Research
Epistemic Exclusion in Climate Science:
Why We Grow the Wrong Trees in the Wrong Places
Dissertation paper (under review)
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) advocates planting trees in the Global South to cool down our global temperature. The intuition that growing trees is good for fighting climate change has been naturalized by mainstream climate science in the Global North. Yet, as biologists and ecologists point out, trees (especially in the tropics) emit gases known as BVOCs that can further exacerbate global warming. Why then do we grow the wrong trees in the wrong places? And why, given the espoused scientific commitment to pluralism as well as the interdisciplinary and global nature of climate change, are some scientific perspectives, especially biologists and ecologists from the Global South, not well integrated into mainstream climate science? I show that rendering the climate as a singular legible entity solely from a universalist epistemology erects structural barriers to more heterogenous scientific studies of local ecologies from being integrated. Moreover, because models of the climate are based on environmental assumptions and tools of the Global North, they struggle to incorporate knowledge where these assumptions do not hold – especially in the Global South, where trees are more likely to emit gases that can exacerbate climate change – leading to international climate policies that ironically harms, rather than helps, the planet. I illustrate these challenges to integrating knowledge on BVOCs into mainstream climate models based on 50 interviews with climate scientists in both the Global North and Global South, as well as fieldwork based in climate science labs in the U.S. and Thailand.
The Logic of Strategic Ambiguity:
Why Saving Your Opponent’s Face can be Good for You in a Face-Off
With Amoz JY Hor (under review)
References to “strategic ambiguity” are ubiquitous in policy debates over the U.S.’s posture over Taiwan. Yet the term remains undertheorized in both international relations scholarship and the broader policy world. In this paper, we suggest the raisond'être of strategic ambiguity is not deterrence, but to help state leaders prevent a “face-off”
from escalating further. Strategic ambiguity enables state leaders to both send coded signals of one’s desire to not escalate, while simultaneously performing toughness so as to avoid losing face at home or to allies. Crucially, face-saving must go both ways: plausibly denying knowledge of your opponent’s desire to avoid escalation makes it easier for them to back down without losing face, which in turn makes it easier for them to not challenge your own performances of toughness. While strategic clarity utilizes credible signals of resolve with the hope of prevailing in
bargaining crises, it inadvertently goads the other party to issue credible signals of their own. By contrast, strategic ambiguity allows two state leaders to escape a “face-off” altogether – both avoiding escalating abroad without losing face at home. We illustrate this logic in three cases: the Cuban Missile Crisis; NATO expansion; and the Third Taiwan Straits Crisis.
The Curse of Centrality
work in progress with Eric Grynaviski
In the last two decades, IR scholars have increasingly turned to network-based theories to explain important outcomes in international politics. The most consistent finding of this scholarship is that centrality to networks produces advantages to agents, usually in the form of power or influence. This centrality finding spans issue areas and has been used to explain imperial, organizational, security, and trade networks. This paper questions this conventional wisdom. Building on balance and social ledger theorists, this paper argues that IR scholars have a positive tie bias. By this, we mean that IR scholars neglect to study negative ties that link agents together in social networks. Negative ties, defined as negative relationships or enduring, recurring sets of negative judgments, feelings, and behavioral intentions toward another, are common in international politics. By incorporating negative ties into IR scholarship on social networks, we show that centrality can be as much of a curse as a blessing. We explore this argument by examining dyadic level and system level effects of negative ties in the international system.
Local Visions of Expert Authority: Why the IMF was Received as Experts in Thailand, but Shunned in Malaysia
work in progress
Why do some countries adopt advice or knowledge from some experts, but not from the others? Constructivist research argues that experts in international organizations can exert their power over states due to their technical knowledge and legitimacy. However, not all experts are always accepted as “legitimate experts” by all countries as people who have an authoritative claim on expertise. While the majority of the literature tends to treat expertise as a resource of experts, this paper conceptualizes expertise relationally. Borrowing from Jim Scott and Social Epistemology, I conceptualize two types of expert knowledge as constituted by different relationships with other knowledges: a universalist episteme (or techne) where one has a faith in the ability of technical knowledge to apply regardless of context; on the other, one might have a localist episteme (or metis) where one privileges the practical knowledge that is developed to solve problems of a given context. I argue that the IMF's expertise was recieved in Thailand because Thailand understood the economy in the realm of techne, whereas the IMF's expertise was rejected in Malaysia because Malaysia understood the economy in the real of metis.