afin de promouvoir le dialogue et la diversité à l’échelle globale, ils défendent l’intérêt d’une démarche réflexive contre les pratiques de fermeture et de hiérarchisation exercées, selon eux, par les chercheurs « mainstream » « positivistes ». Vingt ans après les débuts du programme réflexiviste cependant, l’émergence d’une autocritique sème le doute sur les capacités de ce projet à produire une alternative aux pratiques académiques qu’il dénonce: les chercheurs réflexivistes en Relations Internationales reproduisent-ils la « domination occidentale » qu’ils révoquent ?Pour mener à bien cette recherche, nous avons analysé la publication internationale en Relations Internationales comme une situation d’énonciation à laquelle nous participons en tant que chercheuse réflexiviste. Une enquête socio-historique, menée sur l’internationalisation des chercheurs en RI en Inde et au Brésil, ainsi que l’analyse de différents corpus composés des discours des agents sur lesquels portent notre enquête (les chercheurs « réflexivistes », les chercheurs « mainstream », et les chercheurs indiens et brésiliens), représentent nos sources principales.Conformément aux soupçons formulés par l’autocritique, notre travail met en avant l’eurocentrisme de la thèse de la domination occidentale. Il révèle en outre la naturalisation particulière des rapports sociaux produits par le réflexivisme du fait de son ambition émancipatrice. Cependant, contrairement à cette critique de la critique, nous percevons comme un point positif la prise en compte, par les réflexivistes, de leur participation aux processus de hiérarchisation académique. En effet, notre expérimentation montre que l’acceptation de notre participation aux rapports sociaux que nous étudions a représenté la condition nécessaire pour transformer nos propres rapports sociaux, dans le sens de la diversité et du dialogue académique que nous recherchons

Altmetric scores in Political Science are gendered - does it matter?

Altmetrics are generally seen as indicators for online engagement and attention. However, taking the field of political science as an example, Gustav Meibauer, Kiran Phull, Audrey Alejandro & Gokhan Ciflikli use altmetrics to analyse the dynamics of knowledge production in the field. Finding that altmetrics show a highly hierarchical and gendered spread of attention to work in political science, they ask how and why these metrics can be used responsibly

Forum: the case for reflexive writing practices in management communication and organization studies

Following criticism about the quality of writing in management communication and organization studies, this Forum presents arguments for change in how scholarly knowledge is communicated. The expectation today seems to be that, to get published, academic writing requires monologic and complex ways of expression. However, using formulaic and reader-exclusive language in publications limits their accessibility to a wider readership, including not only more diverse members of the disciplinary community—such as non-Anglophone scholars and junior researchers—but also those we study and write about. In our respective contributions, we argue for more meaningful communication between writers and readers achieved through writers adopting reflexive practices when crafting their texts for publication. Specifically, we suggest considering reflexivity through the following concepts: conformity and individuality, socialization, tenderness, and respect. These, we argue, help make our academic writing more accessible and meaningful

Designing role-play simulations for climate change decision-making: a step-by-step approach to facilitate cooperation between science and policy

Literature has demonstrated the benefits of role-play simulations (RPS) for decision-making and social learning in the field of climate change and environmental policy. Despite growing interest, step-by-step guidelines are still rare when it comes to the practical design and implementation of RPS, which hinders the adoption and implementation of this promising approach. This article aims to facilitate the development of RPS by proposing a step-by-step framework for designing role-play simulations around three stages – before, during, and after the simulation. To develop the methodology, we use as a starting point a pilot simulation on decision-making and knowledge production in contexts of uncertainty and complexity. Focusing on negative emission technologies in Switzerland, the pilot simulation involved 12 scientists and 12 politicians who role-played each other for half a day. Overall, we propose an actionable framework for RPS designed to facilitate cooperation between groups with different socialisations, timelines, and imperatives towards more informed and collaborative decision-making practices. Doing so, this article contributes to making RPS more accessible to a broad audience as a method supporting cooperation between science and policy in the field of climate and environmental politics and beyond

Timing and Amount of Physical Therapy Treatment are Associated with Length of Stay in the Cardiothoracic ICU

Significant variability exists in physical therapy early mobilization practice. The frequency of physical therapy or early mobilization of patients in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit and its effect on length of stay has not been investigated. The goal of our research was to examine variables that influence physical therapy evaluation and treatment in the intensive care unit using a retrospective chart review. Patients (n = 2568) were categorized and compared based on the most common diagnoses or surgical procedures. Multivariate semi-logarithmic regression analyses were used to determine correlations. Differences among patient subgroups for all independent variables other than age and for length of stay were found. The regression model determined that time to first physical therapy evaluation, Charlson Comorbidity Index score, mean days of physical therapy treatment and mechanical ventilation were associated with increased hospital length of stay. Time to first physical therapy evaluation in the intensive care unit and the hospital, and mean days of physical therapy treatment associated with hospital length of stay. Further prospective study is required to determine whether shortening time to physical therapy evaluation and treatment in a cardiothoracic intensive care unit could influence length of stay