Postgraduate Researchers
Michiel van Ingen
Email m.van-ingen@lboro.ac.uk
Loughborough University
Dept. Politics, History and International Relations
Loughborough, Leicestershire,
LE11 3TU, United Kingdom.
University: +44(0)1509222976
Mobile: +44(0)7838940468
Academic Biography
I started my Doctoral Research in 2009 after having secured one of the studentships provided by the Department of Politics, History and International Relations at Loughborough University. I previously completed a BA Combined Honours (Politics and International Relations) at the University of Westminster (2006) and the Msc. Violence, Conflict and Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies (2007).
Academic Interests
My main academic interests are in the areas of:
- international relations (theory) - especially International Political Economy (IPE)
- social sciences methodology
- (political) philosophy
- war, conflict and (in)security
- development - especially in sub-Saharan Africa
The three years that I spent studying Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster provided the intellectual and conceptual basis needed to pursue these interests. At the School of Oriental and African Studies I became increasingly familiar with the various debates that exist within the fields of development and war/security studies. The conflicting approaches that have been taken within these two disciplines led to me actively pursuing an advance in my understanding of the various methodological and theoretical approaches which underpin research in the social and political sciences.
The pursuit of this kind of knowledge has had numerous results, including a return of interest in the questions which are asked and answered by political philosophers and international relations theorists (as opposed to authors solely concerned with development and security issues). It has furthermore resulted in a renewed interest in exploring the utility of the questions which are asked, and the answers which are provided, by IPE approaches to understanding the social and political world. At the philosophical level I am interested in a number of issues, including the role and uses of ontology and epistemology in the social sciences, contemporary debates regarding structure and agency, and theories of science and scientific discovery. With regard to development/security-studies I have taken a particular interest in state-building/formation and state-failure/collapse, complex emergencies, and finding adequate ways of understanding and conceptualizing both local (i.e. developing country) dynamics and the global political-economic system. My dissertation at the School of Oriental and African Studies put forth an explanation for the divergent state-building paths of southern/central Somalia and Somaliland.
PhD Title (preliminary)
(Mis)understanding Somalia: History, Hierarchy and the Liberal Understanding of War and State-building.
PhD Description
Introduction
The 2002 US National Security Strategy paper stated that ‘America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones’. Despite this seeming prioritization of the state-building agenda on the part of a leading state, a host of internationally-sponsored conferences aimed at promoting peace and the reconstruction of the Somali state, a US/UN ‘humanitarian intervention’ and peace-enforcement mission in the early 1990s, and the US-Ethiopian invasion of 2006, southern/central Somalia now seems no closer to either peace or functional central governance than it was some 18 years ago. The continuation of civil conflict and statelessness in the area is perhaps the clearest example available globally of the fact that a rights-based or liberal universalist order is not (yet) an empirical reality in many parts of the world. While it is worth emphasizing the fact that international actors are of course not all-powerful, this failure furthermore suggests that the various strategies employed by liberal states and institutions in order to encourage peaceful relations and state-formation/building in Somalia have been either ineffective or counter-productive.
Aims and objectives
The first aim of the proposed project is therefore to uncover and evaluate, in a more systematic manner than has been done before, the understanding of war/conflict, state-building and statelessness that has underpinned the various responses to the Somali crisis by liberal states and institutions.
The project will show that these responses reveal tendencies inherent to liberal-universalist and rights-based thought and, exactly for this reason, reflect an extremely narrow and often a-historical understanding of these phenomena. They tend, for instance, to employ a perspective on state-building and an analysis of war/conflict which is highly misleading and obscures or neglects the complex historical conditions which eventually resulted in statehood, peace and advanced forms of capitalism in Europe, the U.S. and parts of Asia. The prevalence of such omissions, prettifications and misinterpretations, the project will argue, has resulted in a particularly counter-productive situation with regards to solving the Somali crisis.
If their policies are to be effective in promoting positive socio-political change in Somalia, therefore, considerable policy-adjustments on the part of liberal states and institutions need to be made. In order to provide the basis for such adjustments the second part of the project aims to develop a more dynamic and historically/methodologically-informed understanding of state-building/formation and war/conflict (in Somalia) than has been provided before.
Methodology
This perspective will draw widely on the tenets of international political-economy, (Frankfurt school) Critical Theory and social constructivism. It will stress the importance of 1) including and appropriately analyzing the effects of imperial power when interpreting the failure of previous responses to the Somali crisis, 2) acknowledging and appropriately understanding hierarchies of social power in Somalia, 3) introducing a relational dimension to the analysis of war/conflict and state-building in Somalia in order to counter the effects of rational-choice methodological approaches, and 4) grasping why progress and social change have historically often been contradictory, complex and conflictual processes.
Supervisor
Dr. Rob Dover
Status
Full-time
Nationality
Dutch
Languages
Dutch (Mother tongue)
English (Fluent)
German (Basic)
French (Basic)