Friday, August 24, 2018

ISA-FLACSO

The ISA-FLACSO Joint Meeting, held in Quito, Ecuador, 25-27 July, was well attended and a success. The theme was "Power Reconfigurations: Regional and Global Responses in an Age of Uncertainty"  (Reconfiguraciones de Poder: Respuestas Regionales y Globales en Tiempos de Incertidumbre)." About 650 individual presenters attended, according to a count of the program's Index. Caucus members and associates were very visible. giving presentations on Latin American issues, the rise of  China, African international relations and other themes within the subfields of theory, foreign policy, security, law and political economy.
Highlights included the welcome by ISA's Executive Director  and the Director of FLACSO-Ecuador Juan Ponce Jarrin. Thsi was followed by a plenary featuring current ISA president Patrick James and Past President Etel Solingen as well as FLACO secretary general Josette Altamann Borbon and Professor Oscar Ugarteche of UNAM, Mexico.
Caucus Chair Arlene Tickner chaired a number of panels and arranged and hosted a caucus breakfast for all participating members on the first day. For more information, see of course, ISA's website as well as the caucus social media communications.
Caucus members are now focusing on Toronto!




Photo:
Brazil, Ecuador, Suriname, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago (US) and Jamaica (US)  presenters pose after their roundtable on "Influence Strategies of Global South States."


Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Singapore Summit at Al

Dear Followers and Friends:

As most of you know, we are publishing very little now on this blog inasmuch as the caucus has opted to make more use of social media outlets. The caucus's Communications Director is Prof. Thiago Moreira de Souza Rodrigues of INEST, Niteroi, Brazil. Do make sure to check out his social media posts. Anything said on the blog is usually also reflected in Thiago's posts. (Also Thiago has recently co-authored a chapter "Brazil: Violence and Public (un)Safety," in Jonathan Rosen's and Hanna Kassab's, Violence in the Americas (Lexington Books, 2018). As we know many parts of Latin America are plagued by violence, criminality, public safety policies, and human rights violations. The book itself is available on amazon.com.)

We will occasionally update you on this blog when there is something special to say. At this time, we wanted to say that stalwart caucus member Alan Chong has sent us some interesting short pieces he has done for the RSIS on  the recent Singapore Summit between Chairman Kim Jong-Un and President Trump. Members will recall that we held a very successful joint ISA-GSCIS conference in Singapore in January 2015 and participants left with warm feelings toward that country.
Alan's commentaries can be found, in order of publication at:

  http://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/CO18090.pdf[rsis.edu.sg] (with Graham Ong-Webb)
 http://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/CO18096.pdf[rsis.edu.sg] (with Graham Ong-Webb)
http://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/cms/co18101-the-razzmatazz-of-public-diplomacy/#.Wyquc4pKiUl
and http://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/cms/co18104-trump-kim-summit-a-tale-of-two-endings/#.W4BWSuhKiUl



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CUBA Again

It is almost a year since the Cuba workshop and several persons have emailed me (JBW), reflecting on last July's event. Some participants have even returned to Cuba for other meetings (for example, the Caribbean Studies Association's conference which has just ended). Some of you have also asked about our publication plans. Please know that despite delays because of an unexpected illness, we are still working on what we hope will be two volumes of relevant material from the workshop. As we have long noted, neither of these will be "Conference papers" per se. Rather these will be traditional books. You will be contacted as needed, as things progress. Book publications always take time and we are still in the early stages. Meanwhile, B-W has uploaded two of her latest speeches on Global South IR to Research Gate.

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Best wishes to all for a wonderful and productive summer.

Don't forget ISA/FLACSO's meeting, coming up July 24.