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Tuesday, November 27, 2007
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The mainstreaming of blogging in political science
When a former editor of the American Political Science Review gets into the blogging biz, you know things have changed. So go check out The Monkey Cage, a group blog of three George Washington University professors of American politics. Their raison d'etre post is worth reading. posted by Dan on 11.27.07 at 09:07 AMComments: "Why This Blog? .... To publicize political science research...To provide informed commentary on political events and issues...." Of course, if that were the objective Sigelman could have just produced a disciplinary journal that addressed important subjects in accessible language....oh yeah, I forgot, he was at APSR. Why oscillate from one trivial extreme to the other? Why not just do something useful in the middle? Is that actually forbidden these days, or just so out of fashion few even bother to try? lc posted by: lamont cranston on 11.27.07 at 09:07 AM [permalink]That thing in the middle was created. It is called Perspectives on Politics and is published by the APSA. posted by: Mike on 11.27.07 at 09:07 AM [permalink]lc, what's so "trivial" about the blogosphere? didn't you see Dan's post yesterday? Huh? Huh? let's not forget that it was the blogosphere, (not political scientists, the mainstream media or even human rights organizations) that fueld the international outrage this week at the sentencing of a 19-year-old Saudi rape victim to a flogging. In days flat, the outcry reversed the Bush Administration's complacence, caused the Saudi Foreign Ministry to distance itself from the ruling and King Abdullah to hear an appeal. Rah! posted by: Charli Carpenter on 11.27.07 at 09:07 AM [permalink]"That thing in the middle was created. It is called Perspectives on Politics and is published by the APSA." Stop, stop, you're killing me. Perspectives was a great idea and lots of us had high hopes for it. And sure, it's not quite as bad as APSR still is. But you can't seriously be arguing that it actually achieves what it supposedly set out to, can you? Has a single person outside the academy who has ever cracked its pages? Has a single article from it made waves or even ripples anywhere, either in the field or out? Does it actually bring intellectual rigor to bear on important practical issues in ways that an educated general audience finds accessible or useful? It doesn't even have a website! The Journal of Democracy is much closer to the sort of thing I was talking about, and the fact that publishing there is pretty much a waste of time professionally says volumes about the state of the field today. dyspeptically, lc posted by: lamont cranston on 11.27.07 at 09:07 AM [permalink]Post a Comment: |
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