Next week is the International Studies Association convention. Normally, it’s a highlight of my professional calendar, though doing ISA from my guest bedroom instead of the planned conventions in Honolulu (2020) or Las Vegas (2021) is something of a letdown. I don’t exactly miss the flights, but it certainly is less appealing to spend additional hours teleconferencing with time zones out of whack. Mostly, though, conferences are at least as much about the informal exchanges with friends and colleagues, chance encounters, and the opportunities to meet new people as they are about presenting papers. And so half the experience–by far the more enjoyable half!–is lost. Sometimes those things get written off as just “fun,” but those sorts of meetings have actually had somewhat career-altering effects for me, including with someone who is now a good friend with whom I’ve co-authored, exchanged fellowship visits, applied for grants, etc.
Despite attending ISA from my own house (and during a week in which we’re all supposed to be on holiday!), I’ve ended up with a full schedule. I’m presenting one paper (abstract and draft below), chairing a round table on Latin American contributions to international order, and acting as discussant for two other panels.
My paper is “Joining the global, protecting the regional: Latin America in the post-WWII critical juncture.” In part because the last seven months left almost no time for writing and research, it took a somewhat different direction. I have reams of archival documents from Chile and Argentina, in particular, that I’ve had little time to review. But the change of direction is also a reflection of some of the theoretical reading I’ve been doing, and my interest in engaging with work on international hierarchy more directly. So the abstract is in the right ballpark, but the draft paper, goes in a somewhat more theoretical direction.
Abstract: Following the Second World War, the United States advanced projects of international order-building at the global level, as well as across various regions. IR scholars have long been noted that US-led regional projects varied in nature—with leading accounts treating European projects as multilateral, Asian projects as networks of bilateralism, and the Western Hemisphere as “crudely imperial” in Ikenberry’s words. These projects of regional order-building have been studied predominantly from the perspectives of the United States and, at times, other Allied great powers. While Latin America has received limited attention in the immediate post-WWII period, it offers an important site for understanding how secondary and smaller powers engaged with the simultaneous reconstitution of regional and global orders. As that already possessed long traditions of sovereignty, diplomacy, and regional organization, Latin America was the most active group of Global South countries in shaping the postwar emergence of “liberal international order.” Drawing on archival work in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and the Untied States, this paper explores how Latin American leaders and diplomats understood and sought to shape the interface between inter-American regional institutions and global patterns of order.
Tom Long, PhD 